The Badlands Journal editorial board believes it is necessary to clarify some matters. We are aware, from reports of people who fear reprisal and whose anonymity is safe with us, that there is quite a propaganda campaign going on against the Merced River Stakeholders, claiming they are “obstructionists.”
The Merced River Stakeholders (MRS), for those who have not attended its meetings in its near decade of existence, is a collaborative forum of people representing the full array of divergent interests concerning the Merced County reach of the Merced River. After some years of committee work on a system of governance for the MRS, stakeholders decided that it should remain a collaborate forum. This was decided with respect for the divergence of the interests included in the MRS. Stakeholders believe they need to meet, share information, discuss river issues, yet maintain their autonomy of action. MRS members strongly defend the processes they have created for their group and believe these are the only processes that will maintain the MRS and continue the valuable work it does.
The propaganda campaign against members of the MRS comes from particular individuals, visible in the community, for specific reasons. Because important matters are at stake, there are also less visible players and interests behind the attack against MRS. To understand the hostility, it is necessary to follow the money.
The public funds for scientific work and watershed coordination on our reach of the Merced River are administered by the East Merced Resource Conservation District (EMRCD), which has non-profit status and is therefore eligible to receive grant funds. A group of staff people, who facilitate publicly funded grants, have collected into yet another agency, called the Merced River Alliance. Public funds are disbursed by the EMRCD to a scientific consultant and to the Merced River Alliance.
Grants of state and federal funds require local stakeholders’ support. In past successful grants, the Alliance staffers wrote grant proposal for the EMRCD to public agencies, the MRS was presented in the grants as supporting their aims, purposes, and the salary requests of the Alliance staff. In a recent, unsuccessful grant proposal, the EMRCD and Alliance staff did not claim the support of the MRS.
Alliance staff wrote a grant this spring for the EMRCD to the state Department of Water Resources for about $500,000, claiming the support of a number of occasional stakeholders, most of whom have never participated in MRS meetings. From the start Alliance staff was required to show the proposal to MRS members. Two MRS member groups in particular were concerned about this grant: the San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center and representatives of the river property owners.
The Raptor Center has a well-known reputation for upholding correct public processes, proven in court on many occasions. Its president, Lydia Miller, sensed that Merced River Alliance staff, through the EMRCD, was trying to railroad a grant through because they weren’t following proper protocol with the Merced River Stakeholders. The river property owners correctly guessed that this grant could adversely affect property owners’ water rights.
One of the grants administered by the EMRCD for Alliance staff is a watershed coordinator grant. Part of the responsibilities of the watershed coordinator is to facilitate MRS meetings. The Raptor Center and river property owners, in two spring meetings before the due date for the final EMRCD grant proposal, continually voiced objections to the grant. The Alliance facilitator and several stakeholders who are also EMRCD and/or Alliance staffers continued to ignore those objections. MRS members told them that they would file protest letters with DWR, the grantor agency.
The opposition to the concerns of the property owners and the Raptor Center was led by a newly appointed county planning commissioner, who is also a paid staffer on the Merced River Alliance and an associate member of the board of directors of the EMRCD. The Badlands Journal editorial board believes that Merced County Planning Commissioner Cindy Lashbrook is in deep conflict-of-interest.
When the deadline for submission of the grant to the state DWR arrived, stakeholders were denied access to the final document. The excuse offered by Alliance staffers was that the MRS facilitator had to turn her attention immediately to work on the River Fair and so just couldn’t get a copy of the final grant out to the MRS. The River Fair, partially funded by public agencies, was held on the riverside farm of Commissioner Lashbrook.
The following week, the Raptor Center, numerous groups and river property owners filed letters of opposition with the granting agency, DWR.
At a recent public meeting of the board of the EMRCD, Lashbrook emotionally expressed her sense of betrayal that the DWR accepted the letters in opposition, saying that if she had known material could be submitted after the deadline she could have gathered many signatures on a petition supporting the grant. One question MRS members have is: Who did she think was betraying her?
