Permit me one cynical question from Friday afternoon’s splendidly run state Assembly committee hearing at City Hall on the health and safety hazards inextricably linked to oil drilling.
Will Assemblyman Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) advocate as fiercely for a crackdown on specific regulatory agencies after he likely is eliminated as a contender for state Attorney General in the June 8 primary?
With only Friday’s hard-nosed performance and his favorable reputation in Santa Barbara as guidelines, the suspected/hopeful answer is affirmative.
Building confidence as he went along, Mr. Nava sounded more like a Culver Crest, oil field-adjacent partisan than a remote, dime-store Sacramento operative/referee as he increasingly interrupted witnesses for more penetrating illumination.
I saw enough from him to support him in the primary.
Separately, after hearing hours of knowledgeable, heartfelt testimony from lay persons and professionals, who have educated themselves about the messy world of oil drilling since January of ’06, will Mr. Nava convert the information into useful, enforced regulations?
That answer is much cloudier, more tentative.
Oil companies have millions more dollars and persons to invest in lobbying and campaign contributions than the under-siege private and public citizens who stoutly pleaded for relief at Friday’s hearing.
They Pleaded
Among them were Lark Galloway-Gilliam of the Community Heath Councils, who could bring an oil company to its knees if she were granted a slight opening; Robert Garcia of The City Project was eloquent once again, as were Damon Nagami of the Natural Resources Defense Council, City Councilman Andy Weissman and Culver Crest residents/attorneys John Kuechle and Ken Kutcher.
As we reported Friday afternoon, the chief state agency, Doggr — which stands for the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources of the Dept. of Conservation — was as slickly and thoroughly undressed as if Mr. Nava were an urban sharpie robbing a sleepy-eyed bumpkin on his first trip to a city with lights.
Bridgett Luther, the weak-kneed, crybaby director of the agency, resembled a sad-faced 10-year-old girl sucking a rapidly melting ice cream cone.
If the aptly named Ms. Luther had been her historic namesake, Martin Luther, there would only be one stem of Christianity today. If she had been Martin Luther King Jr., the Deep South still would be stuck in the white-heavy racial mores of the 1940s and ‘50s.
A Few Shortcomings
Besides being timid, defensive, ill-informed and poorly prepared, Ms. Luther’s useful testimony was limited to a fleeting assurance that the formerly soiled agency has corrected past ethical problems and is now primed to regulate.
Listening to her droning on Friday afternoon, I shuddered while trying to bizarrely picture the flimsy housewife type in a negotiating session with one of the friendly gorillas representing PXP. I covered my eyes and cringed.
It was a combination of pounding questioning by Mr. Nava and pathetically hollow responses from the director of Doggr that formed the major revelation of the afternoon. Because of her wimpy, vague, intimidated responses, she was a more effective witness for the critics of Doggr. When she limped away from the witness stand, someone should have handed her a box of band-aids.
Between Mr. Nava’s insistently pressing questions and Ms. Luther’s repeated pleadings for sympathy on the grounds Doggr has slim authority and is underfunded, an objective member of the audience didn’t know whether to throw rotten tomatoes at her or lend her a pair of rubber crutches.
For four years, exasperated Greater Culver City residents have been hearing that PXP, Plains Exploration & Production Co., has its way every time it hits the Sacramento city limits, that it allegedly has formed an unethically snug relationship with the regulatory bosses at Doggr.
Drawing from Ms. Luther’s featherweight testimony and the me-too comments of her equally pliable Chief Deputy, Rob Habel, no wonder PXP has gotten virtually every little and big order that it has wanted, regulations be darned, for the last four years.
Ms. Luther and Mr. Habel acted as if they had just stepped out from behind the candy counter at Woolworth’s. They resembled dropouts from Saturday Night Live.
The next move is Mr. Nava’s, win or lose on June 8.
