LAST-MINUTE DESPERATION: Sherlock Holmes famously fretted about “the dog that didn’t bark,” but the dogs I worry most about are the ones barking in my face. The most obvious case in point is the $60,000 that an oil-industry front group — Keep Santa Barbara Working — announced it’s raising to get Santa Ynez businessman Bruce Porter elected as 3rd District Supervisor. Their timing was impeccably perverse, choosing May 19 — the anniversary of the Refugio Oil Spill — to file campaign reports detailing how Vaquero Energy just donated $30,000 to help elect Porter, and the California Independent Petroleum Association $25,000.
The first commandment of Santa Barbara politics is to never accept money from oil companies. The second commandment is to not tell reporters you won’t take oil money when a tape recorder is running, as Porter did.
Making matters even worse still, the same day Keep Santa Barbara Working announced it was operating a cha-ching machine on Porter’s behalf, District Attorney Joyce Dudley and Attorney General Kamala Harris celebrated the anniversary of the Line 901 rupture by filing 46 criminal charges against Plains All American Pipeline. The federal agency responsible for pipeline safety also got into the act, issuing a 500-page report detailing the thousand-and-one ways Plains repeatedly ignored information about pipeline corrosion that caused the blowout. Pipeline safety tests dating back to 2007 show corrosion was a big problem on Line 901 and getting much worse at an alarming rate. The report found Plains repeatedly failed to take steps along the way to determine just how bad it was.