Lynda Hopkins addresses our Concerns; Part 1 - Her Donors

[Barry]

Lynda Hopkins answers questions
from WaccoBB members

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.

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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.

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From Lynda Hopkins:

Thanks 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, 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.

[davidkat]

I think Lynda's response is completely disingenuous and does not truthfully respond to the questions. She warns us about the county's election funding website and telling us how difficult it is to read. It is perfectly clear to anyone, with or without a Stanford degree.

Is she really a farmer?: According to her farm website and the Farm Bureau article on her farm, they produce a gross income approximately $80,000 a year. Once you take the cost of irrigation, equipment, seeds, fertilizer, labor, permits, fuel, fees, etc. they will be lucky to net $20,000 for the season, which is twice the net income percentage most small farms get in Sonoma county. Over a 9 month season that works out to be $6.75 hr. That's a subsidized hobby farm, not a farmer. Not to mention the free rent on hubby's parent farm.

She says she know economics cause she took a few economic classes at college. Those are her words. In that case, I must be a medical expert cause I took a few classes in medicine at college. Another thing, the study of economics is not the real world. The real world is all about making a living, cash flow, and meaningful employment.

The facts are plain: she got a undergraduate degree in Poetry/Creative writing from Stanford. That is the exact degree she got at Stanford, not "Local Coastal Planning" which she says she studied on the side and achieved mastery. If she has nothing to hide she should tell the plain truth, and not mask it with lots of words to tell a tall tale. [See Lynda's explanation of her degrees here ~ Barry ]

She completely avoids explaining why all sorts of outside forces are pouring money into her campaign. She criticizes Noreen's view on her funding and makes no serious attempt to address the funding issue. The facts are plain, no matter how either side occasionally mis-categorizes who is a developer or not. Most of the funds received by Lynda come from the development community and outside big money sources. She ain't no grassroots girl.

Lynda says the other supervisors (Zane & Gore) that were either supported or opposed by SEIU were unaffected by the SEIU stance when making decisions once in office. Thus, according to Lynda, the SEIU is not likely to have any influence on Noreen as well once she is elected. I think our police, firemen and nurses, which are all mostly union, deserve good compensation and adequate pensions regardless of the mistakes made by past government officials.

She emphasizes that she opposes gravel mining, vineyard conversion, winery events, loves organic farming, and is so dedicated to the green well-being of Sonoma county. So why are outside, anti-environmental development forces pouring so much money into her campaign? It doesn't add up.

[Barry]

The following question came in from a member:

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There's something I've always wondered about since I first saw the candidates' panel in Sebastopol early on in the primaries. Lynda was asked where she stood on Measure M to ban GMO crop growing in Sonoma County. At that time, she answered that she didn't yet have a position on M -- she hadn't read the full text of the measure and would have to do so before she took a stand.

As an organic farmer, I would expect Lynda would support Measure M -- indeed, she may have said something about it somewhere, subsequently -- but I haven't seen/heard/read her position on this at all in this phase of the campaign. On the other hand, I believe that by and large the Farm Bureau, which supports Lynda, opposes Measure M. If Hopkins is in favor of the GMO ban this would be an excellent opportunity for her to demonstrate her independence from her influential backers. If she opposes M, this would be a good opportunity to explain clearly and in detail why she believes it is not in the interests of organic farmers and environmental activists. Could you ask her, and publish her answer?

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I'm not going to bother Lynda with this during these last hectic days, since she's has already answered the question:

Lynda Hopkins On Banning GMO In Sonoma County

She also addressed it here in the in Sonoma County Gazette. Here's an excerpt:

"I support the ban. And I’ve been endorsed by the Sonoma County Farm Bureau. To clarify: they oppose the initiative. I support it. I come from an opinionated family -- so to me, this is a perfectly normal part of adult life. We have passionate conversations; we debate fine points; ultimately, we may disagree. I don’t understand leaders that only listen to their supporters, are afraid to disagree with certain groups, and never think outside the box.

If the ban fails, I will work as Supervisor to develop and enact an anti-GMO ordinance."

So here's an example of Lynda taking a position in direct opposition to one of her donors.

[Barry]

I got a reply from Lynda that addresses many of the points raised a response on this thread. It may be the last we hear from her directly. Between this post, her negative IEC posts, and her upcoming promised replies about her experience and starting at the Supervisor level, and a summary of policy differences with Noreen I think she has addressed many of the concerns raised in our discussions. - Barry

THIS IS REALLY WORTH A READ

Lynda says the other supervisors (Zane & Gore) that were either supported or opposed by SEIU were unaffected by the SEIU stance when making decisions once in office. Thus, according to Lynda, the SEIU is not likely to have any influence on Noreen as well once she is elected. I think our police, firemen and nurses, which are all mostly union, deserve good compensation and adequate pensions regardless of the mistakes made by past government officials.

From Lynda Hopkins:

Shirlee and Noreen: Will Noreen Also be Tough on Unions?

The poster astutely noted that I mentioned that Shirlee, who was supported by the unions, wound up being tough at the negotiating table... so why wouldn't Noreen be?

Here are a few reasons that lead me to believe Noreen, unlike Shirlee, will not meaningfully address pension reform:

1) At candidate forums, Noreen has never admitted that there is a pension problem. She has repeatedly insisted that the unfunded liability will be paid off in 14 years.

