Dear Editor,

The residents behind Santa Monicans for Responsible Growth (“New Resident’s Group Under Assault”) are to be commended, not attacked.

I am a City Council candidate, and declined to sign onto the proposed “transparency agreement” because it represented, in my opinion, the disingenuous political hypocrisy that saturates our city. It had, in my view, nothing to do with transparency, but was instead intended to intimidate and demean a group of residents who simply want to limit development.

Councilmembers O’Day and Davis have willingly benefited from a lack of transparency numerous times over the years, but are now jumping all over residents for trying to become active in community affairs. I remember Councilman O’Day leading the deceptive developer-backed campaign against Proposition “T” in 2008 that the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City placed on the ballot in an attempt to control the massive overdevelopment that is crushing the city’s residents. The public did not know at the time who was behind the campaign, or that developers had poured almost $1,000,000 into defeating that initiative. Mr. O’Day did not seem to be concerned with transparency at that time. He was subsequently appointed to fill a vacant Council seat by presumably grateful incumbents.

Council members O’Day and Davis were supported in 2010 by a secretive developer-backed organization cynically named “Santa Monicans for Quality Government”. SMQG targeted Councilmember McKeown and Council candidate Ted Winterer, going so far as to use phony depictions of Santa Monica’s Police and Fire Department insignias in its advertisements to provide an illusion of credibility. Neither Ms. Davis nor Mr. O’Day seemed concerned about transparency at that time.

Council members O’Day and Davis recently voted to not provide any information about their donors, and to not to make a booklet of their state filings available in the council chambers for the public to consult. Was this transparency?

What is transparent (to me, at least) is the attempt to intimidate responsible residents who have had enough of the manipulation and Orwellian buzzwords that have become business as usual.

Bob Seldon
Santa Monica