Big Spender

Michael Amsler

Morning grind: Anyone forced to sit in the local commuter snarl on Highway 101 hopes that the proposed Calthorpe plan will fix the mess. Of course, some have their doubts. What would you do with a $780 million fix-it kit?

Say someone hands you the delicate future of Hwy. 101 and $780 million …

By Janet Wells

WE ALL KNOW what the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, along with a consortium of political and environmental mucky-mucks, propose as the solution to Highway 101 traffic: Tax ourselves to the tune of $780 million over 20 years, and spend it on new lanes for the highway, passenger rail service, and bike lanes.

Seems like a logical, something-for-everyone plan, right?

But, really, who’s going to add 45 minutes to their commute by taking the train? Who’s going to put up with biking to work and arriving all sweaty and tired? And who for a minute imagines that one more lane in each direction is actually going to alleviate the traffic mess?

Consensus, while a solid democratic theory, often results in a mediocre solution based on the lowest common denominator. But what if compromise wasn’t necessary? What if off-beat, less-than-politically-correct ideas suddenly were welcomed as “visionary” and “creative”? Just imagine. Go ahead and fantasize: the anti-gas tax.

And forget public transit. It sounds so civilized and modern and clean, but no one’s ever going to use it (one public opinion poll showed that while more than half of local voters support the concept of a passenger rail line, only 14 percent say they’ll actually use it)–unless they’ve got real incentive.

How’s this for a motivator? Pay people not to drive. We subsidize farmers and corporations, why not ourselves? Here’s how it works: In November, we approve the new sales tax, along with a slightly modified advisory measure to earmark the money for Sonoma County DUH (Driving Unnecessary Here). An electronic device that attaches to your car records every day that the car isn’t started. At the end of the month, everyone with a registered vehicle goes down to the DUH office and picks up their share of the fund.

Saves the environment, and with $780 million to distribute, the plan provides extra income for drivers keeping the county’s 346,763 motor vehicles off the roads. Suddenly buses and trains are wildly popular because we’re getting paid to use them.

DUH!

We’ll even give the interest accrued in the account to the county for Russian River cleanup, playing fields, bike lanes, and other green endeavors.

Downside: dramatically decreased sightings of “Mean People Suck” bumper stickers.

SUV Lanes

WHY BOTHER building new lanes when every other car on the road is a sports utility vehicle? These poorly reined-in vehicles have no place in the Bay Area to really strut their stuff, and it’s so sad to see SUV owners desperately clinging to their fading youth by buying $40,000 4-wheel -drive gas guzzlers to foray to the office and ferry the kids and groceries through the wilds of Sonoma County.

So, SUV drivers, why not give yourself a big adrenalin rush? Test those motor reflexes and see if your clearance really is high enough, all the while doing errands. Consider this transit solution: If you’re in an SUV on the highway, you must drive on the unpaved left-hand shoulder, negotiating gravel, large chunks of disabled tires, metal, and garbage, precarious shoulder drop-offs, and those really pesky places where the shoulder meets an overpass railing.

The tax will go toward erecting a barrier to keep the SUVs in their adventure-fraught lane and force SUV manufacturers to comply with clean-air and safety standards so everyone else can breathe easier.

Downside: Urban SUVing becomes wildly popular, and the powerful new SUV lobby is successful in pushing through a program to remove all highway pavement, creating off-road-only thoroughfares.

Transit tax could stall in courts.

Choo-Choo Goes the Bus

“PAVE THE RAILROAD tracks,” an idea first proposed for Northern California in the late 1980s and bandied around by some bold Golden Gate Transit District directors, was resurrected by Windsor physicist Carl Mears as his solution to ever-increasing gridlock:

“Use the tracks as an expressway for buses,” he says. “The problem with rail is that there’s no way to get from the station to where you want to go.”

The new tax provides funds to pave the track–already owned by the Golden Gate Transit District in partnership with North Coast counties–from Willits to Larkspur Landing. The new Northern California Busway would provide a traffic-free express ride unhampered by inefficient car-pool lanes.

When the bus gets to a town, it simply hangs a left or right and takes passengers to a central spot.

While the North Coast Rail Authority might squawk at losing contracts to run freight on the woefully underutilized line, eminent domain has its time and place.

As Mears says, “When was the last time you saw a train on those tracks anyway? It’s time to put that resource to better use.”

Downside: The Busway Beanie Baby–free with every full-fare “alltheway” ticket from Santa Rosa to the Bay–becomes such a sought-after commodity that schoolchildren cut class in record numbers.

Mass-Transit Mania

“FORGET SPENDING money on the freeway–there are never going to be enough lanes,” says Santa Rosa artist Steve Keller. “I’d make mass transit feasible.”

