You just can’t imagine what a burden it is to a journalist to sit through endless council meetings, listening to the members reasonably debate important public issues and politely disagree with each other. Even after they vote, the sheer tedium of getting quotes like, “Well, I guess we just didn’t see it the same way” begins to wear on your nerves.
We long for the old days when they used to give us quotes like, “That dirty land-raping, condo-loving, citified pustule of corruption won’t be happy until the entire town is covered with concrete and ill-conceived projects, and destroys our way of life, poisons our water, maims our children, kills the dolphins –” Well, you get the idea.
But I’m happy to report that the good old days may be making a comeback.
It began innocently enough with a letter to the editor of an unnamed publication, by our old friend, mayor, and frequent opponent Walt Keller. Several people had told me they thought he had gone on to his greater reward, or that he was elder-hostelling his way around the globe and was no longer part of the local scene, which shows how little they know about Walt. My first thought on seeing the letter was, “Well, he’s just tired of sitting around the house, and he’s getting on Lucile’s nerves and looking for a little excitement” — forgetting recent history, when a letter to the editor by Walt usually announced the beginning of a political offensive.
Then this past Monday night at the City Council meeting, Herb Broking — a longtime, card-carrying member of the Walt Keller/Carolyn Van Horn axis, and formerly if not presently Van Horn’s No. 1 squeeze — rose during the public comment period to make a personal attack on Councilmember Sharon Barovsky. Barovsky, incidentally, has only a two-year term and is up for reelection in 2002.
Recently, the environmentalists have some new faces, like Ozzie Silna, Marcia Hanscom, and former council candidate Robert Roy Van de Hoek plus the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy with a reasonable, rational attitude–“Can’t we work together? Can we get a bond issue for open space?”
People were beginning to say, “Well, maybe Malibu is changing. Maybe it’s finally growing up. Maybe there really are some new ideas and new faces on the scene.”
But when Broking got up to speak, it looked like the old team of Keller and Van Horn, Jo Ruggles and Efrom Fader and several others wanted to come out of exile and retake their role in the Malibu pantheon of leaders, having nursed their wounds from their overwhelming 2-1 defeat in the election before last. Their manner was as ever — combative.
Barovsky’s apparent “crime” was related to the Keller/Van Horn side’s most hated of creatures, their personal Darth Vader: in their rather strangely warped perception, what they see as the all-powerful and Machiavellian — albeit diminutive — interim city manager, Christi Hogin, who in June will switch jobs and become city attorney again. Barovsky’s crime was that she wants to keep Hogin, which greatly displeased the old guard.
Last time around, they hated Hogin enough to try and harass her into quitting in disgust. When that didn’t work, they (Keller and Van Horn, with Hasse as the third vote) finally forked over $227,000 in city cash to get her to go. They did this upon the advice of their very expensive lawyer from Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, who I’m sure explained to them that when cities do sneaky, slimy, underhanded and cruel things to employees, it’s not called politics, it’s called harassment — which in a court of law can get very, very expensive, particularly when there’s a whole group of people eager to testify how nasty they’ve been. So they did the more prudent thing and paid her off and called it a voluntary leaving. Now Broking wants to call it a firing, but it’s hard to describe a parting that gives anyone two years’ salary as a firing.
The really interesting part of all this is that, if Keller and Van Horn are looking to make a comeback, it’s not so clear that the new crowd (led by the same old Gil Segal) is so anxious to see them return. The old gang comes with considerable baggage, and if the Green movement in Malibu is to take on a more reasonable face it obviously has to sit down at the table with those with whom it disagrees. But sitting down at the table with their opponents has never been Keller and Van Horn’s strong suit.
So the politics of Malibu are heating up again. It was sort of a two-party system before, and it may turn out to be more like a parliamentary system with all types of interests — school people, ballfield people, passive recreation people, wetlanders, greenies and developers making shifting alliances. It certainly promises to be interesting.