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Editorial: Unbelievable arrogance

Published: March 19, 2010

WHEN THE Carmel Hall of Shame opens someday, a whole wing will have to be devoted to the obstructionism and arrogance of Melanie Billig. And now, she’s also in the running for the Lifetime Achievement Award for Hypocrisy.

Taking full advantage of the lawsuit-happy California Environmental Quality Act — which contains so many vague and unworkable provisions that it is literally impossible to understand, much less follow — and the naivete of a Monterey County judge (see below), Billig has managed yet again to overturn the will of the people of Carmel, whose most ardent ambition for their city is to sell the useless Flanders Mansion and devote the proceeds to some purpose that will benefit them.

It’s an old story that Billig doesn’t care a whit about democracy or the will of her neighbors, which has now been expressed over and over again in numerous elections for city council and mayor, and even in an overwhelming vote last fall, in which the people of Carmel-by-the-Sea practically shouted from the rooftops, “Sell Flanders Mansion!”

But now, in a gleeful press release trumpeting her latest triumph over all reason, Billig makes the claim that the city council is responsible for wasting the taxpayers’ money (“nearly a million dollars”) trying to unload the old mansion and fighting her in court.

Wrong, Melanie. The person wasting that money is you.

HER DECISION is lengthy and goes into quite a bit of detail — most of it supporting the city’s umpteenth decision to sell Flanders Mansion. In fact, this week, Monterey County Superior Court Judge Kay Kingsley upheld the city’s action on all grounds, save two. Of course, under CEQA, just one tiny triumph is enough to hand complete victory to Melanie Billig in her never-ending quest to stop the people of Carmel from selling their own property.

But here’s the thing to keep in mind: No matter how you parse it, Kingsley’s ruling that the city didn’t work hard enough to analyze what might happen if the sheriff’s office, state parks, the IRS or the CIA bought Flanders Mansion and turned it into a affordable housing or a jail amounts to making a legal mountain out of a molehill. None of those agencies will want Flanders Mansion. Even the hyper-sensitive CEQA doesn’t require the public’s money to be tossed away on speculative fantasies.

By ruling the way she did, Kingsley showed a complete lack of regard for basic legal concepts of fairness, equity and common sense. And, by failing even to mention that, just a few months ago, the people of Carmel voted 62 percent to 38 percent to sell Flanders Mansion, Kingsley also showed her contempt for the people she is supposed to serve.

We did learn something new about CEQA from Kingsley’s ruling, however. In this unbelievable law, Kingsley pointed out, there’s a section that says even insignificant errors of omission in an EIR are sufficient to overturn the decision of a city council or a direct vote of the people, such as the oft-repeated decision to sell Flanders Mansion. Putting it another way, Kingsley’s ruling states that, where CEQA is concerned, “harmless error analysis is inapplicable.”

Therefore, according to Kingsley, the city’s failure to analyze what might happen under a host of fanciful, conjectural uses for the Flanders property is sufficient to overturn decades of deliberation and numerous votes by the people of Carmel and their elected representatives, even if the city council and the people would have reached the same conclusions if the analysis Kingsley now demands had already been done. Which they obviously would have.

But Kingsley had another option. Regardless of what CEQA says, every judge is required by basic, common law principles of due process and fairness to do a “harmless error analysis” with every matter that comes before him. Every law should be enforced in a way that benefits the public. The courts are not places where people are to be jerked around for nothing.

Because Kingsley doesn’t seem to understand that, the people of Carmel are going to have to spend a lot of money and go to a lot of trouble for no purpose whatsoever. She should be removed from the bench.