Barry
11-01-2016, 09:33 AM
Lynda Hopkins answers questions
from WaccoBB members
:waccosun: :waccosun: :waccosun:
I took the opportunity to pose what I thought were the obvious questions and concerns of our members to get it rolling. If there's time before the election she'll take additional questions. Please send them to me privately (Reply privately to this post).
I asked her to address :
- her donors
- Eric Koenigshofer's negative campaign
- her experience
- a summary of her policy differences with Norreen.
You are welcome to comment on her response on this thread, but please have it be in direct response about what she wrote. Opinions that are just a restatement of posts on the main thread will be removed.
From Barry:
1) Your Campaign Funding. This is by far the biggest reason many of our readers are backing Noreen. There tons of concerns about the high level of funding you have received from development, winery and other business interests. People don't feel that they can trust you to follow through with policies and votes that do not serve the interests of your donors. Saying that you haven't signed any pledges or made any promises is not enough.
I think you need to explain why they are backing you if you will not do their bidding. This is also an opportunity to express your commitment to environmental protection and how you hold land use and development, including vineyards.
Providing examples, local and otherwise, of successful candidates voting against their major donors interests would help. You might include your opinion of past and current local environmental battles, such gravel mining, Dutra and the Petaluma park.
From Lynda Hopkins:
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2016-11-03_23-22-57.pngThanks for giving me the opportunity to address campaign funding.
First off, I would encourage everyone to look through both candidates' campaign finance records on the Registrar of Voters website. (Unfortunately, the County makes this a royal pain: they're all on separate, unsearchable PDFs, and you have to manually scroll through each and every page. But do it! It's worth it. And maybe one of these days we can, as a County, make some investments in more accessible data systems.)
Please don't look at Noreen's website, or glossy mailers with funding graphs, and take them as truth. On Noreen's website, she tends to categorize anyone she doesn't know as a developer. In this way, my mother (a single mom on disability who previously worked government contracts for the VA) became a developer. So did my step-dad, Herman's sister, and my husband's uncle, who develops fonts for Adobe Photoshop.... among others.
That’s a long way of saying that my funding sources are more diverse than my opponent would have you believe. I've received substantial contributions from non-profit leaders, former judges, environmentalists, social justice advocates, and eccentric local geniuses. (You'd be surprised, or maybe not, by how many people occupy the latter category in West County.)
It's also noteworthy that the support I've received from agriculture is not only from the wine industry: it's across the board. Dairies, food farms, cannabis cultivators -- a lot of my campaign funding has come from some form of ag. (Fact: 9% of total campaign contributions received, by dollar amount, come from organic or biodynamic farms.)
Why is ag supporting me? Here's Occam's Razor at work: ag is supporting me because I'm a farmer. When I talk to ag people, I can talk farmer to farmer. Does it mean I'll always agree with them? No. But it means that I will understand where they're coming from, and can empathize in a way that non-farmers might not be able to. (Have you ever pulled stuck twins from a laboring goat? Gotten a truck stuck in the mud, and pulled it out with your crawler? Had five irrigation pipes burst in one day? These are the things we talk about.)
So, that's ag. Let's talk about non-ag business support. Noreen tends to lump all business support under one category: "developers." In fact, there's a difference between builders and developers. I've received a lot of campaign contributions from builders -- and so has she. The difference is, her builders are unionized, and mine are small business owners. But they all make a living undertaking some form of construction. This doesn’t make them anti-environment or even pro-development.
I haven't received the support of businesses because I secretly want to pave over paradise or mine the Russian River for gravel. These days even actual developers recognize that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of paving over paradise! We have a robust General Plan. I believe deeply in upholding that plan. So, what do general contractors and those engaged in the construction industry want? One thing they'd like to see is an apolitical PRMD (https://sonomacounty.ca.gov/Permit-and-Resource-Management/), one that doesn’t require a PhD or a team of attorneys to navigate. The current state of PRMD (which is presently even more aggrieved due to the sudden loss of many senior planners) is particularly difficult for small business owners. It’s actually better for large corporations, who can afford to hire “permitting specialists” to get their project applications through. Is that what we want – a system where you can get whatever you want if you’ve got enough money, but Average Joe is left out (or simply goes black market, building illegal second units and remodeling bathrooms in secret)?
That isn’t what I want. I want an efficient, transparent PRMD, with clear decision trees that take the politics out of permitting.
There are a few other things I bring to the business community:
1) An understanding of economics, based on my coursework at Stanford.
2) The experience of having run my own business for nine years.
3) A disdain for redundant paperwork for small business owners.
It's kind of surprising, actually, how many elected officials have never taken an economics course, run their own business, or had any firsthand experience of regulatory burden.
