Measure P Kool-Aid

I wavered between astonishment and disappointment when I read your endorsement of the No on Measure P position in last week’s Indy. The analysis tastes a lot like the oil industry’s Kool-Aid, as they falsely claim again and again that the initiative is poor and hurriedly written, needs remediation, and will cost the county millions.

Did your editorial board bother to read Linda Krop’s op-ed, printed just a few pages later? Linda, the most respected environmental attorney in the region, explained at length that Measure P is solidly and defensibly constructed. The implementation ordinances that the Board of Supervisors passed on October 7 function as advance planning to ensure that the county is immediately ready to grant exemptions if P passes. This is exactly what good governance does; it creates regulations to implement laws. It is inaccurate and unfair both to the initiative’s authors and to the Board of Supervisors to misrepresent those ordinances as a “fix’ of something that is not, in fact, broken.

The Yes on P campaign may have been hurriedly thrown together, but the initiative itself was not — it was the product of many months of careful crafting by highly experienced environmental lawyers. You conflate two very different things and as a result misrepresent the reality of what P is and how it was created.

I have traditionally looked to The Indy to offer intelligent, objective assessments as the bases for your endorsements. Now, I’m not so sure.