Schaefer’s Sour Grapes

It must be autumn: There’s a chill in the night air, and the stench of sour grapes permeates not only the county vineyards but county politics as well. Madge Schaefer’s publicly displayed snit against Maria VanderKolk for ostensibly “taking developers’ donations” would be amusing if it were not so pathetic and petty.

VanderKolk stands accused by Schaefer of accepting developers’ contributions, having promised not to in her campaign. What Schaefer left out was the fact that, when Maria took office, she realized that developers weren’t the only special interest group stuffing the coffers of our local pols. Labor unions, agribusiness interests, environmental groups and many other organized groups were in the practice of making their contributions heard in local politics. So instead of disenfranchising one particular special interest group while ignoring all the others, VanderKolk, in her inimitable egalitarian fashion, introduced and pushed through legislation limiting all contributions from any group or individual to a county official to $250 a year.

She created a level playing field. Now every fire-breathing greedy developer has the same political and financial clout as every tree-hugging environmentalist. With the aforementioned level playing field in place, VanderKolk is free to, with a clear conscience and an unclouded vision, accept contributions from all comers, $250 each.

For the record, in Schaefer’s first campaign for supervisor, she received at least $35,000 from developers. Over her four years in office, she banked about $80,000, all from developers. Conversely, using the most liberal definitions of “developer,” VanderKolk has received maybe $2,000. All this temper and pettiness is coming from someone who is rumored to be considering a run for Tom McClintock’s Assembly seat. Lord help us.

LAWRENCE C. JANSS, Thousand Oaks