I find it highly offensive that as a result of the donation my wife and I made to the Cruz Bustamante campaign,that any publication would print “a rumor” stating “that, if there is a Bustamante victory, Silna, former Coastal Commission Chair Sara Wan and the Sierra Club are pushing to force out Mary Nichols as the resources secretary and replace her with Susan Jordan, longtime coastal activist, wife of Coastal Commissioner Pedro Nava. …”
Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason my wife and I gave our contribution to Lt. Governor Bustamante, is he is the one candidate who declared his overwhelming support for protecting the coast.
It is important to state that I had been quite distressed when the City implied that the Secretary of Resources was in support of the Malibu Bay Company’s Development Agreement, which is set for the November ballot. That, in fact, is not the case!
Secretary Mary Nichols clearly declared her neutrality, when on August 28, 2003, Secretary Nichols, in response to our request, wrote a letter to Mayor Kearsley stating, in part, “Recently I have learned that some people have confused our support for replacing longstanding septic pollution with a state-of-the-art integrated waste management facility, with support for the Malibu Bay Company Development Agreement. We do support that component of the Agreement that removes 140,000 square feet of development from the Malibu Bay Company plan by offering to sell the Chili Cook-Off site to the city for the purposes stated above.” (Which, by the way, I support as well.) Her letter goes on to state, “However, we are neutral on other (sic) all other aspects of the Malibu Bay Company Development Agreement. It is not the role of the Resources Agency to take positions on specific developments before state departments and commissions responsible for those reviews have had the opportunity to do the detailed analysis that they are charged to do “
In light of the fact that Secretary Nichols clarified, for the record, her neutral position regarding the Malibu Bay Company Development Agreement, the suggestion that we are “pushing to force out Mary Nichols” is patently absurd!
Ozzie Silna