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For GWD’s New General Counsel, Water’s In Her Blood
With water becoming an increasingly complex issue in the Goleta Valley, it takes a certain kind of person to want to jump into the fray.
Fran Farina is eager to prove she is just that kind of person as she takes up her post as general counsel for the Goleta Water District.
“Ever since I moved to California in 1987, I’ve been interested in water,” Farina said.
It was just the beginning of a great statewide drought, and she noticed trees on her property were dying because the local utility was pumping the water table down too low. It wasn’t long before she dived into local water issues, getting herself elected to the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District board of directors in 1991.
“I took the California Bar promising I would only do water law,” said the attorney, who had practiced in Florida before her move to the West Coast.
Farina said there are similarities between the Goleta Valley and Monterey Peninsula districts: Both are relatively isolated in terms of water sources that are subject to drought and oversubscription because of development.
“Both have water supplies that are adjudicated,” she said, “and both have river supplies that contain species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.”
The big difference is that the Goleta district eventually hooked up to State Water while the Monterey Peninsula district did not.
“The irony is that we actually do get enough water ... we just don’t have it when we need it,” Farina said.
It isn’t uncommon, she said, for reservoirs to be flooded by winter rains and then have a water shortage six months later because of dry weather and increased demand during the summer.
Even State Water isn’t the reliable source it was once thought to be. The Sierra snowpack, which is its source, is being affected by climate change — resulting in an early and rapid melt. Downstream, fisheries and habitats wrangle over water supply. Northern California, Farina said, isn’t happy about having to send its water south. But without water, Southern California’s economy would collapse, affecting the entire state.
Locally, officials are still waiting to see what the State Water Resources Control Board might say about the supply at Lake Cachuma, which supplies about 80 percent of the South Coast’s water. Steelhead trout in the Santa Ynez River, which flows to Cachuma, are listed as a threatened species that may require limits to how much water ultimately can be diverted.
“Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over,” said Farina, quoting the old saw often attributed to Mark Twain.
But it isn’t as though she doesn’t know what she’s getting into. Since her arrival in Goleta in 2002, Farina has been interested in the workings of the Goleta Water District, even trying out for the job of legal counsel two years ago when district counsel Russel Ruiz resigned. She and her firm, De Lay & Laredo, interviewed for the position, but the post went to Chip Wullbrandt of Price, Postel & Parma.
Even before her first official legal opinion of 2009, her move to her new position has been the subject of controversy for Goleta Water District watchers. The new board majority of Bert Bertrando, Lauren Hanson and Bill Rosen have been called hypocrites for allegedly appointing Farina to replace Wullbrandt as counsel without providing the requisite public notice required by the Brown Act.
“Without any discussion with fellow board members, without proper notice in the agenda and without even the process of interviews and a proper selection procedure, with one blink of an eye, Bert Bertrando, Lauren Hanson and Bill Rosen threw out the district’s council, Chip Wullbrandt, who has an amazing background in water law with years of experience, and voted in Fran Farina,” former district board member Lynette Mills wrote in a recent letter to Noozhawk in reference to the district’s Dec. 16 board meeting.
According to Farina, who attended that meeting, the directors didn’t take any action to replace Wullbrandt at that time; they only set up the agenda for the special meeting three days later to discuss a new appointee for general counsel.
“I knew her in the context of going to Goleta Water District meetings,” Hanson said of Farina. “And I’ve seen her as a person making informed public comment for several years.”
When it came time to consider a replacement, she said, Farina’s resume was already on file from her application two years ago.
“I think both (Wullbrandt and Farina) are very capable and certainly well-qualified,” Hanson said, “and I think it comes down to who a board feels more comfortable working with.”
For Bertrando, who has been on the board for two years, the comfort level had to do with conflicts of interest.
“Here we had a Long-Range Development Plan from UCSB that we couldn’t comment on because we didn’t have an attorney for it,” he said. According to Bertrando, Wullbrandt couldn’t work on the UCSB issue because of a potential conflict of interest within Price, Postel & Parma.
