[ From: "Offshore Oil Foes Pack Hearing on New Exploration - Drilling critics press their case at San Francisco meeting with Obama administration," By Sonia Fernandez, Noozhawk, 04.18.2009 ]


People from all over California... [attended the] petroleum exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf... hearings, moderated by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar... one of a series as his department considers a five-year program for oil and gas production.

A contingent from Santa Barbara County also made it to the hearing, including staff from the offices of Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, and Supervisors Salud Carbajal and Janet Wolf. Santa Barbara City Councilman Das Williams and Linda Krop, chief counsel at the Environmental Defense Center, also were on hand.

“We’re not NIMBYs, we’re looking at alternative energies and we’re open to exploring that,” said Williams, who was part of a delegation that spoke with Salazar prior to the hearing.

The group was one of many that turned out for the Thursday morning hearing, urging Salazar to reconsider the recently expired presidential and congressional moratoria on new oil leases in federal waters. The proposed five-year plan could open up 130 million acres of California coast to new exploration. Opponents say the risk to the environment outweighs the benefits the new exploration may provide...

Although the majority of speakers opposed new exploration and development, Carpinteria City Councilman Joe Armendariz, business leaders and representatives of the petroleum industry were also present to urge Salazar to consider the new oil operations...

At the height of last summer’s gas price increases, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to send a letter urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to take advantage of the lifting of the moratoria. The cities of Goleta and Santa Barbara subsequently passed resolutions against new drilling and last week the new majority on the Board of Supervisors reversed the previous board’s decision by passing its own resolution against new drilling.

Comment on the draft proposed five-year program will be accepted until Sept. 21. To comment and also for more information, go to the website for the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Labels: offshore oil drilling, oil

[ From: "Assembly race already heating up," By Eric Lindberg, DAILY SOUND, March 12, 2009 ]


It’s still 20 months away, but the race for the State Assembly’s 35th District seat is already stirring up interest in the political community, particularly on the Democratic side of the ticket...

In recent days, Santa Barbara Councilmember Das Williams has started testing the waters with an exploratory committee and statement of intent to enter the race, allowing him to start raising funds to bankroll a possible campaign...

Williams preferred not to discuss the potential primary showdown with [Susan Jordan], adding that he doesn’t even want to set a date certain for when he’ll officially enter the race or back down.

“I think it’s just really important right now to concentrate on some of the problems in the city itself and I don’t want to be distracted by the assembly race when we’re dealing with things like the budget and gang violence,” he said.

Nonetheless, Williams said the pinch of the state’s budget nightmare is starting to be felt locally, describing how he visited a school yesterday where a large percentage of teachers had received pink slips.

“I’m pretty passionate about what’s happening — the destruction of our public education system,” he said. “It’s definitely made me even more serious about running.”

The councilman is also feeling out how his potential bid sits with a handful of voters in the district, which sprawls across a huge chunk of the Santa Ynez Valley and South Coast, as well as a portion of Ventura County.

Williams said he is speaking with 100 people from “all walks of life” throughout the district to get feedback...

----------------------------

For full text, please go to: DAILY SOUND: Assembly Race Heats Up

Labels: 2010, 35th Assembly District, education, oil

[ From: "Oil-drilling deal splits Democrats - Fracture opens the way for contested Assembly primary," By Timm Herdt, VENTURA COUNTY STAR, March 11, 2009 ]


The fallout from a state agency’s controversial rejection of an offshore oil deal brokered by Santa Barbara environmentalists has created a potentially bitter fracture among area Democrats that could spill over into Ventura County.

An immediate effect of the split is the decision by Santa Barbara City Councilman Das Williams to open an exploratory committee to run for the 35th Assembly District. Williams had previously pledged to endorse Susan Jordan, the wife of termed-out incumbent Pedro Nava.

Nava and Jordan opposed the deal, which would have allowed the first new drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel in 40 years in exchange for the oil company’s agreement to virtually shut down all oil production off the Santa Barbara coast by 2022 and close the oil processing facility in Gaviota.

The agreement was enthusiastically supported by such longtime anti-oil crusaders as the Environmental Defense Center and Get Oil Out, which saw it as the realization of their decades-long dream of ridding Santa Barbara of offshore oil rigs once and for all.