Yes -- I admit that regulatory burden exists. That alone actually sets me apart from many candidates. As a small farmer, I watched the Food Safety Modernization Act come down the pipeline -- certain that if it were implemented as the draft was originally written, it would put my small food farm (which had never poisoned anyone) straight out of business. Thanks to a huge outcry from small organic farmers, FSMA was amended to provide an exemption for farms earning less than $500,000 a year. But there are still a lot of hoops we small farmers have to jump through: as a certified organic farmer, I have to fill out nearly-but-not-quite identical paperwork for two different government agencies and one quasi-governmental agency that all want the same information in different forms. (Acres versus row-feet versus pounds, if you must know.) These are frustrations many small business owners face, and I believe that government should take the lead on crafting what I call elegant regulation. This does NOT mean relaxed regulation. This simply means streamlining the process. I dream of a world where a small farmer can log onto one portal, enter all of the needed information about his/her farm, and have that information shared by all of the regulatory agencies involved – and, moreover, that the regulatory agencies would actually agree on the rules that apply to small farms! (Federal, state, and local regulations rarely match up for agriculture, much to the frustration of farmers everywhere.)
So, those are some of the reasons I believe I’ve earned the support of business groups... Because I think that government can and should do a better job of regulating small businesses. (One last note on local business coalitions: it's worth noting that Noreen also interviewed with and pursued the endorsement of the Sonoma County Alliance, which she now derides as developers.)
More importantly, you asked about the broader perspective. Can I make independent decisions? Will I be swayed by my supporters?
I simply wouldn’t accept support if I thought it could ever hinder my ability to make independent, values-based decisions as a Supervisor. This is why I refused to sign pledges. This is why I rejected some contributions that I felt came with a policy "ask."
And quite frankly, if you watch the way Supervisors behave after they're elected, you'll actually see many of them tack pointedly towards their former opponents – because if you’re going to be a successful leader, you must effectively work with the people who opposed your candidacy. Shirlee Zane, who was supported by the unions, frustrated her union supporters by being tough with SEIU at the negotiating table. She has also become a vocal champion for the Farm Bureau. James Gore, who was supported by business and agriculture, actually received a letter of commendation from the North Bay Labor Council noting that he had taken a leadership role in crafting the County's living wage ordinance. He also received an award from the Russian Riverkeeper for his environmental stewardship efforts earlier this year.
If I’m elected next Tuesday, I plan to spend Wednesday making phone calls to people who spent the last year trying to elect my opponent.
And as for gravel mining, vineyards, and the like:
I oppose in-stream gravel mining, timber-to-vineyard conversion, and the use of agricultural property for event centers. Admittedly, that last one is easy to say, but tougher to define. We must figure out how to draw the line between agriculture with a bit of marketing, and marketing with a bit of agriculture. Dairyman is clearly on the wrong side of the line.
from WaccoBB members
:waccosun: :waccosun: :waccosun:
I took the opportunity to pose what I thought were the obvious questions and concerns of our members to get it rolling. If there's time before the election she'll take additional questions. Please send them to me privately (Reply privately to this post).
I asked her to address :
- her donors
- Eric Koenigshofer's negative campaign
- her experience
- a summary of her policy differences with Norreen.
You are welcome to comment on her response on this thread, but please have it be in direct response about what she wrote. Opinions that are just a restatement of posts on the main thread will be removed.
From Barry:
1) Your Campaign Funding. This is by far the biggest reason many of our readers are backing Noreen. There tons of concerns about the high level of funding you have received from development, winery and other business interests. People don't feel that they can trust you to follow through with policies and votes that do not serve the interests of your donors. Saying that you haven't signed any pledges or made any promises is not enough.
I think you need to explain why they are backing you if you will not do their bidding. This is also an opportunity to express your commitment to environmental protection and how you hold land use and development, including vineyards.
Providing examples, local and otherwise, of successful candidates voting against their major donors interests would help. You might include your opinion of past and current local environmental battles, such gravel mining, Dutra and the Petaluma park.
From Lynda Hopkins:
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2016-11-03_23-22-57.pngThanks for giving me the opportunity to address campaign funding.
First off, I would encourage everyone to look through both candidates' campaign finance records on the Registrar of Voters website. (Unfortunately, the County makes this a royal pain: they're all on separate, unsearchable PDFs, and you have to manually scroll through each and every page. But do it! It's worth it. And maybe one of these days we can, as a County, make some investments in more accessible data systems.)
Please don't look at Noreen's website, or glossy mailers with funding graphs, and take them as truth. On Noreen's website, she tends to categorize anyone she doesn't know as a developer. In this way, my mother (a single mom on disability who previously worked government contracts for the VA) became a developer. So did my step-dad, Herman's sister, and my husband's uncle, who develops fonts for Adobe Photoshop.... among others.
That’s a long way of saying that my funding sources are more diverse than my opponent would have you believe. I've received substantial contributions from non-profit leaders, former judges, environmentalists, social justice advocates, and eccentric local geniuses. (You'd be surprised, or maybe not, by how many people occupy the latter category in West County.)
It's also noteworthy that the support I've received from agriculture is not only from the wine industry: it's across the board. Dairies, food farms, cannabis cultivators -- a lot of my campaign funding has come from some form of ag. (Fact: 9% of total campaign contributions received, by dollar amount, come from organic or biodynamic farms.)