UCSB is the Goleta Water District’s single largest customer and plans a 20-year development plan that will increase its water usage beyond even what the district can supply.
For a time, the board hired another attorney to handle relations with UCSB, but ultimately, Bertrando said, it would be more efficient to hire a single attorney with no potential for conflict of interest with other local entities. Farina’s law firm, which practices water law in Monterey, fit the bill, he said.
Farina has less than two weeks before the first district board meeting of 2009. Although she has been aware of issues for the past six years, she still finds a lot ahead of her as she pushes to catch up with the district’s ongoing legal matters.
That’s to be expected for someone working on an issue that’s becoming increasingly complex and important for the Goleta Valley and throughout California.
“It’s just a fascinating area that I find very challenging,” Farina said. “Every time you think you have an answer to a problem, you realize that there are two or three other little problems that need to be resolved.”
Write to sfernandez@noozhawk.com
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» on 01.06.09 @ 06:23 AM
If Noozhawk aspires to incisive, informed journalism, this is certainly not it. This is a fluff piece on a nice lady who was appointed to one of the most important and historically controversial local legal/political positions in our community, under a very questionable process. No interview of Board Member Mills who likely did not agree with the action. No interview with Board Member Cunnignham who has seved the Goleta community for many years. No interview of Mr. Wullbrandt. No information on who else was considered and how, in such a short period of time consensus was reached that Ms. Farina was the best available candidate for the position. This was a real disappointment from Noozhawk. We wish Ms. Farina and the new Board well but unfortunately it does not appear we can expect anything other than fluff from Noozhawk.
» on 01.06.09 @ 08:11 AM
... The problem of patronage appointments isn’t so much the qualifications of the individual, it’s that the public interest is poorly served by changes in staff and management for political reasons after every election.
As customers I guess we know what’s in store for us when their handpicked lawyer’s first quote is all about fighting. And who is in the other corner for the second round ....?
» on 01.06.09 @ 08:22 AM
Elections Have Consequences.
Different and new Directors hire different attorneys.
That is one reason why those new Directors received the most votes.
If SBREADER does not like the news article because it needs to be twice as long to include all those extra, selective interviews, maybe he should donate some more money to the Noozhawk Hawks Fund so the reporter can get paid more to work more on additional news articles. Or, he should expose himself and write up a long letter to the editor, as Noozhawk seems to publish all of them because electrons are cheap at a website.
Attacking the the news reporter messenger does not change the basic issue on who was hired as the Water District counsel and why.
Elections still have consequences. That is why they happen in a democracy.
» on 01.06.09 @ 01:22 PM
In response to Mr. Pritchett:
The reason I did not like the article was not because it was not twice as long but rather because it did not address the most interesting part of the story, and only told one side of the story it did address. Telling only one side of a story is always a problem in journalism, as Mr. Pritchett regularly points out in his critics of the SB News-Press. For us local political wonks another intriguing part of this story, as suggested by former Board Member Mills in her letter to the Editor, was an almost cetrtain violation of the Brown Act in the appointment process action, and the fact that the appointment was done without any recruitment process. Highly unusual in SB County. Mr. Pritchett is hardly situated to comment on anyone else’s Brown Act compliance after what his disregard for the law cost the City of SB last year in money and staff resources in their losing litigation on the issue. I also did not intend to “attack the news reporter” but rather, express my disappointment that Noozhawk has not yet been able to achieve professional journalism on what could have been an interesting story. I am still optomistic for the future or I wouldn’t bother commenting and checking in. Finally the “Elections Have Consequences” mantra vesus Wingnut’s comment on patronage appointments (I used the term cronyism in a prior post)will be interesting to watch here. It is always dangerous when elected officials pick lawyers based on an expectation that they will tell them what they want to hear. The most difficult role for a public agency attorney is to tell elected officials they are wrong or otherwise cannot do what they want to do because of that nuisance, the law. Knowing Mr. Bertrando, Ms. Farina will be tested in this regard early and often. We will be watching with interest on how she does. We wish them all the best.