“It would have gotten rid of all the infrastructure,” said Linda Krop, chief counsel for the Environmental Defense Center. “For the first time in the nation’s history, you had members of a local community shutting down offshore oil.”

The deal was approved by Santa Barbara County and was backed by Rep. Lois Capps. But the State Lands Commission shot it down on a 2-1 vote in late January thanks at least in some measure to Nava’s leadership in organizing opposition among Democratic legislators.

Some Santa Barbara environmentalists are still stinging over the defeat and are focusing their anger on Nava and Jordan.

The situation played a major role in convincing Williams to abandon his support for Jordan and move toward entering the race himself.

“People who I thought would be part of her base are not supporting her,” Williams told me this week. “It’s definitely something that caused a lot of environmentalists in Santa Barbara to approach me about running.”

Williams was an aide to former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson and is now an organizer for Central Coast Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), a community-based advocacy group in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

At 34, Williams will be termed out of the Santa Barbara City Council in 2011 an age, he figures, “a little too young to retire from politics. I have to at least explore the idea of running.”

The 35th Assembly District strides the two coastal counties, with 56 percent of voters in Santa Barbara County and 44 percent in the cities of Ventura and Oxnard.

Because he works for a Ventura County-based organization, has longtime family roots in the county and was reared in Ojai, Williams says he has strong ties to both counties.

An avid surfer, Williams says his psychic home remains in Ventura. “I feel most at home right there at Surfer’s Point.”

Still, Williams is an elected official in Santa Barbara. And if he and Jordan, another Santa Barbaran, are in the race, that could create an opening for a candidate from Ventura County.

Ventura City Councilman Bill Fulton has told associates not to rule him out as a potential candidate, and Ventura insurance agent Irene Henry, a one-time City Council candidate, told me Tuesday she is researching the idea of running.

The staying power of the fracture in Santa Barbara remains to be seen.

Jordan, director of the California Coastal Protection Network, is a longtime environmental activist who has built trust and allies in the environmental community — notably for her leadership in stopping a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal off the Oxnard coast.

Jordan notes that her objections about the offshore oil deal were substantive, based principally on concerns that the terms of the agreement that called for dismantling of platforms, pipelines and the processing facility may not have been enforceable.

She cites a State Lands Commission analysis that reports the conclusion of the Attorney General’s Office that “the goals of the agreement could not be reliably enforced.”

Jordan is a long-standing friend and ally of Krop at the Environmental Defense Center. And while some have split with Jordan over the issue, Krop is withholding judgment.

Asked if there will be political repercussions from Jordan’s opposition, Kropp told me, “It’s too early to say.”

At this point, the split over the offshore oil issue has at least created an opening for Williams and appears to have ensured a contested Democratic primary next spring.

Such primaries can become nasty, but Williams said he hopes this one won’t. He says he has nothing but “friendship and love” for Jordan.

“I would really, really not like to see a primary that’s about knocking people down.”

-----------------------------

Timm Herdt is chief of The Star state bureau. His political blog “95 percent accurate*” is at http://www.TimmHerdt.com.

Labels: 35th Assembly District, oil

Lotsa talk about the Tranquillon Ridge Project, how it relates to the upcoming election for the 35th Assembly District, and the push for Das to run. Here are some websites with relevant info:

SBI: When Friends Become Rivals

KEYT-TV: 35th District Election

The most comprehensive article was printed in the DAILY SOUND:

"Assembly seat could hinge on failed oil deal - Carbajal endorses Williams, if he runs," By Colby Frazier, DAILY SOUND, Feb. 6, 2009

The fallout from a State Lands Commission vote last week that killed an agreement between local environmental groups and an oil company to expand offshore oil drilling in exchange for the early decommission of several offshore platforms, continued yesterday when First District County Supervisor Salud Carbajal announced he wouldn’t run for the 35th Assembly District seat in 2010.

Carbajal’s public announcement that he wouldn’t run came before he publicly stated he would.

His interest, however brief, in replacing current Assemblymemeber Pedro Nava, appeared to gain traction after the oil deal failed. Nava did not support the project while Carbajal was an outspoken proponent.

Carbajal said many people have encouraged him to seek the office, “especially the environmental community.”

While Carbajal, who was just elected to his second term on the board of supervisors after running uncontested, has opted not to seek the seat, he threw his support behind Santa Barbara City Councilman Das Williams. He said he would “enthusiastically support” Williams if he decides to run.

