Who Should Be Having a Tea Party?

I was pondering the fact that the current Council majority, plus the candidates for Council with similar views and political affiliations, have decided to shun constituents who don’t agree with them.

Won’t talk to us or listen to us.  Those who believe that environmental protections are important, those of us who think that planning ought to ensure that infrastructure will meet the needs of future development, are to be treated as anathema.

Don’t believe me?  Read these comments by Bill Knutzen and Ben Ellenbaas, who at least were honest about their reasons for refusing to attend a candidate forum on growth and the environment.   Despite multiple invitations and efforts to find a date without conflicts, Kathy Kershner and Michelle Luke also would not participate in the forum.

The claim that litigation against the County disqualifies people or organizations from participating in public affairs is ironic.  It’s ironic (a nicer word than “hypocritical”), for two reasons:

(1) Because the shunning only applies to those who support planning and environmental protections, not to property owners, developers, or their trade associations (such as the Building Industry Association of Whatcom County, which is holding a forum that Mssrs. Knutzen and Ellenbaas agreed to attend), all of whom sue the County and all of whom are consulted on a regular basis; and

(2) Because litigation is the consequence of the County’s decision to ignore a segment of its constituents.  My clients and I have submitted dozens of letters and hundreds of pages of supporting documentation expressing our concerns over rural planning over the past few years.  The County simply ignores them.  

We have offered to meet with the County to discuss our concerns.  We are (sometimes quite rudely) told that the County is not interested.  

Council Chair Kershner went so far as to tell the Northwest Business Club that we are “domestic terrorists” with whom the County should never negotiate.  

Beyond the sheer silliness of this, the more serious issue is the disenfranchisement of a large number of constituents.

The Boston Tea Party, as you may recall, was not about over-taxation.  It was about taxation that was dedicated to a particular corporate interest:  the British East India Company, a “too big to fail” entity that one commentator called “the Monsanto or Microsoft of its era.”    The tax on tea harmed local interests while benefitting the government’s preferred for-profit entity, and that’s why the colonists revolted.

And now, guess who is being taxed – to support litigation that upholds the profit interests of developers, to pay for infrastructure needed for sprawl, to pay the salaries of County Council members who won’t speak to us – without representation?

Members of RE Sources.  Members of Futurewise.  Citizens who work to implement environmental protections and good planning, but who are told that their views and their voices are unwelcome in Whatcom County.

It’s un-American. In fact, it's downright revolting.