Anti oil & gas activists are still playing fast and loose with the facts, and now they’ve brought in more activists from other counties to muddy the waters and escalate the circus atmosphere of BOCC meetings.
Transparency in government means removing opportunities for corruption of public officials as those officials make decisions relevant to the public offices they hold.
Transparency does not mean providing a stage for every Tom, Dick and Harriet who seek face time in the public eye to aggrandize their personal agenda.
In the BOCC public comment circus of 8-14-2013 we heard:
- Call for BOCC reconsideration of proposed O & G regs, unchanged
- Call for a public election to affirm or deny the proposed O & G regs, unchanged
- Call for another edit committee and additional rewrite of the O & G regs
- Call for Grant Thayer to re-head that edit committee
- Performances by two anti-fracking activists from Arapahoe County
- Performance by one anti-fracking activist from Douglas County
- Call for a moratorium on O & G development
- Call for a citizen public comment forum to be established to somehow offset O & G operators
- Revelation that proposed O & G regs began as writings from Richard Miller, a smartgrowth urban planner
- Claim that the planning commission decision of 5-23-2013 was denied benefit of the substance of the COGCC and CO Attorney General’s work products about operational conflicts, which were available for at least two weeks prior to the planning commission meeting.
At the risk of sounding cynical, none of these gambits appear to be good faith efforts aimed toward sound industry practices and operating methods.
Instead, planners and Leftists walked the same array of worn out delaying tactics before the public at this meeting that they’ve been using for the last two and half years, as if they were new ideas.
What has changed? What assurances did they provide that things will be different? They continued to lie about the availability of operational conflict warnings from the Attorney General. They avoided responsibility for attempting to put Elbert County into a litigious posture with the industry and the state. They continued in the delusion that their fringe agenda is a mandate from the majority of Elbert County citizens.
These are desperate acts by a desperate minority who will say anything to get what they want. The informational value and more importantly, the evolutionary potential from this touchy-feely bunch of habitually-offended professionally-aggrieved activists have run out.
The populist street theater that seems to have overtaken every public meeting in Elbert County is making a running joke out of our local government. Really BOCC? Surely you can do better.
Enough with the encounter group sessions. Let the enviro Left go hire professional therapists like normal people if they need someone to talk to. Maybe have them take a civics class, or read a little DeToqueville to reacquaint themselves with the idea of a republic. They act like we live in a mobocracy where every citizen’s audible voice must be broadcast before every public decision. Oh wait a minute commissioners, we haven’t yet heard from Ms. Ecogabs on Fairyforest Circle. She might have something to say we all haven’t thought of yet.
If citizen comments are so damn integral to the process, have them put in writing on the county website where they can be studied. Spare us the sensitivity theatrics.
B_Imperial
P.S. The BOCC should require that speakers at BOCC and Planning Commission public meetings show legal standing on a given subject matter before being given a public microphone.