The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors managed to maneuver into compromise during a tense June 19 discussion that could have left a routine decision up to the courts.
The debate over just how to package the citizens’ initiative to ban fracking and oil expansion in SLO County for the November ballot had supervisors in a 2-2 stalemate. Potential tiebreaker 1st District Supervisor John Peschong recused himself due to his political consulting firm’s work with the oil industry.
“Do we really want to get to a point where a court is telling us what to do? First of all, that makes us look bad,” 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson told his colleagues on the dais. “In the spirit of compromise: I do not want the embarrassment of a court telling us what to be.”
At issue was whether to print the full text of the initiative in the informational election pamphlet mailed out to voters, which could have cost the county an additional $100,000, and whether to ask SLO County Auditor-Controller Jim Erb to prepare a fiscal impact statement. Supervisors Lynn Compton (4th District) and Debbie Arnold (5th District) pushed for both, as many initiative opponents had asked for during public comment, while Gibson and 3rd District Supervisor Adam Hill initially opposed both, siding with the initiative’s backers.
Arnold and Compton argued for including more information in the ballot pamphlet rather than less.
“People at home open this ballot material, and without some transparency, it’s difficult to have the information you need to make important decisions,” Arnold said. “It’s a service to the voters to help them make informed decisions.”
Hill called the argument a false one, referring to the civility code supervisors had voted to pass earlier in the meeting and insinuating that Compton and Arnold were unable to budge from their positions.
“This is probably why civility is not going to change anything. Transparency should not be misused,” he said. “It’s misleading to tell people that this is a transparency issue. … They’re not going to concede anything until we go to court. Let’s go to court.”
But Gibson and Compton managed to work out a deal. Drop the full text of the initiative and include the fiscal impact statement on the accompanying ballot information materials. The board passed the compromise 4-0.
This article appears in Winning Images 2018.
My Conservative VOTE will be YES on Measure G.
During the public comment, someone mentioned to me that the COLAB, BiG OiL, and the PAID political manipulators didn’t seem to have an intelligible statement and simply used scare tactics read from a one-page “talking points” document – “they all seemed to be saying one same-statement”. One of the false claims was that the initiative ends jobs.
The Protect Our Water, Air, and Land: Ban Fracking and Oil Expansion in SLO County Initiative would not close, shut-down, or stop existing oil-field operations. It will do only the following: (1) prohibit the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), acidizing, and other defined well stimulation treatments (which do not include steam flooding, water flooding, or cyclic steaming, the current methods of production in the Arroyo Grande oil field); (2) prohibit the drilling of new wells in the unincorporated areas of the County; and (3) allows routine oil cleanup work, routine well maintenance, routine removal of formation damage due to drilling, bottom hole pressure surveys, or routine activities that do not affect the integrity of the well or formation in existing wells. Read the initiative for yourself at: http://protectSLOcounty.org
Question: Have you been getting the “Fracking” survey calls and the ROBO calls about oil in SLO County? More scare tactics and lies. I hope you know why those calls are being made 1) to feed us all their messages by twisting the truth 2) to gather information about YOU – once they know how feel – that tells them how hard they have to work to change your mind.
WILL YOU BE ALLOWING the paid political machine of the BiG OiL and the Ultra Conservative secret-hand-shake groups to tell you how to vote?
TRUTH: Every drop of oil extracted in SLO County ends up in a San Francisco Refinery after a preliminary refinement in Nipomo. EVERY DROP goes on the International market and sold to who knows where. The USA exports of over One Million Barrels of Oil everyday. EVERYDAY.
The oil in SLO County has NOTHING to do with the gas prices we pay at the pump, our gas comes from Los Angeles or Bakersfield refineries – ask your gas station where their gas trucks are coming from!
Because the new Measure G will not stop current oil operations, there will be NO JOB loss and NO LOSS of taxes. If I worked in the Arroyo Grande Oil Field I’d be asking my employer (Sentinel Peak Resources) why they want to greatly accelerate the oil extraction in the field. Extracting the finite oil reserves 5-10X FASTER will be the job killer.
