LETTERS
Dear Editor,
My name is Jennifer Sorensen, and I was born and raised in Santa
Barbara County.
In April of 2007 a group of citizens and I formed an organization
called Citizens Against Casino Corruption. The goal was to educate the public
about the corrupting influences that organized Indian gambling is having on our
politicians, news media, law enforcement, and our government. We more recently
changed our name to Citizens for Fair Government, since it is really our
government that is the problem.
In the June 3 election, our group sent out an educational mailer
that two local casino advocates have objected to. I am responding to those
objections with the facts.
First, none of the members of this group was a donor to any of the
five supervisorial campaigns in the 3rd District except Jim Marino, who had
earlier donated to the Smyser campaign. This mailer was a result of the numerous articles,
op-ed pieces, and letters to the editor that showed up in the local press
during the months of April and May and which indicated that David Smyser was being funded by a few large
out-of-county and out-of-state developers. The articles also brought out his
dismal résumé of not keeping any job very long. This, combined with the facts
that he refused to attend an important valley-wide debate and instead had the
time the same week to be a guest of honor at the Chumash Casino, solidified my
concern that he was the casino’s and developers’ candidate. Probably one of the
most concerning positions Mr. Smyser promoted on a local talk radio show was
that he wanted to put a member of the casino and tribe on the board of the
Santa Barbara County Association of Governments. This amounted to putting a
member of a secret sovereign government on the SBCAG board, which has the main
authority to determine where our tax money is spent in the county.
The tribal government is funded by a casino that is netting
approximately $750,000 per day and pays no local or state taxes and is not
under the jurisdiction of the state or county governments. This tribal
government is the same one that uses all of our county services and does not
pay anything for those services. The tribal government wants to buy as much
agricultural acreage and farmland as possible and annex them into the reservation.
This would accommodate expanding the gambling operations by as much as two to
three times the size it is right now and expanding and building more
non-tax-paying retail business to compete against local non-reservation retail
businesses.
The mailer that has been referred to by two Chumash Casino
lobbyists was not a hit piece at all. It was a compilation of unedited
newspaper op ed’s, letters to the editors, and media reported articles about
the Smyser campaign. The public had already seen these articles during the
months of April and May. The articles did not promote any of the 3rd District
supervisor candidates. The copies of six different articles from the Nexus,
Santa Ynez Valley News, Independent, and the Santa Ynez Valley Journal were
sent to the voters after this mailer had been sent to the Fair Political
Practices Commission (FPPC) in Sacramento first and their legal staff signed
off on it as being perfectly legal and fair.
At no time did the candidate Smyser ever dispute what had been
written in these six local papers by six different unrelated authors.
The corruption of our government and excessive financial influence
over our press, and local, state and national politicians, is a very serious
problem that is not being covered in the news. The goal of Citizens for Fair
Government is to fill the news blackout gap and educate the public and the
lawmakers about this very destabilizing, dangerous situation, in which
organized gambling is having way to much influence over our daily lives and
businesses.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Sorensen
Dear Editor,
It is my pleasure to pass along great news — last night the
school board of Santa Barbara School District approved hiring Norm Clevenger as
principal of San Marcos High School.
While we are very happy for Norm, this event gives us cause to re-examine
what has happened here in the Santa Ynez Valley. We’ve all been involved in the
Clevenger issue for a while, so I don’t need to pontificate, but here are my
thoughts:
• This further vindicates Clevenger from any suspicions of
wrongdoing as a cause for being fired from Santa Ynez High.
• This reinforces the notion that Clevenger was fired out of
vindictiveness, not for cause.
• This reinforces the notion that the Santa Ynez High school board
was foolish to support Norm’s firing, and fiscally irresponsible by sending
Norm home on full pay and, eventually, paying attorney’s fees and other costs
for the bungled dismissal.
Actually, this is all even more embarrassing for our community
than it seems. As you know, when SYVUHS was in the process of hiring a new
principal, the selection committee conducted a site visit to Lompoc School
District; for our new superintendent, a site visit was made to Santa Barbara
School District. When the Superintendent of SB Schools talked to the Santa Ynez
district administration about conducting a site visit to SYVUHS to talk to
employees before hiring Norm, the Santa Ynez district administration strongly
discouraged (if not outright denied) anyone from entering the campus to conduct
interviews. (For the record, Van Leuven denies that he ever received a request
for a visit, which would be a bit hard to believe.) This is an embarrassment to
both our school and our entire community.
Again, our hardiest congratulations to Norm and Jan Clevenger.
Bruce Porter
P.S.: Just for
the record, I reported to the school board our petition numbers so far: total
13,112 signatures, with more than 2,600 to recall each one of the members.
Dear
Editor,
Sometime
ago, a new newspaper was delivered to my home. I read it with interest,
especially the back on the ranch section.
I thought
that “at last a newspaper that will provide information that will help with
knowing what is happening in the Valley.” Then in February, India Allen did a
hit piece on Mr. Smyser, tying him to the dreaded developers and people out of
the area. I waited for a piece on Farr and Pappas, but it never happened.
Then
Nancy Crawford-Hall did a hit piece in her column that included info about
Smyser quitting several jobs (have any successful people had this history?),
then went on to detail why candidates were the wrong choice without naming her
favorite, Steve Pappas; neither did she indicate that she had given $20,000 to
Steve Pappas, which, by the way, was exposed in the Santa Barbara News Press.
Interestingly
enough there was another hit piece in the publication on Mr. Smyser before the
election.
We now
know that the same piece was mailed to people in the 3rd District by Citizens
for Fair Government, with a Post Office box in Goleta. We now know that this is
a new name for Citizens Against Casino Corruption. Now we know the truth, and it wasn’t in the Valley
Journal. I am opposed to the casino and everything that will cause people to
use their money to gamble, however the Chumash-haters that supported Pappas
have used dirty tricks and subterfuge to denigrate and defeat Mr. Smyser. I don’t
know Mr. Smyser, but I sure smelled a rat when the hit pieces appeared in the
Journal. I may not be able to stop receiving your paper, but I can and will put
it in the recycle pile.
Al Schultz