Arrogance, thy name is Pedro Nava

Once again I find myself carefully inspecting the snail mail I receive, and okay! Here's one letter addressed to me.. and YES! It does stipulate U.S.A.!! Wow, am I relieved! After reading a couple of editorials over at the Santa Ynez Valley Journal I was starting to think I was in another country... Venezuela perhaps? Mr. Nava does not seem to have time for constituents that don't throw money at him. He has informed Valley residents that he does not have time to attend a town meeting to answer community questions - but I see he does have time to give his friends and paying constituents - The Chumash Casino - a nice green environmental award. Maybe folks, what he is trying to say is 'hit the tip jar', and once there are several thousands in there - it will be good enough for him to show. And here I was thinking regardless of who got you elected into office, once there - you represent all the people in your district. Silly me.


Editorial From The Santa Ynez Valley Journal:
By Edmond Jacoby, Journal Editor

Last month, a group of concerned constituents in Nava’s 35th Assembly District sought his attention, asking that he confer with them and their neighbors — also Nava’s constituents — about the strange ways in which strings were pulled by unseen hands to memorialize something by renaming a feature of the constituents’ back yard at the behest of someone who lived half way across the state. Not only were the constituents not asked what they thought of the idea, they weren’t even told that it was being considered.

Nava feigned ignorance of the string pulling, but as a member of one of the assembly committees that debated the measure, and as chairman of another, his claim that he had no idea what was happening is hardly credible. As his constituents’ representative, he had a duty to know what was being planned for the district, and a duty to inform the people who live there. He confesses that he did not perform the first duty, and he dismisses the second as unimportant.

Being an assemblyman is a little bit like being a lawyer, in that an assemblyman represents his constituents somewhat like a lawyer represents clients. Nava surely understands this, because he used to be a lawyer.

Most people, Nava included, would fire any lawyer who failed in his duty to represent a client and who then refused to meet with the client to talk about that failure.

But Nava, upon receiving a written invitation to address his constituents at a town hall meeting, dismissed his constituents’ invitation out of hand, saying in a letter dated Nov. 1, “I am unable to commit to any town hall meeting due to scheduling commitments.” In other words, he doesn’t have time to talk to the people he works for about the job he’s doing — or not doing — for them. He justified having such an inflexible schedule by saying he heard the governor calling him.

That is arrogance, promoted to such heights that it makes Nava incompetent to represent his district. Political power and deal making have so gone to his head that he is no longer suited to hold office — any office. And he told you so himself when he signed that letter to the River Committee.



In case anyone needs a reminder, Mr. Nava has accepted at least in $6,400 in donations from the Chumash.
He is also the politician who had two local men investigated by law enforcement, who simply had the temerity to suggest to him that people in the valley were unhappy with the re-naming of Highway 154.