Surrounding her Closing Day strategy with enough rhetorical shrubbery to blot out the Santa Monica Mountains, County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke brilliantly — and slickly — stage-managed her showdown on Tuesday afternoon with more than a hundred protesting Culver City area residents over how strongly or softly to regulate drilling for the next 20 years in the Inglewood oilfield.
To the bitter disappointment — but hardly surprise — of the activist group the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance, the wily Ms. Brathwaite Burke meticulously designed and scrupulously produced a dramatic script whose precise denouement she had “predicted” many months ago.
On both sets of fiercely contested governing documents, the soon-to-retire Supervisor made the final score come out the way she wanted it to read. Virtually everyone in the large, teeming auditorium seemed convinced that the disputed review-and-approval process of the documents was sped up exclusively to accommodate the Supervisor so she may accept credit before leaving office, effectively, with the Nov. 4 election.
Ignoring pleas from dozens of speakers to continue to pursue refinements, outright changes and modifications for weeks, if not months, Ms. Brathwaite Burke muscularly steered the Final Draft Environmental Report to a clean victory. And with amazing political dexterity, she pushed the Community Standards District document to the verge of a matching cinch victory at next Tuesday’s meeting.
Only once did some residents think they saw a sliver of optimism. They wrongly suspected they might have bought a little time when both Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina pushed back against the perceived rush-through of the two documents. Mr. Yaroslavsky, the more aggressive interrogator, said he wanted to study the newest version of the EIR a little longer. He wondered why they couldn’t hold onto it for one more week instead of immediately voting on it. But once it was noted that an additional week would be needed for it to take effect, pushing the date to become law date past Election Day, Mr. Yaroslavsky backed away and ultimately joined his three teammates in supporting instant passage.
Ms. Brathwaite Burke intercepted, or interrupted, Mr. Yaroslavsky several times to explain to him that if the EIR were not voted upon within minutes, the oil drilling company could resume either drilling or the process of drilling approval before any of the regulations kicked in.
Mr. Yaroslavsky , supplying the only effective — if momentary — resistance to Ms. Brathwaite Burke, later secured a promise from the oil drilling company that it would not put any machinery into the ground until all regulations take hold. Not only that, Mr. Yaroslavsky also exacted a public pledge that the company would not take the County to court over any of the regulations.
Forecasting the Future
Still, the vote went through unmolested, 4 to 0, with South Bay Supervisor Don Knabe being absent.
As for Ms. Brathwaite Burke’s perceived fortune telling skills:
She accurately, some said suspiciously, “predicted” or arranged the whole drama. At the outset, she promised to listen to comments from all members of the public, listen to the County’s experts respond to each of them, and only then would she lean back, think over the day’s events, and after sufficient reflection, she would decide how to vote. However, about half an hour before the meeting ended, well in advance of the supposedly unsettled vote, she ordered hundreds of copies of her previously prepared 10-page motion for approval distributed to a skeptical audience. She also predicted the length of the oilfield portion of the Supervisors’ weekly meeting down to the minute, four hours.
“Nothing happens by chance here, does it?” cracked one Westside activist.
Legal Trouble on the Way?
Dr. Suzanne De Benedittis, one of the most passionate Culver Crest activists, was immensely upset.
“The County is just begging for lawsuits,” she said, “from environmentalists and from the community at large.”
As another marathon day in downtown Los Angeles wore on and fatigued protestors wore out during the course of the eight-hour meeting, several emboldened activists declared flatly that Ms. Brathwaite Burke had rigged the outcome.
Mark Salkin, one of the most outspoken residents of Culver Crest — whose homeowners say they are directly in the danger path of expanded oil drilling — accused the Supervisor to her face of pre-ordaining the result. “We are witnessing a done decision,” he said, chewing up and biting off his words. “Supervisor Burke, you already have made up your mind. Please respect us. Don’t leave behind a mess.”
Community leader Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who is debuting as this newspaper’s newest weekly columnist, was even saltier. This was a fake drama, he suggested. He unblinkingly paired Ms. Brathwaite Burke with Steve Rusch, the executive vice president of Plains, Exploration & Production Co., PXP, the much villainized petitioning oil company, an alliance that hundreds of residents believe assured the desired outcome.
A Smooth Operator
“Steve Rusch,” said Mr, Hutchinson, “the head honcho of PXP, my hat’s off to him. He’s very smooth. He went through this two-year charade, pretending that PXP is going to do all of these wonderful things in terms of controls, mitigation and compliance.
“But at the end of the day, we only have their word for it. There is absolutely no enforcement mechanism from the County Board of Supervisors to ensure that PXP and Steve Rusch do what they say.
“You can go through all the pages of these documents. You will not find any hard and fast provision for monitoring regulations and enforcing penalties. You will not find them.
“I think that was pretty, pretty smooth. Pretty good. And the Supervisors went along it. They bought all this crap.”
Mr. Hutchinson was asked if Ms. Brathwaite Burke’s legacy was safely preserved.
“Bless her heart,” he said, cynically. “Yvonne got it terribly wrong about King Hospital. And she got it terribly wrong about PXP and the Baldwin Hills oilfield. She is not batting 1.000. Or maybe I should say she is batting 1.000 — in terms of striking out.”
Rusch to Judgment?
In Ms. Brathwaite Burke’s motion, she ordered a number of changes in the Community Standard District document, including a convoluted formulation for supposedly limiting the number of wells that can be drilled annually. Last seen, the CSD said PXP could drill an average of 53 a year. Ms. Brathwaite Burke changed the numbers to 24 for the first year, 600 wells total the next 20 years, an average of 30 a year plus this crucial, dense notation:
“Revise the provision on the maximum number of wells that may be drilled or redrilled in one year under the Director’s Review procedure to 53 wells, with a maximum of 45 for drilling new wells and the remaining wells of that annual total limited to redrilling of existing wells.”
That left the final words for Mr. Rusch, whom some said played it very cool considering that the protesting residents regarded him and his company the only winners for the day.
In evaluating Ms. Brathwaite Burke’s revisions and meshing them with the present contents, he diplomatically judged the final score this way:
“This was a victory for the public, a victory for the County, and it’s acceptable to PXP.”
What about drilling?
“There’s a bunch of things I have to do before I can drill,” Mr. Rusch said. Without naming a date, he only would predict that, following a two-year moratorium, PXP will resume drilling “during the first quarter of next year.”
