Time to gang up on our county representatives 

According to the recent New Times ("SLO reps to lobby for Diablo Canyon settlement at CPUC hearing," Nov. 23), our "county representatives and elected officials" are ganging up to convince the California Public Utilities Commission to kick our county's major employer out of town, thereby ridding our community of thousands of jobs and effectively banishing way more than a thousand families from a community that they have lived in and served for decades. Maybe it's just me, but this seems not only stupid but profoundly unjust. It is not often one sees representatives working so assiduously against the interests of thousands of their constituents and the community as a whole. It seems to me that our community would be better served if these representatives and elective officials were the ones run out of town, and the quicker the better.

In fairness, these numbskulls are working on softening the economic blow to the community by proposing that an $85 million settlement be paid by someone. The only problem they are having is figuring out who to steal the $85 million from: the taxpayers, the ratepayers, maybe both, or better yet, PG&E as a penalty for being forced to shut down their Diablo operations. It is pretty much a waste of time. PG&E pays about $30 million annually in property and sales taxes, and over a period of a 20-year extension this would amount to some $600 million in tax revenue, not to mention many billions in indirect economic benefits. Subtracting the $85 million "settlement" still leaves more than half a billion dollars lost to the community over a 20-year period, and our schools will be particularly hard hit. It is no secret who will have to pay for this shortfall ... local taxpayers of course. The proposed "settlement" is a complete joke; a mere scheme intended to allow the responsible officials and deluded groups like Mothers for Peace to convince themselves and others that their efforts will not cause disastrous social and financial consequences to our community.

It is clear that the best thing we can do for our community and the future of our young people would be to identify these "county representatives and elected officials" and work together to remove them from office as swiftly as possible.

Mark Henry

San Luis Obispo