It would be nice if Malibu CAN president Steve Uhring could decide when to give me credit and when not. After I lambasted the Coastal Commission 18 months ago for attacking our rights, he slurred me as some kind of rogue “embarrassment” to the city. But now that I file a lawsuit seeking to make Ozzie Silna play fair by election laws, he thinks I’m a City Council pawn? Before this election is over, I expect Steve to further blame the City Council for the Hindenberg, the Titanic, the San Francisco quake of 1906, the Chicago fire of 1871 and the Ice Age.
Steve, your conspiracy theories are tiresome. I have as much contact with the City Council as you do. I only see or speak to them at public forums. I’m not “six degrees of separation” from them. I’m one degree of separation from them. We all are. That’s what makes Malibu’s democracy so unique. It’s why many of us are determined to prevent the Coastal Commission from stealing our democracy. On the other hand, very few of us are one degree of separation from Sara Wan and the Coastal Commission like you and Ozzie.
The fact, Steve, that you and Ozzie are elbow-to-elbow with Sara Wan as board members of her “Vote the Coast” gang makes your accusations suspect. Given such close associations, how are we to believe your claim that this election is about development? This council opted to let the voters make the final decision on Measure M. You know they were under no obligation to do that. Yet they did. You and Ozzie, on the other hand, support a Commission-authored LCP that not only strips away the rights of Malibu’s citizens, but allows for more development in the Civic Center without any voter approval.
That puts you, Ozzie and your Malibu CAN-endorsed candidates on the wrong side of development, democracy and property rights. Regarding my suit, I have no interest in trying to “silence” Ozzie. I’d have an easier time trying to silence the state of New York. I simply want Ozzie to play fair, observing the letter and the spirit of the law. Ozzie is wealthy enough to outspend everyone else in this election 100 to 1, and he has already begun to do so. The law allows such expenditures provided that there is no “coordination” with a campaign. So what part of “signing a candidate’s papers” and “standing in for a candidate at a meeting” does not constitute coordination? Illegal? Unethical? Probably both. Either way, the people of Malibu need to know the truth.
Wade Major