Blind voting
10:00 PM PST on Tuesday, March 4, 2008
The fine print does matter. Just ask Riverside County supervisors, who last week blindly approved a resolution that directly contradicts pledges the county made to Mira Loma residents about truck traffic. The county should at least keep its promises, which requires fixing the document the supervisors approved last week. And the episode should also serve as a warning against rushing to vote on issues without proper review. Evidently no one at the county bothered to read the 53-page document, which arrived in supervisors' hands only a few hours before the meeting. The failure to double-check managed to make the county look either sloppy or untrustworthy. And official carelessness saps public confidence in government, especially among people already skeptical of supervisors' plans for the area. The resolution addressed the Stonehill Estates project, a housing development proposed for land south of Cantu-Galleano Ranch Road, west of Etiwanda Avenue. The objections to the project turn heavily on air pollution; the development site is near heavy truck traffic headed to warehouses in the area. The county had agreed to reroute truck traffic away from the homes to cut exposure to dangerous diesel pollution. Yet last week's resolution termed that alternate truck route "undesirable, unnecessary and infeasible." At the same time, Supervisor John Tavaglione was promising tough enforcement to ensure that trucks used that route. The mistake is as baffling as it is embarrassing. The vote was the latest step in a legal battle that dates to 2005. Last week's vote was necessary to respond to an adverse court ruling in July on the project's approval. The county had to know any decision it made would receive close scrutiny, if not another legal challenge. County Counsel Joe Rank blamed the confusion on "miscommunication" -- hardly a reassuring explanation for county that has twice had a judge find fault with its development procedures. Supervisor Bob Buster, who voted against the resolution, denounced the vote on documents "rushed through at the last minute in a complicated case." He's right. Keeping political promises is hard enough without supervisors voting in ignorance of the details.