The fact is the finite amount of oil in the AGOF will eventually be extracted, as allowed by Measure G, but accelerating extraction results in water, environment, and economic risk and eliminates long-term employment for employees of the field. 25 years of petroleum reserves have been reported by owners of the AGOF (our County assessor looks at that data for mineral right assessment), accelerating extraction by 5-10 fold will prematurely terminate employment and leave our County with the prospect of a massive site clean-up – besides exposing the environment to potentially unsafe practices.
WHO PAYS? The eventual remediation of the AGOF site, if extraction is accelerated 5-10x, could be required in 5 years. The obligation to return the AGOF site back to its former condition, after 100 years of extraction, will require an approved plan and financial resources that the operator (Sentinel Peak Resources) may not plan to fund. Shouldn’t our county be talking with Sentinel Peak Resources today about the money remediation will require? Do you want to pay for the clean of of the 1000 acre oil field?
YES on Measure G makes sense for those who don’t want to pay to clean-up the oil company’s mess, or their industrial accidents.
My 2 cents.
I’d love to respond to all of the interesting and loose commentary above, but I’ll stick with this point that was never acknowledged in a previous piece.
Doug here emphasizes that the US exports One Million barrels a day. Well guess what? California alone uses 2 Million barrels a day. Even better, CALIFORNIA IMPORTS just as much oil as the US exports every day, One Million barrels everyday. EVERYDAY. Interesting how certain realities can just be ignored…
California Oil Supply
http://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/petroleum_data/statistics/crude_oil_receipts.html
Where California Imports Come From – See the third paragraph under “Petroleum”
https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=CA
“Crude oil production in California and Alaska has declined, and California refineries have become increasingly dependent on imports to meet the state’s needs.33,34 Led by Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, and Columbia, foreign suppliers now provide more than half of the crude oil refined in California.35,36”
The coalition’s suggestion that “hemp fuel” will solve all of our fuel needs is, at the very least, entertaining.
Both of those links are from state websites and they both say the same thing. I think it would be more fitting (and somewhat humorous) if the Coalition’s slogan read something more like this:
“Ban Fracking and New Oil Wells: SUPPORT MORE PETROLEUM IMPORTS FROM SAUDI ARABIA, ECUADOR, AND COLUMBIA”.
Facts are stubborn things.
Over/under before Doug claims I am BiG OiL (semi caps?) set at 14 hours… who’s in?!
Mr. or Ms. Voice of Reason which by the way, thats quite the title youve crowned yourself. Maybe when your self-esteem improves youll pull back the curtain on Mr. Wizard who pulls the levers from afar to manipulate SLO voters.
The writing is on the wall, its clear and a fact (sort of a physics issue) you speed up the extraction of a finite amount of ANYTHING and your end game will come sooner than later. Again, I encourage ALL employees of the oil field to look long and hard at this issue TALK TO YOUR EMPLOYER AND ASK WHY EXPAND. The expansion of the Arroyo Grande Oil Field will harm career jobs, risk the environment, and cost us all (well, those who actually live here) more in TAXES. Measure G does not close down any current operations, it preserves jobs, tax revenues and prevents risky business practices that will result in higher state and local government expenses.
And Mr. or Ms. Voice of Reason, let’s talk about the conservative vote, maybe you can ask your client whos going to clean up the oil field in 10 years once theyve sucked all the oil dry Im not voting for extra taxes. And dont tell me the Limit Liability Denver Company formed for growth and profit by the Houston, TX investment firm is going to write the check? Demonstrate your client has the funds at their disposal to clean up an industrial accident on the scale of polluting a water aquifer. The bottom line is the taxpayers of our county will likely be forced to pay for the clean-up of the Arroyo Grande field once your client has cashed in all their chips, and well be forced to pay the price of any industrial disaster (God forbid). If this is fear mongering prove me wrong show us the money.