The Alliance staff did not give MRS copies of the final grant for review and comment before the grant was submitted. This was done in the face of well-known opposition. The staffers believed that MRS opposition letters filed after the deadline would be rejected by the DWR. This was not the case. The case was that the grant was rejected, based in part on the strong opposition of members of the MRS. This is not the first time that MRS members have successfully stopped inappropriate grants with letters of opposition to state and federal funders.
Since the state agency rejected the EMRCD grant, there has been a concerted campaign mounted by disgruntled members of the board of EMRCD and the Merced River Alliance to discredit the MRS, particularly the Raptor Center and river property owners. This “obstructionist” campaign deepens suspicions in the MRS that it is the object of a power play to eliminate stakeholder influence on Merced River policies.
The latest attempt concerns the next MRS meeting, the subject of several e-mails presented below. At the last EMRCD board meeting, a request by the Raptor Center to include its letter of opposition to the grant in the next MRS information package was unanimously refused by the board.
The Merced County Board of Supervisors appoints the EMRCD board. It acknowledges it is a public agency, known as a “special district,” and is subject to the state Brown Act governing its conduct. The opposition letter is a public document submitted to a state agency in opposition to a grant seeking public funds. There is no question here: the EMRCD has a duty to release that letter to the MRS. Yet, the board bought the argument that because EMRCD administers the grant that covers the MRS facilitator, it can prohibit public information from being distributed by the MRS facilitator to the MRS members.
Meanwhile, MRS members discovered that MRS meetings are no longer listed in the Merced River Alliance newsletter. Curiously, the MRS facilitator is the editor of this newsletter.
The MRS facilitator, having rejected a meeting agenda offered by MRS members for their own meeting, has now changed the meeting venue to UC Merced, where the MRS has never met. The next meeting of the MRS should be held at a familiar location, where farmers in the middle of harvest can come without campus police questioning their appearance.
Badlands Journal editorial board
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To: Gwen Huff, EMRCD/Merced Alliance Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator
From: San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center
Re: Your Sept. 10 telephone calls and draft Agenda
Date: Sept. 12, 2007
Gwen,
We received your telephone call on Sept. 10 concerning your proposed agenda for the next Merced River Stakeholders (MRS) meeting. The agenda appears to have been proposed by the East Merced Resource Conservation District (EMRCD) rather than the stakeholders, whose facilitator you are paid by public funds to be. Due to your inability to maintain a value-free, professional facilitation position with stakeholders during this period of conflict between MRS and EMRCD, and in light of the RCD board's recent decision to suppress public documents from MRS view, as members of MRS, we will be forced to make inquiries to your funders about your facilitation grant.
As members of the MRS, we reject an agenda, originating with the RCD board, a majority of whose members regard the MRS is unnecessary, that MRS should spend half its next meeting discussing its charter, with respect to how often it will meet and how it participates in grant development. Our mission statement and goals, painstakingly worked out over a period of years of meetings, are clearly stated on the EMRCD website.
MERCED RIVER STAKEHOLDERS
MISSION STATEMENT
Provide a collaborative forum for coordination, and gathering and sharing of information
about the Merced River watershed. Protect and enhance the lower Merced River Watershed such that the natural processes, ecosystems, and its unique characteristics are conserved and restored. Foster voluntary stewardship in advance of habitat degradation and regulatory action.
Strive for a balanced level of human interaction within the watershed.
GOALS
Educate the public about the Merced River watershed and its importance.
Foster and improve communication among affected private individuals, interested citizens, commercial interests, educational institutes, and representatives of local, state and federal agencies.
We members of MRS are content to be a collaborative forum. If MRS members who are also EMRCD board members and/or staff of the Merced Alliance are unhappy with them, as far as we are concerned their discontent does nothing but raise issues of conflict-of-interest and perception of corruption, already well articulated in our protest letters and petitions sent to the state Department of Water Resources in opposition to your grant application. Your refusal, as MRS facilitator, to circulate these documents, along with
the chronology of emails in the weeks and days prior to your final grant application, does nothing to relieve suspicion of conflict-of-interest and perception of corruption.
