The Officials Who Are Accountable: A Voter’s Guide to the IVDC Fight

in

Democratic accountability requires that voters know which officials made which decisions. The IVDC dispute has involved both the County of Imperial — which approved the project — and the City of Imperial — which challenged it. The officials involved in those decisions are accountable to the residents who elected them, and the record of their decisions is a legitimate basis for evaluating their performance in office.

The County: The Approval Decision

The Imperial County Board of Supervisors oversees the county’s planning and land use functions, and the supervisors who were in office when the IVDC received its ministerial approval bear institutional responsibility for that decision. The approval was legally correct — as the Superior Court has affirmed — and represents the exercise of the county’s legitimate land use authority over unincorporated county land. Imperial County voters who support the project’s economic impact have officials who acted correctly to thank for the approval.

The City: The Challenge Decision

The City of Imperial City Council authorized the legal challenges to the IVDC’s county approval. Those council members — whose names are in the public record of council meeting minutes and resolutions — made the decision to spend city resources on legal action that the trial court has now rejected, and to pursue an appeal whose legal theory the Superior Court found insufficient. Imperial residents who have watched their city government spend public money fighting a project that would bring $28.75 million annually to the regional tax base — and whose children attend the school districts that would benefit from that revenue — have a legitimate basis to ask their council representatives to account for that decision.

The Question Worth Asking

The question worth asking every elected official who has supported the IVDC opposition is a simple one: what is your alternative? What specific economic development project, at comparable scale, are you actively supporting that would provide equivalent employment, tax revenue, and wage growth for Imperial Valley workers and school districts? If the answer is that no such alternative exists — and none has been proposed by the opposition — then the officials supporting the obstruction are not making a choice between development paths. They are making a choice between development and the status quo. Imperial Valley voters should evaluate that choice with full understanding of what the status quo means for their families’ economic futures.

Elections are how communities express their preferences about these trade-offs. The IVDC fight has produced a clear record of who stood where. That record is available to every voter who wants to consult it.

Original Article: https://www.ourimperialvalley.com/officials-who-are-accountable-voters-guide-ivdc-fight/