SLO County supervisor election: The District 5 dilemma

In a race that comes down to political ideology, 5th District Supervisor Debbie Arnold faces a challenge from a single candidate, organic farmer and retired nonprofit housing official Eric Michielssen.

Michielssen would be a more liberal voice on the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors and, depending on the outcome of races in other districts, could tilt the balance of power on a board where conservatives hold the majority.

That won’t be easy. While liberal voters are likely to support Michielssen, they are significantly outnumbered in the 5th District, which includes 12,423 Republicans, 9,096 Democrats and 6,181 voters without a party preference.

Arnold also is way ahead when it comes to campaign fundraising: As of early February, she had collected $116,054, compared to Michielssen’s $18,005.

Michielssen faces other challenges: He has never held an elected office, though he did serve on the Atascadero Planning Commission for several years in the 1980s. He’s also held leadership positions in several community organizations, including the Atascadero Chamber of Commerce and San Luis Obispo Grange.

What concerns us more than his shortage of experience in politics, though, is his lack of clearly articulated positions and goals. In an interview with The Tribune Editorial Board, he gave vague answers on some key issues, such as how to best manage the Paso Robles groundwater basin. Nor did he have specific suggestions on how to address the county’s shortage of workforce housing, which was surprising since he spent 17 years working as a broker and asset manager for Peoples’ Self-Help Housing. His campaign website does offer some proposals, such as increasing affordable housing fees that have been frozen ever since the recession — an idea we have long supported.

Still, we have no clear sense of Michielssen’s vision for the county. He might make a fine county supervisor, but we don’t know enough at this point to offer him our endorsement.

We do offer him some advice: For the remaining weeks of the campaign, move beyond the usual platitudes we hear from candidates and focus instead on giving voters a stronger sense of who you are and where you stand on specific issues. Being an alternative to Debbie Arnold isn’t enough — voters need to know who you are.

Which leads us to Arnold.

In her favor, she has far more government experience than Michielssen, she’s familiar with the issues and she’s a bulldog when it comes to protecting the taxpayer’s dollar.

However, we have serious concerns about her record, particularly when it comes to management of the declining Paso Robles groundwater basin. While reasonable leaders can disagree about whether the state, the county or a local district should mange the basin, we fault Arnold for not intervening sooner. As soon as wells started drying up, Arnold should have been at the forefront of the push for strong conservation measures, including imposing limits on groundwater pumping. Instead, her colleagues did most of the heavy lifting when it came to adopting interim protections for the basin, while Arnold urged caution and advocated for protecting the vested rights of vineyard owners.

We also questioned how much she listened to her constituents in Santa Margarita when she voted in favor of a rock quarry that would have sent an untenable amount of truck traffic through the small town.

We were disappointed, too, that Arnold — who is exceedingly gracious in private conversation — participated in petty power struggles over board chairmanships and voted against something as innocuous as, for example, a children’s bill of rights when it came before the Air Pollution Control Board. (She voted for it when it came before the Board of Supervisors.)

That said, we’ve applauded Arnold’s decisions on other issues. For example, her recent support of the psychiatric hospital in Templeton shows she can see beyond NIMBY-based interests to consider the bigger picture.

She bucked COLAB — a conservative interest group in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties — when she voted to give each county employee a one-time payment of $1,000 to help offset health care increases.

And we were encouraged when she told The Tribune Editorial Board that safety will be a key consideration in deciding whether Phillips 66 should be allowed to install a rail spur to accommodate crude oil shipments.

“I don’t think the number of jobs is at issue,” she told us, when asked what role jobs will play in her deliberations.

We continue to be concerned, though, that Arnold’s political ideology causes her to prejudge issues to a degree we do not see in her colleagues. A recent example: Arnold was the only member of the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments board to vote against taking preliminary steps toward putting a half-cent sales tax measure on the ballot to fund regional transportation projects. That was disappointing; we believe this is an important issue that should go to the voters. (For the record, Michielssen does support the tax.)

We aren’t asking — nor do we expect — Arnold to check her conservative values at the door of the county government center.

But if Arnold is elected to a second term, we strongly urge her to listen to every side of every issue with an open mind, and to base her decisions on what’s best for the entire county, not just for her core constituencies.

This story was originally published April 9, 2016 at 9:42 PM with the headline "SLO County supervisor election: The District 5 dilemma."