We find it less pardonable that a member of the RCD board and staff for the RCD and Merced River Alliance, Merced County Planning Commissioner Cindy Lashbrook is, as presented in the public minutes of the last EMRCD public meeting, the most vociferous proponent of suppressing distribution of public information to the MRS. EMRCD, a public agency, whose board is appointed by the Merced County Board of Supervisors, is subject to the Brown Act. This, too, will need looking into.
In fact, the MRS stakeholders' process worked exactly as it was designed to in the case of the grant application, which would have feathered a few staff nests in the course of performing studies that some stakeholders perceived as detrimental to their particular business or environmental interests. Those few members of the MRS who received and read copies of the draft grant application opposed it, believing it was against our interests.
We expressed our opposition in a completely lawful process, by sending letters and petitions to the funders, and the grant was rejected by those funders. Now the EMRCD, represented in the next MRS meeting by your biased facilitation and a few stakeholders conflicted by their membership on the EMRCD board and/or drawing staff salaries from EMRCD and the Merced River Alliance, want to change the MRS charter? You want to cut back our meetings because the EMRCD "administers" your watershed coordinator grant? On whose authority?
The EMRCD complaint for failure to receive grant funds in this cycle -- because of the political incompetence of yourself, an out-of-town facilitator who would not reveal who was paying for her, Planning Commissioner Lashbrook, Supervisor Kelsey and, most of all, the EMRCD board of directors -- is with your prospective funders, not with the MRS. The MRS, a collaborative forum, did exactly what it was intended by its Mission Statement and Goals to do. Members of the MRS who opposed the grant and opposed the deplorable attempt by EMRCD/Merced River Alliance staff, including MRS stakeholders, for personal profit, to railroad the process with the MRS. We offered to meet and discuss. You and other EMRCD/Merced River Alliance staff and board members rebuffed our offer.
"EMRCD is supported by public funds; there is a forgotten concept that the public has a
right to equal access to information under the law. This attempt at suppression raises the question of just what ERMCD is attempting to hide. The property owners and the raptor group rarely see eye-to-eye but neither of us has ever advocated suppression of the other's information/opinion." -- Pat Ferrigno to Gwen Huff, email, Sept. 10, 2007
We reject the EMRCD agenda for the MRS meeting. We once again request that you, the MRS facilitator paid with public funds, distribute to MRS members:
The EMRCD rejected grant application;
the two MRS letters and accompanying petitions;
all correspondence from the state DWR concerning why your application was rejected;
the letter of Nancy McConnell (also publicly paid staff of Merced River Alliance) on the
meeting with DWR official Dan Wermiel in Snelling concerning the grant;
any other documents concerning the grant;
EMRCD legal justification for its board's decision not to distribute public information
concerning the MRS to the members of the MRS.
Lydia Miller, President
San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center
P.O. Box 778
Merced, CA 95341
raptorctr@bigvalley.net
SJRRC@sbcglobal.net
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From: gwenhuff@comcast.net
To: SJRRC@sbcglobal.net; Raptorctr@bigvalley.net; brwade@aol.com; Dist4@co.merced.ca.us; pferrigno@elite.net
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:30:05 -0700
The agenda item “MRS and Grant Development” was agreed upon by the stakeholders at their last meeting. The item “MRS Charter” was added by me to frame this discussion –a starting point of agreed upon goals and mission. I don’t know where you got the idea that the charter would be changed, though it can be if the stakeholders see fit. Cut back on the MRS meetings? I have no authority (nor intent) to do that. I can only offer facilitation services as the grant allows. I asked for your input, as well as other stakeholders, on the agenda. You have not provided any suggestions for agenda items. The meeting notification must go out TODAY – the meeting is only a week and a half away and many receive notification by regular mail only. If you have suggestions on modifying the agenda, please get back to me right away.
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From: SJRRC@sbcglobal.net
To: gwenhuff@comcast.net; brwade@aol.com; Dist4@co.merced.ca.us
Subject: Yet another request- Items for Sept 24th MRS- Protest letter, MRS chronology & public minutes.