» on 01.06.09 @ 03:00 PM
I think the Noozhawk deserves kudos for at least giving the community this story. No one else bothered to report on it - that is unless it got buried with the holiday shuffle. SBREADER is right, however, that there is a very serious and concerning story that was only touched upon here. I hope water customers make known their concerns to the new board that we deserve a much better, more open and competitive process when it comes to selecting key staff members. I wonder how they expect to fill the next General Manager spot?
» on 01.07.09 @ 07:43 AM
Does sbreader know anything about Pritchett except what Travis Armstrong spews? Hardly a credible source.
This reads from “reader” that some kind of criminal conviction occurred, which has not.
This also is strange that sbreader is rebutting arguments that never were made in the other comments here.
Sbreader seems to like the old guard at the water district and is whining about how the new attorney was selected, which was with the minimal but still legal agenda notification.
» on 01.08.09 @ 04:16 PM
“only told one side of the story it did address”
This is transparently false, as the article quoted from and linked to Ms. Mills’ letter.
The fact is that “the story it did address” is that Ms. Farina is the new GWD general counsel, not the controversy over her selection. That controversy was given an appropriate amount of coverage in the article, and there was nothing unprofessional about it.
“Mr. Pritchett is hardly situated to comment on anyone else’s Brown Act compliance”
Such a rank ad hominem attack does nothing for your own credibility.
» on 04.14.09 @ 05:46 PM
WHY should there be an interview w. Wullbrandt? To hear him say, once again, that he sees no conflict of interest in his representation of the Goleta Water District at the same time he represented the Carp District? at the same time his firm is representing UCSB, the largest customer of the Goleta Water District?
It would have been a stronger article if it had had comments from either Mills or Cunningham…especially since Cunningham was on the board that “saw no conflict of interest” in Wullbrandt’s above work…or that Wullbrandt filed suit against the city of Goleta on behalf of a land owner who wanted the General Plan changed so he could build on his property - on the same day he (Wullbrandt) was interviewed for the interim position for the Goleta Water District.
Cunningham was also on the ad hoc committee charged by the board (on a 5-0 vote) with hiring an attorney with a specialty in ethics to review the conflict of interest accusations…but surprise - the committee came back to the board and said that they couldn’t find an ethics expert with enough “experience in water.” The point was to have someone who knew about ethics and conflicts of interest, not water law.
The same committee reported (through Cunningham’s lips, I believe) that they did not plan to search any further for an ethics expert (regardless of their charge) because they saw no conflict of interest with Wullbrandt, particularly since Wullbrandt sat in on their meetings and had told them there was no conflict.
And saying, “Unfortunately it does not appear we can expect anything other than fluff from Noozhawk.” is laughable. SB Reader must base all remarks like this on one example.
Noozhawk breaks plenty of good, hard news.
» on 04.14.09 @ 05:56 PM
SBReader needs to know a lot more about the history of the Goleta Water District, its former general manager and the board of the past 7 years or so (prior to November’s election) before spouting off about “quesitonable processes,” and best available candidates.
That board did countless sly, opaque if not hidden, things and at least one member, along with former gm kevin walsh, prevaricated many times by claiming to know nothing about progress of specific issues, when later it would come out that they had to have known. Check the minutes…on second thought, don’t bother. The minutes from that era reveal almost nothing in contrast to minutes prior to the years Walsh was there.
The Goleta Valley Voice ran numerous stories by Martha Lannan all of 2008 that were very revealing about the unproductive and sometimes bizarre actions of the board from the end of 2007 through 2008, including Lynette Mills (yes, Larry’s wife) turning her back on a member of the public during comment. Noozhawk, the Inde and the Sound had some clear stories too.
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