10/29/2007: "Guest Editorial"

A Bad LawBy Alexandra Gavora

If you have not already mailed in your 2007 ballot, this letter is for you. I am the person that turned in the required number of signatures for San Juan County Referendum 2007-1 (the storm water utility funding ordinance referendum) to qualify for the ballot. I am also the person that San Juan County filed suit against for bringing the subject of the referendum to a vote.

After abandoning the lawsuit idea, the County decided that they would attempt to defeat the referendum by campaigning against it. The result was the glossy, multi-colored mailer that your tax dollars paid for that ignored the pertinent issues of equity, conflict of interest, costs and legality in favor of confusing language about “maintaining hundreds of miles of stormwater ditches and 1400 culverts.” Isn’t this what Public Works is already supposed to do?

Referendum 2007-1, the first to be introduced under the new county home rule charter government, challenges the 2006 ordinance that funds the storm water utility that was established in 2005. There were many reasons why over 2000 people were eager to sign the petition. The one thing that most signers agreed with was that they did not trust Public Works to protect the environment or to spend their tax money wisely.

If you remain a little confused about which way to vote, it may be because even the people that claim they are for the Ordinance are at least a little bit against it. In the three County Council meetings that I attended where the referendum was discussed there were multiple instances where the same councilmen that signed the Ordinance into law agreed that it had problems that required consideration. At the League of Women Voters forums this month, the individuals that came to support the Ordinance did so in a lukewarm fashion and several of them changed their minds and agreed that the Ordinance needed work.

Apparently the strongest argument that the Ordinance’s supporters can gin up is that the voters should not undo the work that has been done. This position flies in the face of the very nature of direct action under home rule. We, as citizens under this style of local government, are expressly granted the right to seek out laws or actions of our county government that are ill-conceived, poorly executed, or downright wrong, and bring them to a vote of the people.

Here, the funding mechanism for the storm water utility is either poorly written, incomplete, possibly an illegal tax or just atrocious, depending on your perspective. It is a bad law that the County Council needs to address again. Home rule has given you the right to vote on this issue and I encourage you to join me in voting to REJECT Ordinance 20-2006.