The Carmel Pine Cone's editorial of the week

WHEN THE people of Carmel elected Jason Burnett mayor, they hoped he’d turn out to be the sort of commonsense politician that the Monterey Peninsula – and even the whole of California — desperately needs. Someone who could balance environmental concerns with economic imperatives and restore a bit of power to the majority instead of letting a tiny group of activists turn their every whim into law.

The most important local issue that cried out for leadership was the water shortage, which has continued for decades despite nearly unanimous public opinion that something must be done. Previous efforts went nowhere, mostly because the politicians with authority to cut through the red tape and get a water project moving — people like Congressman Sam Farr and State Assemblymen Fred Keeley and Bill Monning — didn’t lift a finger to do so.

Keeley, for example, was all too eager to make sure a new dam didn’t get built on the Carmel River but made no effort to see any alternative through to fruition. Farr provided some real leadership when it came to getting old dams torn down, but (until now, anyway) has been utterly silent on what should replace them. And Monning ... during his years in the Assembly, he didn’t seem to do anything at all.

But when Burnett became mayor, he decided to make getting a water project his No. 1 priority for the Monterey Peninsula. And, miracle of miracles, with the help of the other mayors on the Peninsula, he actually seems to be making substantial progress.

To understand how remarkable that progress has been, you need only look at our lead story this week, which reports that Farr and no less a local figure than Monterey Bay Aquarium CEO Julie Packard have asked the CPUC to endorse Cal Am’s water project — clearly the front runner — with some tweaking of how it will be financed and operated. This surely would never have happened without Burnett’s involvement, and not only because Farr has been one of Burnett’s mentors and Packard is his aunt, but also because Burnett’s approach is obviously the correct one and he has the credibility to get people to admit it. Truly, getting Farr and Packard to back Cal Am’s project is something probably only he could have achieved.

For the first time since the mid-1970s, it seems that an end to our water shortage may actually be in sight, which, considering all the obstacles that have been in the way, seems incredible.

Editorial: Idiots in government

Published: March 1, 2013

ONCE AGAIN we are threatened with economic doom because of a budget stalemate in Washington.

To understand how this idiotic situation has arisen, you need look no further than the NOAA building in Pacific Grove, where just a few years ago, more than $150,000 of the taxpayers’ money was spent on fancy new lights in the parking lot and a cartoonish mural on the outside.

The mural is ugly and mars the very ocean environment it’s supposed to honor, and the lights are an eyesore in an otherwise pristine setting.

After ignoring complaints about the mural and fighting like starving dogs to keep the lights, NOAA has now announced it will move out of the building in a short time.

Which means that the controversy over the lights and the mural, both of which the government would never allow a private property owner to have, was completely unnecessary, and the money spent to install them was wasted.
Of course, our government is addicted to spending money and doesn’t care a whit about whether it’s wasted or whether the money is actually available to be spent.

Take the situation with the NOAA building and multiply it by 100,000,000 or so, and you have the federal government. And that’s why we have (yet another) fiscal crisis.