Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences

Contemporary American historian Daniel J. Boorstin cautions that education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.

Ventura County’s Measure A, an advisory growth-control law staggeringly approved by the voters in November, has prompted the Board of Supervisors to recommend educational outreach on land use. The League of Women Voters, the Sustainability Council and other local organizations have gotten the nod to help make this recommendation a reality.

Critics of this directive are convinced that voters trumpeted with one voice, “Down with sprawl!” They argue that ample information about trade-offs inherent in land-use regulation has been disseminated already--any more would cause the tired eyes of Ventura County residents to simply glaze over. They point out the pointlessness of further force-feeding unreliable, self-serving or irrelevant information.

Unreliable? Self-serving? Irrelevant? Although data were distorted by both sides during the debates swirling around the various Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) measures, Supervisor Frank Schillo cast his aye because “we want to educate the public on what SOAR did or didn’t do--Measure A did not save all farmland.”

Neither will SOAR destroy, as opponents contended, all life as we know it. What is critical to note is that if there’s one law operational at all times in the body politic, it’s the law of unintended consequences.

The plethora of “pull-up-the-drawbridge” letters to the editor flies in the face of the assertion that Ventura County is adequately informed. Let’s get real. Some sort of growth is necessary to keep the economies of our 10 cities vital. Furthermore, saying no to either new development or density translates into slamming the door in the faces of our own kids. Just remember: Two out of every three new residents to Ventura County arrive via the stork, not the moving van.

Granted, the slew of so-called land-use dialogues during 1997 and 1998 produced no tangible results. SOAR, however, is tugging the public’s attention, however involuntarily, toward such sleep-inducing topics as redevelopment, municipal finance reform, affordable housing and mixed-use zoning designations.

These matters, which might otherwise be left to ritualistic massage by passionate policy wonks, are far from extraneous to the success of SOAR.

Let me put it this way: Remember the last time you were in a classroom? Didn’t you allow your butt to fall asleep in order to wake up your brain? It’s time to try that again.

Education, if you do it right, is a two-way process. Our electeds need to know what we want Ventura County to look like. Since the folks involved in the wildly popular visioning projects across the county have discovered what does and doesn’t work, I recommend bringing a few on board to share the fruits of their experiential erudition.

If you are afraid of blood being spilled on some auditorium floor as farmers, developers, environmentalists, public officials and the public are brought together, I’m sure there are a couple of former Marine drill instructors around who could volunteer as facilitators.

The more arduous task will be arriving at a bias-free list of experts to address the assembled. In these matters, the League of Women Voters and Sustainability Council might be wise to consider that no individual, no matter how altruistic, is without sin--or political agenda.

Finally, although I hate to be crass, where’s the loot for all this edification coming from? Surely the organizations anointed by the Board of Supervisors can’t be expected to provide balm, bodies and bucks, should they agree to this mission impossible. Time is running out. If all goes well at an Aug. 20 hearing, Ventura voters will find a measure on the November ballot asking whether the First Assembly of God Church can erect a sanctuary / sports park on farmland.

The alternative to the public outreach proposed by the Board of Supervisors is education by mailer. Do we really want to rely on a flurry of glossy brochures to prepare us for the responsibility of the land-use decisions we demanded with SOAR? Do we really want to let money talk and sound bites walk?

Boorstin focused on the visionaries in American history. He was intrigued with the way these individuals shifted the shape of this country. We in Ventura County are visionaries--at least Newsweek thought so--when we breathtakingly blessed SOAR. If Boorstin is right about education, we’d better hit the books.