Few crooks in political process

May 31, 2006

By DON BENNETT
FOR THE ARGUS-COURIER

A week or so back, I was serving hot dogs at the "American Graffiti" promotion out at the factory outlets. It was a busy day. Large numbers had turned out to see the movie types as well as an extensive selection of vintage and antique cars.

Standing there, tossing the blistered wienies onto hard-to-open buns, I had plenty of time to study the endless line of Petalumans passing through to get their lunch. These were, by and large, good people, honest people, concerned with raising a family, concerned with making a living, and, on Saturday, see some old cars and some old movie stars. (By the way, it seems the cars weathered the years better than the Hollywooders.)

Why, then, I pondered, since most people seem to be basically good and honest, does there seem to be so much crookedness in high places?

There are probably a couple of answers to this. One is that high stakes attracts the type of person who would sacrifice a lot of ethics in an effort to get ahead, and that person is probably not going to spend an afternoon eating hot dogs in a shopping center. The other answer is that the problem may not be as bad as you think.

Admittedly, we just had the verdict on the Enron fellas, who apparently never thought they would get caught, but also never thought they would get convicted. But they did.

We also enjoyed the spectacle of a congressman who took a $100,000 bribe, kept the money in a freezer, and then got his feathers all fluffed because they searched his office.

Because of the power of media, it is easy to assume that one guy taking bribes, or two guys bankrupting a company for personal gain, are the rule, not the exception.

This perception of perpetual corruption in high places has found its way into our election campaigns this year. It seems that anyone who has ever had a civil conversation with a developer is being accused of trying to rape the planet.

We have two candidates for the Democratic nomination for governor of this good state who have both crawled into the slime to accuse each other of rampant misfeasance, malfeasance, or whatever. The state's teachers, who are backing Torliatt for the state Assembly, put their name to a pretty vicious hit piece on candidate Murray, again using the "developer" word with all its dubious associations.

Congresswoman Woolsey has generated a bit of a dust cloud over the funding for ferries at Port Sonoma. Her difficulty comes not so much for writing a letter supporting legislation favoring the ferry project, but from denying she had done so, and then trying to "spin" the letter so it could fit her previous story.

Despite all the tongue clucking of the coffeehouse pundits, Woolsey's problem was not that she "was on the take." Nobody is really asserting that, and her record to now has been unchallenged. Her problem was in supporting a project that to a large extent is opposed by her core constituency. She tried to have it both ways, and in this era of public distrust, the public is not being very generous in her defense.

So, with Westly and Angelides and Murray and Woolsey, despite all the yelling and hand wringing, there really is little or no evidence so far that any of them did anything worse than succumb to some lobbying or make some poor decisions, which at last count was not illegal.

As a veteran of 16 years and counting on local planning commissions, I hear from time to time that we're all "on the take" from people who sincerely believe that. Although I would like to claim supreme virtue, the truth is that in all of those years, not once, not a single time, did any developer or like applicant offer any kind of untoward or illegal incentive in exchange for a vote. In my experience, it simply does not take place.

Lobbying does happen. When a dicey vote is coming up before a planning commission, land use consultants and attorneys love to try to get you alone and plead their case without unfriendly ears pointing out the error of their logic, but that is their right, just as it is the right of commissioners to say "no thanks."

The point is that, despite all the political rhetoric, there are not that many crooks in the process. Dumb, sometimes, but not necessary crooked.

(Don Bennett, a business writer and consultant, has been involved with city planning issues dating back to the growth control plan of the early 1970s. A 12-year veteran of the Petaluma Planning Commission, he currently serves on the Sonoma County Planning Commission.)