Soka University’s Lobbying Efforts

I don’t think it came through clearly enough in your Sept. 19 story about Soka University’s lobbying efforts that state Sen. Mike Thompson and his staff are wholly blameless in the latest Soka-sponsored amendment. Sen. Thompson is a conservationist and friend of parks--witness his bond measure and his chairmanship of the Senate Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee.

Soka’s lobbyist, former Assemblyman Bruce Young, may have even considered his client’s interests “non-controversial” in light of Soka’s lobbying success in other places.

The real fault lies with me, as head of the conservancy staff, for not more aggressively following Soka’s efforts in the last hours of the legislative session.

JOSEPH T. EDMISTON

Executive Director

Santa Monica Mountains

Conservancy

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Soka’s latest moves make me very angry. Not only is a large corporate interest attempting to subvert the interests of the community and is using our own state and federal government to do so, but these actions are being committed by a foreign entity that thinks it can come in and do as it pleases because it has a lot of money.

That is just not the way this country works, although they seem to be getting away with it. Their tactics of intimidation are unethical, and the lawmakers who have given in to them for fear of opposition should be ashamed of themselves. I feel that the conservancy, which is supported by residents who do not want the high volume of traffic a full-scale college campus would generate, should be able to buy the property because it is ready, willing and able to do so. Soka is wrong in its efforts to prevent the conservancy from doing its job. To me, a high school student studying U.S. government, this looks like a case where the government is not living up to its primary objective: serving the people.

AARON TELL

Los Angeles

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