To really do the job right, Keller would reroute Highway 101 around Santa Rosa to unite Railroad Square and downtown, and eliminate half of the city’s bus stops to speed up travel time (“Make people walk the extra three blocks”).

Then Keller would go wild with bike lanes. By all rights, Sonoma County should be a bicycling haven: gentle rolling hills, wide streets, great weather. Yet cyclists often encounter drivers who seem unable to grasp the concept of sharing road space.

“Seven hundred and eighty million dollars’ worth of bike lanes,” Keller mused. “That would build a helluva system.”

Downside: Bike helmets become a hot consumer item, causing violent outbreaks over Nike’s $475 “Air Brain Bucket” model.

FASTrain

GRATON RESIDENT Ian Riedel would spend his $780 million on the Forget Automobiles Speed Train system down the center of the freeway corridor.

“It would be visible to all motorists stuck in traffic, with obvious signs informing them how much faster they would get to where they want to go on the train,” Riedel says. In addition, he would build toll booths all the way down Highway 101, with electronic meters to register at what time and how often the vehicle passes through.

“The highest users would have to pay much higher vehicle registration fees, which would go toward subsidizing the train.” Oh, and one more thing, adds Riedel, who commutes on his 1975 Honda 400/4 motorcycle: space on the train for cycles–both manual and motorized–as well as fare discounts.

“You roll your cycle up a ramp, lock the front wheel, go to the dining car, and roll your bike off when you get to your destination.”

Downside: Sonoma County drivers, suffering from addiction to their cars, file a class-action lawsuit against the county, citing egregious daily pain and distress from being trapped in gridlock while the train zooms by with a merry whistle.

Supported by the ACLU, drivers win $780 million in damages.

From the September 17-23, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Summer CAMP Busts

Michael Amsler

Goin’ to pot: Ed Learn and Will Larson had a run-in with local sheriff’s officials who claim the men had no authority to raise medicinal pot plants.

Medical-pot activists want local police raids to stop

By Dylan Bennett

IN THE AUGUST HALLS of the county administration building an old man with a leg amputated below the knee sits in a wheelchair. Nearby, a middle-aged woman missing her right hand and lower right leg talks energetically, while another woman with multiple sclerosis walks with hesitant steps.

They are all gathered for one reason: the right to grow and consume medical marijuana without police interference. That right became state law with Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. But law enforcement officials have been slow to comply.

Fortified with hundreds of petitioned signatures and 10 speakers last month, medical marijuana supporters asked the county supervisors to turn down $250,000 in state funding for the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting.

Mary Pat Beck, Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana spokesperson, argued that CAMP operations have victimized medical marijuana patients with busts by out-of-town CAMP officers whose gung-ho, guns-drawn tactics disregard local guidelines and violate civil liberties. “This appears to be an abuse of authority by an outside force,” says Beck.

The testimony of SAMM members, District Attorney Mike Mullins, and Sheriff Jim Piccinini sparked a discussion among the county supervisors that was sympathetic toward medical marijuana patients. But the CAMP funding was approved nonetheless as part of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department’s $60.5 million budget.

“I am disturbed about continued reports I get of CAMP activities that are not consistent with county efforts,” says 5th District Supervisor Mike Reilly.

First District Supervisor Mike Cale, an ex-cop, says he is “not sure” CAMP has been operating with sufficient respect for civil liberties and the U.S. Constitution.

The CAMP money comes from the state Department of Justice and funds the salaries of a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office and two sheriff’s detectives.

Beck told the Independent that recent raids on medical marijuana gardens, both by CAMP and by local law enforcement officers following Sonoma County guidelines, have fostered a climate of fear and anxiety among chronically ill patients who worry about the security of their medicine and designated “care-growers.” Some, she said, are afraid to leave their homes for fear their prescribed marijuana will be taken in their absence.

Now, at the height of the pot-busting season, relief may be coming for the medical marijuana community. An agreement is in the works between Mullins and the Sonoma County Medical Association to allow a panel of physicians to adopt a verification process for medical marijuana patients. The plan would provide patients with certification from a panel of approved doctors recognized by Mullins.

Sonoma County Public Health Director George Flores, chairperson of the medical association’s medical-marijuana subcommittee, hastens to point out that the verification process would be entirely confidential between doctors and patients. Patients could then decide for themselves whether to share their verified status with the District Attorney’s Office.

“It’s a work in progress,” says Mullins.

Currently, law enforcement guidelines for distinguishing between legal and illegal marijuana give considerable discretion to police officers, but provide them with no information about what kind of pot gardens are appropriate. Beck says that even the existing guidelines, the same rules SAMM claims CAMP ignores, invade the privacy of individuals and need to be changed.