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:26:22 -0700
Gwen,
This is not true. We and other MRS stakeholders have asked you numerous times for distribution of the material attached to this email, sent to you and EMRCD President Bernie Wade on August 8, September 6, and September 12. The material is attached as we have provided all along. We asked for additional information in our September 12 letter to be made available. All of this material pertains to talking about grant applications.
We requested that the EMRCD send this material to the MRS before its next meeting as a matter of courtesy to the EMRCD board. We were stunned that the EMRCD board displayed at its August 15 meeting such a hyper-inflated view of its authority that it voted unanimously to prohibit the MRS facilitator, yourself, to distribute a public letter in opposition to the EMRCD grant application. We were further appalled to witness a county official, Planning Commissioner Cindy Lashbrook, leading the argument for this prohibition. Your manifest gratitude to the EMRCD for making this decision destroyed our trust in you as a professional facilitator.
We got the idea that you and members of the EMRCD board who also sit on the MRS group were planning to try to change the MRS Mission Statement and Goals, which you misname the "Charter," from your telephone call to Lydia Miller on September 10 in which you talk of "reviewing the charter" with an eye to limiting the number of meetings and how the MRS can or cannot participate in grant proposals and how to limit the effect of its recommendations.
You have repeatedly ignored our requests for distribution of information, behaving as if
"they are off the table," behaving as if you were the president of the MRS instead of its facilitator, paid by public funds. The EMRCD board is behaving as if it believes that the MRS is an unnecessary institution for discussion of Lower Merced River issues. Cindy Lashbrook, EMRCD board member, Merced River Alliance staff and Merced County Planning Commissioner is on record in two public meetings as saying she is "at war" with some MRS stakeholders and the EMRCD "doesn't need" the MRS. EMRCD/Merced River Alliance Grant Administrator Karen Whipp is on record as saying that because EMRCD administers your grant, it can direct you to suppress distribution of public information to MRS stakeholders.
You and the EMRCD and the Merced River Alliance have taken an unwise course since the grant application first surfaced in March. By attempting to railroad that grant over the MRS, you have seen the authority the MRS has and have demonstrated the kind of ambitions EMRCD/Merced River Alliance staff have. This has now caused suspicion of EMRCD intents, purposes, and legality. Unwise.
Lydia Miller, President
San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center
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To: Bernard Wade, President East Merced Resource Conservation District
From: San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center, MRS stakeholder
Re: Protest against actions taken by EMRCD/Merced River Alliance watershed
coordinator and MRS facilitator
Date: Sept. 13, 2007
Bernie,
We are writing to protest actions taken by the EMRCD, recently and specifically by MRS
facilitator, Gwen Huff. EMRCD administers grant funding from the state Department of
Conservation II and Prop. 13 for EMRCD/Merced River Alliance staff, including Huff. At your last board meeting, the board unanimously passed a motion to prohibit Huff, the MRS facilitator, from distributing a public documents written by a group of MRS stakeholders to DWR concerning a EMRCD grant application for public funds.
We are making a formal request that you direct the MRS facilitator to:
1) Distribute to MRS stakeholders prior to their next meeting on Sept. 24 the public documents in opposition to the EMRCD grant proposal from SJRRC and the Bettencourt family to the state Department of Water Resources;
2) Send all MRS stakeholders a copy of the latest list of email and regular mail addresses of all MRS stakeholders -- since Huff has been the facilitator this list has been suppressed and not available to stakeholders;
3) Provide us with copies of any documents that support the EMRCD board claim that because the MRS facilitator's grant funding is administered by EMRCD, the EMRCD has authority over the MRS and is authorized to direct the MRS facilitator to commit or omit actions MRS stakeholders regard as prejudicial to their interests and their rights to information essential to their understanding of issues before their collaborative forum.
4) Change the proposed venue for the Sept. 24 MRS meeting to a location familiar to MRS stakeholders.
Lydia Miller, President
San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center
----------------
From: Brwade@aol.com
To: SJRRC@sbcglobal.net
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 5:24 PM
Subject: Re: Request for July MRS minutes and email list
Dear Lydia, Gwen has been out of town and I don't know if she is back yet for the minutes. I am waiting for a policy decision from CARCD regarding distribution of material through EMRCD. Best Regards, Bernie