Attacks on McPhail Are a Disservice

Your newspaper and the Ventura County Board of Supervisors do a grave disservice to our county by not responsibly researching issues before reporting, commenting or voting on them. The issue that finally aroused me to respond is the furor surrounding the recently escalating attacks on the office of county Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail (“A Call for Leadership,” editorial, March 14).

Supervisor Frank Schillo, in particular, never has anything positive to say about anyone or anything, yet you frequently quote his authoritarian, law-of-the-jungle mentality. Schillo casts blame about freely but provides no solution other than do it my way and do it right or you will be replaced. According to Schillo, this is the natural order of things. Maybe someone should remind him of Madge Schaefer’s arrogance and the lesson she learned.

To make matters worse, critics from all sides of the issues involved have weighed in with their sometimes thoughtful, sometimes obviously biased, at times ignorant and yes, even hysterical, opinions (certain editorial opinions notwithstanding).

Pesticide use and pesticide regulation are state and national issues extending beyond Ventura County while at the same time impacting many of us very close to home. I have family and friends in agriculture; many of us do. Agriculture and its support industries touch us all. My closeness to these people has made me acutely aware of how stressful these times are and how complicated and difficult these issues are to understand.

The agricultural commissioner’s office has had to contend with a shrinking or constrained budget in spite of ever-increasing demands to provide a high level of service to the community. This service includes enforcing state agricultural code laws, pesticide use regulations, educating the public about and protecting the public from potentially harmful foreign insects and, yes, creating a favorable business environment for the agriculture industry of Ventura County.

(I might add that the office does not regulate pesticide products sold over the counter--products advertised weekly in your paper.) The agricultural commissioner’s office cannot be operated as a revenue offset business. The same state agriculture code that established the office of county agricultural commissioner statewide also disallows charging growers for pesticide use permits. The only way to stay within budget is to balance available resources to meet the lawful obligations of the office.

Commissioner McPhail has had to endure your sensational, created news stories and personal attacks. This longtime government servant and professional manager is being threatened with removal because he supposedly has not done enough. He was told that his communication to the board was inadequate. Board members seem unaware that communication is a two-way process.

Allowed to continue, Ventura County could again waste a valuable human resource, years of training and invaluable skill. Steve Kaplan, former head of Behavioral Health, comes to mind. The board is abdicating its responsibility to lead and instead appears ready to again let someone else take the fall for its poor leadership and arrogance.

The entire Board of Supervisors should share responsibility for the handling of these important agricultural issues. A perceived failure to develop a comprehensive strategy to accommodate agriculture in balance with a fast-developing urban landscape (something neither the state nor its university system has yet to develop, although they have acknowledged the growing problem) is more than the fault of one man’s department. Blame, buck-passing, threats and punishment demonstrate a remarkable lack of leadership and vision.

Increasing development in agricultural areas has placed Ventura County at the forefront of a statewide land use and pesticide use issue. Just as in health care, it is necessary to rethink old ideas. We must develop new strategies and priorities and create a balance between opposing visions that reasonable, educated and informed people can agree upon. These changes will be difficult but need not be as punitive or threatening as some seem to desire.

Although I at times disagree with the outcome, I still have faith and trust in our government to at least attempt to do the right thing. I can’t say the same about the entertainment-driven news media.

It was a newspaper man who once said, “It is not the duty of newspapers to print the truth, only the facts.” To quote Henry Louis Mencken, “All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something.” He also said, “The public . . . demands certainties . . . But there are no certainties.”