2) She has refused to introduce any policies related to pension reform. Instead, she attacks my policy suggestions -- even the suggestion of targeting "golden parachute" pensions, and limiting pensions to $150,000/year. Rather than discussing pension reform, she has worked to identify additional revenue streams we could use to shore up the ailing pension system. The revenue streams she has identified -- TOT, and Cannabis revenue -- she has also identified as revenue streams for a host of other challenges (most frequently roads and early childhood education.)

3) She wants to invest the pension fund in workforce housing. This is a fiscally unsound and illegal policy suggestion.

4) While Supervisor Shirlee Zane was negotiating with SEIU during the strike earlier this year, Noreen was picketing outside the County buildings with SEIU, wearing SEIU purple and holding a megaphone. Noreen would have not known what was being discussed at the bargaining table, because those negotiations are closed session items -- but she supported the Union's strike anyway, without knowing the details of what was being discussed.

5) Her legislative track record on pension reform is extremely poor, and while at State she introduced legislation that would have bankrupted local municipalities. Her bill, ABX16, was abandoned after it was denounced by both the PD and Sac Bee editorial boards. The Sac Bee wrote, "ABX1 6 would bestow huge new potential benefits at a time the state, counties and cities are borrowing money to pay current retirement costs. It is likely to create billions more in new liability, with no new revenue sources to pay for it. Pick your adjective: This measure is irresponsible, unconscionable, shameless, craven. Such words might be useful if you call the legislators who voted for it."

6) Local pension advocate Ken Churchill conducted a review of Santa Rosa City Pensions. According to the data he compiled, while Noreen was on the City Council, the pension costs to the city increased by 500% and involved a crippling retroactive increase in benefits. This suggests that the pay packages during that time period were not the result of budget-conscious negotiations.

[ From Barry: Text of ABX1 6 is here, (good luck!), PD article on it is here]

I think Lynda's response is completely disingenuous and does not truthfully respond to the questions. She warns us about the county's election funding website and telling us how difficult it is to read. It is perfectly clear to anyone, with or without a Stanford degree.

From Lynda Hopkins:

Campaign Finance Website: Awkward, Not Impossible
I don't think I claimed the county's election website is hard to read or that you need a PhD to do it -- rather that it's clunky and outdated and there is no one page that amasses all campaign contributions into a single list. In general, I think that the County needs to work on making data easily accessible to the community, and this is one place where we could use an updated system.

Is she really a farmer?: According to her farm website and the Farm Bureau article on her farm, they produce a gross income approximately $80,000 a year. Once you take the cost of irrigation, equipment, seeds, fertilizer, labor, permits, fuel, fees, etc. they will be lucky to net $20,000 for the season, which is twice the net income percentage most small farms get in Sonoma county. Over a 9 month season that works out to be $6.75 hr. That's a subsidized hobby farm, not a farmer. Not to mention the free rent on hubby's parent farm.

From Lynda Hopkins:

Farming: Is It A Real Business?
I don't know where the $80,000 came from but that's not accurate. We gross in the range of $150K-$200K. We've been farming for 9 years. We feed more than 80 families through our CSA program every week; sell at three local farmers markets; and maintain wholesale accounts with a local distributor (FEED Sonoma, based in the Barlow) and local restaurants and caterers.

Also, I'm guessing the person conducting the economic analysis of our farm isn't a farmer, because in the 9 years I've been farming I have never ever spent a penny on fertilizer! Compost, yes. Soil amendments, yes. In farming circles, the word "fertilizer" is typically used to refer specifically to NPK granules, which are basically chemically based Miracle-Gro junk that we wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. :) Small detail but we're a compost based farm, and that's an important distinction for us.

The facts are plain: she got a undergraduate degree in Poetry/Creative writing from Stanford. That is the exact degree she got at Stanford, not "Local Coastal Planning" which she says she studied on the side and achieved mastery. If she has nothing to hide she should tell the plain truth, and not mask it with lots of words to tell a tall tale.

From Lynda Hopkins:

Education: Just A Poet?
I graduated with three degrees from Stanford University. One in Poetry, and two (including a Master's) through the Earth Systems Program. So I have a BA, BS, and MS from Stanford. Earth Systems was not something I studied on the side -- I studied poetry on the side. :) I was also the Head Teaching Assistant for the Earth Systems Program (which enabled me to pay for my own Master's degree), so for years, Earth Systems consumed my academic and professional life. I explained the Earth Systems Program and the independent research I conducted in the other email chain I sent you -- hopefully that got posted on Waccobb for reference.

She completely avoids explaining why all sorts of outside forces are pouring money into her campaign. She criticizes Noreen's view on her funding and makes no serious attempt to address the funding issue. The facts are plain, no matter how either side occasionally mis-categorizes who is a developer or not. Most of the funds received by Lynda come from the development community and outside big money sources. She ain't no grassroots girl.

From Lynda Hopkins:

"Outside Money"
As for the "outside money" -- if there are specific donations someone has questions about, let's talk, but broadly generalized statements with no data to back them up are rarely useful in productive conversations. The vast majority of my campaign contributions are from Sonoma County residents and Sonoma County businesses, or organizations with significant membership in Sonoma County. The exceptions are primarily family members and college friends. We have more than 550 donations under $250 -- most of those $100 or less... I would call this a broad, grass roots support. And we have many more volunteers who are not able to give money but instead are giving their time.