Williams said he has not yet decided if he’ll run. But like Carbajal, he feels the pressure to succeed Nava bearing down from the environmental community.

Williams, who will be termed out of his council seat in 2010, said the failure of the oil deal isn’t his “primary” motivation to run, but it is at the forefront of the minds of those encouraging him to do so.

“There’s people who are my strong supporters who have said ‘No, you don’t have a choice. You have to run. We need you.’”

Many in the environmental community were less than thrilled that Nava didn’t give the oil deal his blessing.

Nava, who is serving his final two-year term in office and has expressed interest in running for California attorney general, was already thought to have a successor in Susan Jordan, his wife.

Jordan opened a campaign committee last month, announcing she planned to run for the office.

But Jordan, the director of the nonprofit environmental advisory group the California Coastal Protection Network, also criticized the oil deal, known as the Tranquillon Ridge Project.

If Williams decides to run against Jordan, he’ll be doing so against a person he worked closely with to help get Nava elected, and whom he considers “a capable and talented activist.”

While it’s difficult to know how much sway Nava and Jordan’s concerns about the oil deal played in the commission’s 2-1 vote against it, some feel slighted by the duo’s take on the matter.

David Landecker, executive director of the Environmental Defense Center (EDC), which was one of a trio of environmental groups that brokered the deal with Plains Exploration and Production (PXP) to drill, acknowledged that there is a lot of “anger and resentment” about the project’s failure.

“People are upset and I think when people are upset about a political decision, they tend to be angry with the people behind it, that’s just the way it is,” he said, speaking for himself and not on behalf of EDC.

“[Nava] used his considerable influence to undermine it, but didn’t work to get us to understand what his issues were,” Landecker said. “People felt betrayed. There are ways that one disagrees and there are ways that one works through issues that keep your friends and keep good feelings.”

Nava said his concerns were two fold. The first centered on the confidential agreement between the environmental groups and PXP. He said the fine print was never made public to anyone other than the commission’s staff.

His second concern was that the commission’s staff, presumably based to in part on the contents of the confidential agreement, recommended the project be denied.

One of the main thrusts of this recommendation was the staff’s belief that the early decommission dates of four offshore platforms operated by PXP could not be enforced. In other words, because the federal office of Minerals Management Service oversees the leases, it could insist the leases remain open and pumping as long as oil remained in the ground, deal or not.

Nava said kinks like these could have been worked out had the deal been made public, and the project would have had a better chance of being approved.

“Other people could have seen it and figured out its flaws and there would have been a much greater chance of an enforceable agreement,” he said. “I think the fundamental mistake that was made was insisting on the confidentiality. That caused a great deal of suspicion.”

While Williams described Nava and Jordan’s non-endorsement of the PXP deal a “strategic difference of opinion,” it appears to have dug deeper with Carbajal.

He declined to comment at length on Nava and Jordan, saying: “I’ve said enough about my concerns and disappointments. Quite frankly, I don’t want to continue the soap opera.”

Carbajal was more animated in his comments to the Santa Barbara Independent. He’s quoted there as saying: “Like many residents of Santa Barbara County, I, too, have experienced the non-responsiveness and lack of customer service our Assemblymember Pedro Nava has inflicted on us, and I regret that his wife, who wants to succeed him in office, will continue the same way.” He goes on to say: “It’s about time someone said it. My phone has been ringing off the hook [with] environmentalists, labor, and social justice people,” urging him to run.

Nava didn’t take Carbajal’s comment lightly.

“His remarks about Susan are recognized by many as sexist, paternalistic, condescending and demonstrate an ignorance of how difficult it has been for women to distinguish themselves based on their own accomplishments,” he said. “That’s exactly how I feel.”

Nava, like Williams, characterized his feelings on the PXP deal as a “difference of opinion,” and one he hopes everyone can get past.

“I firmly believe that this disagreement will resolve itself and that all of us who are fighting to protect the environment in a very short time will once again be standing together,” he said.

Nava added that he feels it’s important to not forget the commission staff, and ultimately the lands commission denied the project, not him or Jordan.

“I don’t think it’s reasonable to blame Susan Jordan for that result,” he said. “I don’t think it’s reasonable to blame me for that result.

“Everyone shouldn’t be expected to have the same opinion all the time.”

Labels: 35th Assembly District, oil, Tranquillon Ridge