Council should be careful when throwing stones

Gil Ferguson

As one who has been involved in politics, including the hardball

variety, for a very long time, I’d respectfully advise our Newport

Beach city councilmen to let this matter regarding their colleague

Dick Nichols slide. Based on the obvious dislike some of them have

for him and the tough report with which the city attorney (their

employee) will provide them, I’m sure they will be tempted to

politically harpoon Nichols. Don’t. Don’t do anything foolish. That’s

a very politically slippery slope you are about to step out on. And

one of the basic truisms of politics is: What goes around, comes

around.

Most politicians can do the political talk and spin long before

they enter office. Some learn how to talk and say little and how to

be nasty while talking nice only after serving a few years. Some,

like Dick Nichols, can’t seem to ever get the hang of it and never

will. That kind of ineptness seems most often to accompany honest men

who have spent much of their lives, mono y mono, on the field of

sports.

Local zoning laws and the power over land use and development, is

by far the single greatest source of political corruption in America.

Every day of the year, councilmen, planning commissioners and

bureaucrats, subjectively and often illegally, apply laws to people

seeking to build or remodel. Their decisions are often so illogical

and subjective that the average citizen is left to wonder, why? Why

did they decide to do it this way this time and not the way they did

it last time? If the observers are sophisticated in politics, they

know the myriad of reasons, from honest attempts to deal with each

project, to show favoritism based on friendship, politics or rewards

of one kind or another. To an unsophisticated, blunt talking, Dick

Nichols-type of guy, he can only think, there must be some kind of

“pay off” for the inconsistent and unreasonable decisions of a

planning commission; unfortunately he said it out loud.

If the council moves to satisfy their thinly disguised dislike of

Nichols, they will be inviting the media to join in their favorite

blood sport of piling on. They will also be inviting the interest of

the ACLU and Pacific Legal, public interest-type lawsuits. More

likely, new interest will be focused on where exactly did all that

public money go that was given to fight for an airport at El Toro or

why did the city allow Newport Coast Road, which the city demanded be

built free for the public, to be turned into part of the toll road;

once again filling our city with coastal traffic.

The honest and ethical way for them to satisfy their desire to

hurt Nichols is to defeat him in the next election. Meanwhile, they

and the public are going to have to get used to a blunt talking,

rather odd, nonpolitical politician.

* EDITOR’S NOTE: Gil Ferguson is a Newport Beach resident and

former assemblyman.