Conflict-of-Interest Concerns

In a lawsuit filed against the owner of a biweekly newspaper and the city of Santa Paula, SOAR leader Richard Francis has included Santa Paula City Council member / real estate broker James Garfield because someone feels there are conflicts of interest (“Soar Leader Sues Newspaper, Elected Officials,” July 8). The suit says Garfield should not vote on land-use decisions because they could be profitable to him and violate Fair Political Practices laws. There is no proof that he has or will profit from any such vote nor is there evidence that Garfield has not acted in the best interest of constituents who own the land that Santa Paula wants to annex and develop. The suit only assumes that there is a conflict, which seems to be enough since the Fair Political Practices Commission advised a Moorpark City Council member / Realtor to abstain from land-use votes over similar concerns.

A very clear pattern of legal discrimination and manipulation is being played out. Whenever decisions that the voting majority’s representatives make interfere with special interests’ agendas, affected groups are now turning to the legal system to wrest the ability to make those decisions from them. What’s so astonishing about Francis’ participation in this particular lawsuit is that he, in his short stint as a member of a city council, voted on plenty of land-use issues. He will be the first to argue that he and his supporters did not profit from any of his decisions directly and, at face value, this would be a valid argument. But by effectively squeezing developers out of Ventura, his decisions could have driven property values skyward thus assuring himself and his backers higher profits if and when they sold their homes.

This whole affair should offer a little insight to the mind-set of activists like Francis: anarchy through intimidation, under the auspices of democracy. Mobocracy is at its most dangerous level when voter participation is low, and we are living in the most dangerous time in American history.

BRUCE ROLAND, Ojai