Why is ag supporting me? Here's Occam's Razor at work: ag is supporting me because I'm a farmer. When I talk to ag people, I can talk farmer to farmer. Does it mean I'll always agree with them? No. But it means that I will understand where they're coming from, and can empathize in a way that non-farmers might not be able to. (Have you ever pulled stuck twins from a laboring goat? Gotten a truck stuck in the mud, and pulled it out with your crawler? Had five irrigation pipes burst in one day? These are the things we talk about.)
So, that's ag. Let's talk about non-ag business support. Noreen tends to lump all business support under one category: "developers." In fact, there's a difference between builders and developers. I've received a lot of campaign contributions from builders -- and so has she. The difference is, her builders are unionized, and mine are small business owners. But they all make a living undertaking some form of construction. This doesn’t make them anti-environment or even pro-development.
I haven't received the support of businesses because I secretly want to pave over paradise or mine the Russian River for gravel. These days even actual developers recognize that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of paving over paradise! We have a robust General Plan. I believe deeply in upholding that plan. So, what do general contractors and those engaged in the construction industry want? One thing they'd like to see is an apolitical PRMD (https://sonomacounty.ca.gov/Permit-and-Resource-Management/), one that doesn’t require a PhD or a team of attorneys to navigate. The current state of PRMD (which is presently even more aggrieved due to the sudden loss of many senior planners) is particularly difficult for small business owners. It’s actually better for large corporations, who can afford to hire “permitting specialists” to get their project applications through. Is that what we want – a system where you can get whatever you want if you’ve got enough money, but Average Joe is left out (or simply goes black market, building illegal second units and remodeling bathrooms in secret)?
That isn’t what I want. I want an efficient, transparent PRMD, with clear decision trees that take the politics out of permitting.
There are a few other things I bring to the business community:
1) An understanding of economics, based on my coursework at Stanford.
2) The experience of having run my own business for nine years.
3) A disdain for redundant paperwork for small business owners.
It's kind of surprising, actually, how many elected officials have never taken an economics course, run their own business, or had any firsthand experience of regulatory burden.
Yes -- I admit that regulatory burden exists. That alone actually sets me apart from many candidates. As a small farmer, I watched the Food Safety Modernization Act come down the pipeline -- certain that if it were implemented as the draft was originally written, it would put my small food farm (which had never poisoned anyone) straight out of business. Thanks to a huge outcry from small organic farmers, FSMA was amended to provide an exemption for farms earning less than $500,000 a year. But there are still a lot of hoops we small farmers have to jump through: as a certified organic farmer, I have to fill out nearly-but-not-quite identical paperwork for two different government agencies and one quasi-governmental agency that all want the same information in different forms. (Acres versus row-feet versus pounds, if you must know.) These are frustrations many small business owners face, and I believe that government should take the lead on crafting what I call elegant regulation. This does NOT mean relaxed regulation. This simply means streamlining the process. I dream of a world where a small farmer can log onto one portal, enter all of the needed information about his/her farm, and have that information shared by all of the regulatory agencies involved – and, moreover, that the regulatory agencies would actually agree on the rules that apply to small farms! (Federal, state, and local regulations rarely match up for agriculture, much to the frustration of farmers everywhere.)
So, those are some of the reasons I believe I’ve earned the support of business groups... Because I think that government can and should do a better job of regulating small businesses. (One last note on local business coalitions: it's worth noting that Noreen also interviewed with and pursued the endorsement of the Sonoma County Alliance, which she now derides as developers.)
More importantly, you asked about the broader perspective. Can I make independent decisions? Will I be swayed by my supporters?
I simply wouldn’t accept support if I thought it could ever hinder my ability to make independent, values-based decisions as a Supervisor. This is why I refused to sign pledges. This is why I rejected some contributions that I felt came with a policy "ask."
And quite frankly, if you watch the way Supervisors behave after they're elected, you'll actually see many of them tack pointedly towards their former opponents – because if you’re going to be a successful leader, you must effectively work with the people who opposed your candidacy. Shirlee Zane, who was supported by the unions, frustrated her union supporters by being tough with SEIU at the negotiating table. She has also become a vocal champion for the Farm Bureau. James Gore, who was supported by business and agriculture, actually received a letter of commendation from the North Bay Labor Council noting that he had taken a leadership role in crafting the County's living wage ordinance. He also received an award from the Russian Riverkeeper for his environmental stewardship efforts earlier this year.
If I’m elected next Tuesday, I plan to spend Wednesday making phone calls to people who spent the last year trying to elect my opponent.
And as for gravel mining, vineyards, and the like:
I oppose in-stream gravel mining, timber-to-vineyard conversion, and the use of agricultural property for event centers. Admittedly, that last one is easy to say, but tougher to define. We must figure out how to draw the line between agriculture with a bit of marketing, and marketing with a bit of agriculture. Dairyman is clearly on the wrong side of the line.