(March 4, 2008) -- In a journalistic gaffe, the Press-Telegram amplified a substantive gaffe by an incumbent Councilman and the candidate challenging him at last night's (March 3) 6th district candidate forum.
The question, asked by moderator Alan Tolkoff (from an audience submission card) at the Wrigley Association's 6th Council district candidate forum, was straightforward to 6th district City Councilman Dee Andrews, elected in a May, 2007 multi-candidate special election, and challenger Ahmed Saafir (who finished third in the May 07 contest).
Mr. Tolkoff's question in pertinent part stated:
"Would you be in favor of a "no net increase" bill and what I want you to talk to also, if you are, how would you work with our elected officials in Sacramento to get such a bill passed?"
The Press-Telegram reported their responses as follows:
[PT text]: ...Andrews said he supports Sen. Alan Lowenthal's "no net increase" bill, which would create container fees at the port to fund measures preventing increases in pollution from freight trucks, and that he is satisfied with Lowenthal's efforts to get the bill passed.
Saafir didn't give a definitive answer to whether he supports the bill. He said Lowenthal's approach is "appropriate," but that he would like to see more community forums about the bill and that area legislators should be brought together to discuss it.
Except there is no Lowenthal "no net increase bill." To hear the Councilman and the candidate mangle this, click here.
The Councilman and the candidate gaffes are only part of the story. No one stands taller than when they stand corrected, and once they figure out what happened, they won't make the same mistake twice.
But for the PT to misreport what happened is, in our opinion, more significant. In our view, it's closer to reporting that Dan Quayle had spelled potato with an "e"...and then spelling it that way itself in its news report.
Here's the record. There was a Lowenthal "no net increase" bill in 2005-2006 (SB 764). The City Council voted to support it. It was the policy of the City of Long Beach to support it. SB 764 died in August 2006 (after passing the Senate) when the Assembly Democrats' leadership blocked it in the Dem-chaired Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Two years earlier in 2004, then-Assemblyman Lowenthal got a "no net increase" bill (AB 2042) to Governor Schwarzenegger's desk. The City of LB supported it through a unanimous vote of the City Council. The Port of LB opposed the bill by a vote of its non-elected Harbor Commissioners...and Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed it.
In 2006, after Dems killed Sen. Lowenthal's successor "no net increase" SB 764 (with the Port of LB publicly neutral), LB community advocate Bry Myown asked Sen. Lowenthal in front of nearly 300 people at a November 2006 CSULB conference on "goods movement" if he'd reintroduce the bill in 2007.
Senator Lowenthal said he would. LBReport.com reported this with documenting audio.
<>p>In February 2007, the deadline for introducing new legislation came and went...and Senator Lowenthal didn't reintroduce his "no net increase" bill. LBReport.com spotted this and broke the story, along with a statement we requested and obtained from Sen. Lowenthal's office on the matter.
To the best of our knowledge, from that day in Feb. 2007 until March 4, 2008, the Press-Telegram didn't report that Senator Lowenthal had failed to reintroduce his "no net increase" measure. Unless cited a PT story that disproves our contention (we can't find one), we are of the opinion that that this was an indefensible omission.
Support for a "no net increase" in pollution policy at the City's Port had been the policy of the City of Long Beach through roughly three years.
It was Senator Lowenthal who abandoned that policy. In early 2007, Senator Lowenthal introduced what he called his "Port Investment bill" (SB 974), a substantively different version of a 2006 container fee bill that Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed.
SB 974 doesn't provide the public with legally enforceable guarantees and remedies of "no net increase" or a decrease in net pollution. It applies a container fee to expand Port-related rail and other infrastructure along with funding for what it calls "mitigation" measures.
SB 974 is supported by (among others) the Natural Resources Defense Council, the American Lung Ass'n, the Coalition for Clean Air, the South Coast Air Quality Management District and Mayor Bob Foster. It contains no legally enforceable guarantee, or remedy that residents exercise, to ensure that the "mitigation" measures it funds will actually deliver a net decrease in pollution with the Port capacity expansion that it funds...or even "no net increase" in pollution.
That's why the moderator asked the 6th district incumbent and his challenger about a future "no net increase" bill...to provide the public with such a minimal guarantee tied to Port growth.