THE NEW verification agreement won’t come soon enough for three chronically ill men in Santa Rosa. In mid-August, sheriff’s deputies confiscated all their indoor pot plants when they weren’t home. The raid left them without the medicine they say is taken with the knowledge of their doctors and that has significantly improved their health.

Edward Learn, 33, and William Larson, 29, are both HIV positive. Larson, who is also diagnosed with wasting disease, is employed as the caregiver of his friend and next-door neighbor Robert Bohnenkamp, 72, who suffers from chronic cardiovascular disease, as well as glaucoma and arthritis. “The only other way Robert could cope with obstacles that have faced him in the last year would be a morphine drip and sitting in his home,” says Larson.

Bohnenkamp underwent surgery four times last year, and his lower leg was recently amputated.

“We do use marijuana medicinally, and we can’t afford it. Plus, it’s illegal to buy it,” says Larson. “So, under the provisions of Prop. 215, we decided to cultivate a small medical marijuana garden exclusively for the three of us. It worked out great for the last two years. We supplied ourselves with marijuana without involving any outside parties at all.”

Larson says their garden of 50 pot plants, all in various stages of maturity, provided a weekly harvest of about a half ounce for the three men. “A couple of joints a day was really plenty,” he says.

After his frightened landlady discovered the garden and called law enforcement officials, Larson claims to have called a sheriff’s detective about the medical nature of the garden. Larson says he invited the detective to visit the garden to observe its authenticity. Instead, “he starts to challenge the validity of my illness, of my partner’s illness, and of Robert’s,” says Larson. “And he doesn’t know anything about us at all. And then he challenges our role as caregivers.”

Larson left notes posted in his kitchen, reportedly verifying the men’s prescriptions. Sheriff’s deputies showed up at the house while the men were out, determined the prescriptions were invalid, and confiscated the plants.

Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Brown, who participated in the raid, says the letters of recommendation from Larson’s doctor were a few years old, so he contacted the doctor, who said he didn’t authorize medical use of marijuana.

“What are we left to do?” asks Brown.

What appears as heavy-handed police work to Larson may have been a sheriff’s deputy simply following the rules. Official guidelines for investigating medical marijuana require police to ask eight rather personal questions, including the name of the doctor who has prescribed or recommended marijuana; the nature of the illness the patient suffers from; the duration of the condition; and the amount of marijuana used per day. Refusal to answer the questions is grounds for arrest.

Police are also instructed to obtain a signed medical-records release from the patient, although refusal to sign the release does not result in arrest.

“The partial remedy that is being proposed by this process involving the medical association would go a ways to avert or prevent the kinds of circumstances … [in] which people are being questioned by non-medical providers about their medical circumstances, and possible intrusion into privacy and confidentiality,” Flores says.

Meanwhile, Lt. Brown agrees that local guidelines need improvement. “Quite frankly, that’s been one of the frustrating areas for everyone, including us,” he says. “No one has told us how many plants are appropriate for whatever condition. Unfortunately, it’s left at this point to the officer on the scene, and, quite frankly, we would welcome more direction in that area.”

But critics point out that the guidelines make no mention of pot gardens or what defines a reasonable amount of medical marijuana. The guidelines, they say, allow for arbitrary enforcement of the law.

Also, while medical marijuana growers like Larson note differences between seedlings and mature, medicine-producing plants, to Lt. Brown, “a plant is a plant.”

ATTORNEY WILLIAM Panzer of Oakland, co-author of Prop. 215, notes that the federal government gives eight authorized patients in the United States each a half pound per month, or two ounces per week. The city of Oakland now bases its new guidelines on the federal standard.

Brown expresses his disagreement with that policy. “That’s a lot of marijuana,” he says. “If we come to your house, and you have three or four plants or whatever, and you have a doctor’s authorization to have that for your condition–we’re out of here, we’re leaving you alone. We hope you feel better.”

Meanwhile, Larson feels terrible. “They are attacking sick and dying people right here,” he says. “I don’t understand what the war is on sick and dying people and elderly people in our community. There are no guns here, there’s no cash. There wasn’t even any dry herb here.”

SAMM also wants the county to adopt guidelines similar to those recently adopted in Oakland. Under those rules if patients cannot show a valid doctor’s approval they get a “fix-it ticket” and have two working days to show it to law enforcement officials. SAMM wants no bust of gardens with less than 150 plants unless there are indications of illegal activity. And if a police officer is unsure about a garden, photographs, sample leaves, identification, and affidavits are taken.

“We feel we have a very good working relationship with the sheriff and district attorney,” says Beck, “but it seems like Will and Ed have been taken advantage of. We don’t understand. We’re confused.”

From the September 10-16, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.