Contentious is not a big enough word to describe the discussion on committee assignments that unfolded Jan. 8 at the Monterey County Board of Supervisors meeting. There might not, in fact, be a big enough word to describe it. It was ugly and awful and nobody escaped unscathed, with allegations of sexism and racism thrown into the discourse, and the damage from the discussion that took place will likely reverberate through the board for months to come, if not longer.
The situation began when the agenda for the supervisors meeting was sent out. At the meeting, in addition to swearing in new Supervisor Chris Lopez, the veteran chief of staff to former District 3 Supervisor Simon Salinas, the board was due to vote on the committee assignments made by incoming board chair John Phillips.
That particular agenda item included a couple of jaw droppers: While District 5 has had a supervisor sit on the Fort Ord Reuse Authority board since FORA’s inception in 1994, Phillips planned to remove District 5 Supervisor Mary Adams from that body and replace her with Lopez. He also planned to remove Jane Parker from LAFCO, the Local Agency Formation Commission responsible for making decisions on local boundaries and the creation of special districts. Lopez would take over the seat vacated by Salinas, and Supervisor Luis Alejo would take Parker’s seat on LAFCO.
FORA and LAFCO go hand in hand. The former is due to sunset in 2020 (although there are already rumblings about extending its lifespan, yet again). But when FORA does sunset, LAFCO will oversee the agency’s assets, liabilities and “obligations.”
Phillips sounded resolute about FORA’s future. FORA “sunsets in 2020 and we’re all committed to the equitable transition of FORA programs… and supporting the necessary legislation to carry it out after that.”
As Parker pleaded her case to remain on LAFCO, and talked about how the unique needs of each district should figure in to committee assignments – her district has more LAFCO business than any other, she said, and her and Adams’ districts are the only districts with Fort Ord lands – the discourse disintegrated, fast.
“I couldn’t disagree with you more… don’t interrupt me, please,” Phillips told her. “Everyone here wanted to be on LAFCO and I felt it was only fair to have some diversity.
“I don’t think your votes on FORA represent the county’s views,” he added. “We need to get through the roadblocks that have been thrown out and I think it’s important we have ethnic representation on there too. But having seen the way it’s been characterized and the animosity… I don’t think it was right to put a new supervisor in that situation. I reconsidered that. But I will not reconsider my position on LAFCO.”
While he castigated Parker, who has voted against things like the boondoggle known as the Eastside Parkway, for example, he left her on FORA. He left Adams there too. Phillips also will sit on the FORA board, with Lopez and Alejo as alternates.
Not so for LAFCO. Parker is out, Lopez will take over his former boss’s seat there and Alejo will take the seat occupied by Parker. And Alejo, never the shy and retiring type to begin with, let the vitriol fly. He was angry the Weekly called the move to replace two women as smacking of sexism, and he was angry that community activists – all from the Peninsula or Highway 68 corridor – emailed, called and showed up to speak for the two white women who represent them without taking into account the lack of Latino representation.
“Some of the allegations were made to smear and defame members of this board. They claim to profess social justice and giving people a voice, but they stop at the representation of Latinos,” he says. “Frankly some of the comments are elitist.”
Without Lopez, he added, there’s not a single Latino serving on FORA: “Where is the outrage on that?”
Adams pleaded for a stop to the hostility, and for a return to decorum and concentrating on the present and future.
Alejo was having none of it. “That’s easy for someone to say who wasn’t slighted,” he shot back.
MARY DUAN writes Local Spin for Monterey County Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com or follow her at twitter.com/maryrduan