Jerry Roberts
Illegal cannabis operation in Los Alamos (Photo: Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office)
By Jerry Roberts, Newsmakers
Supervisor Das Williams charged on Monday that the Santa Barbara Grand Jury displayed “a remarkable lack of knowledge” in its blistering report about the origin and operations of the county’s controversial cannabis ordinance.
In his first extensive public comments since the Grand Jury criticized the Board of Supervisors for “open(ing) the floodgates” to pot growers and providing “unfettered access” to lobbyists for the industry, Williams pushed back on the critique during a radio interview.
“The process has been enormously good” for Santa Barbara, he told Steve Chiotakis, host of the “Greater LA” program on KCRW-FM public radio, in a recorded interview.
The program, which also solicited comments from Newsmakers, is scheduled to air today (Monday July 13) at 88.7 on KCRW in Santa Barbara and 89.9 FM in Ventura and L.A. at 1:10 p.m. and 6:40 p.m., according to the station.
The grand jury report, which is here, hit the supervisors for crafting an out-of-scale and badly flawed ordinance based on the primary goal of implanting a “robust” cannabis industry in the county, without proper regard to its impact on neighbors, vintners and other agriculture businesses, that was driven by a transactional political process. Our story on the report is here.
The supervisors have 90 days to reply formally to each of the jury’s many criticisms. But Williams took to the airwaves early to push back, portraying the pot law as a major success story for the county, while insisting that industry lobbyists did not exercise undue influence because “everybody had unfettered access” to him during the ordinance-writing process.
“I found it annoying” how often representatives of the industry wanted to meet with him, he acknowledged however.
Rather than “opening the floodgates” to any grower who claimed he had previously been cultivating medical marijuana, Williams portrayed the ordinance in large part as an effort to go after and shut down illegal grows. He also asserted that the $10.7 million in pot revenue the county received this year — one third of which goes to enforcement — avoided “very dramatic cuts” in law enforcement and other services in the $1.2 billion budget.
He also heralded the ordinance for controlling the “nuisance” of skunky odor yielded by pot operations in Carpinteria, where many residents have long and loudly complained about the stench.
“We have a zero standard for odor,” he said.
Read more at newsmakerswithjr.com
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Remember Das grew up living in a van in IV and probably still sits in the same van to this day after accepting contributions from marijuana industry and Chumash and churns out some publicity rebuttal like this.
time to Indict
Crooked. Career. Politician.
simple. he doesn’t care, nor do most of us. things smell. everything has a scent. some enjoy certain scents and some do not. you are not going to be able to make everyone happy. that’s fact. another fact is. this is a big cash haul for the city and county as well as a product voted in majority by legal aged voters. so if you are against it, that’s your right, but it’s also law now and time to move on and stop trying to pee on everyone else’s party…its gotten really really old. majority of us have spoken and we won. the fight is over. go enjoy your alcohol, coffee or whatever it is that YOU like to do and leave the others to mind their own affairs…
ok dude…you’re looking at the % as a low number and on a scale of 1-10, 1 is low…
but 10.7m is very robust no matter what your argument is…math doesn’t lie.
thats just stupid as it gets. what’s your point about that verbal attack against someone you clearly do not even know?
BECAUSE IT’S NOT A PROBLEM UNTIL LITTLE WHINERS LIKE YOU MAKE IT A PROBLEM. EVERYTHING HAS ODER. EVERYTHING HAS A SCENT! I’M PRETTY CONFIDENT I’D RATHER SMELL WEED THAN YOU. TO ME, WEED SMELLS GOOD.
Oooh, name calling! That really advances the discussion, Z . . .
Caps lock button is on the left – just past the ‘a’ key there…..
Das Williams has the full backing of the public sector unions behind him. He cannot be touched.
Das must have COVID, no sense of smell, mental confusion.
How is Das like Trump? Self serving bald-faced liars the two of ‘em.