Let’s talk a little local stuff first. There was a story in the GV Union this week about the old public road/private road debate. The story was touched off by a specific location in the south county, but it applies everywhere. Private roads exist on easements which are owned by the individual property owners, and they can do almost anything they choose with those easements. If everyone along the easement agrees, they can build a full-fledged paved road, although the county probably would stop them short of a freeway. As a practical matter, most private roads are gravel and the people who own them like it that way. The owners are responsible for maintenance and for deciding what level of maintenance they prefer. Often, those decisions are a bone of contention, but it’s a private consideration.

Public roads are a public consideration because everyone is paying for them. That doesn’t mean that all county roads are paved roads. The county does maintain some gravel roads, but over the last couple of decades, the county has been reluctant to accept responsibility for any roads, regardless of their surface. The bone of contention which The Union reported this week was a kind of "in limbo" status where the county says it’s a county road, but takes no responsibility for maintaining it. Naturally, the property owners on such a road become reluctant to continue paying individually for maintenance.

When the county says it’s a county road, that means anyone can use it anytime. The property owners can’t control the access, but that’s not really the issue. Most private roads are accessible anyway. What it really means when the county takes responsibility for a private road is that the county sees it as access for planned future development. DUH!

Rewind to that little meeting a couple of weeks ago about a freeway type intersection on Highway 49 south of Grass Valley. It’s not about the intersection; it’s about the road which leads to it and the development which that road would serve. The developers could keep it private, but they wouldn’t get their new and improved interchange, and they wouldn’t get public money flowing into the maintenance of the roads serving their development.

I’m not proposing any brilliant solutions, here. The alternative to spending public money on private development is to have a region of gated communities, a cluster of Lake Wildwoods. If it’s true, as all developers say, that population growth is inevitable, then public money will be spent. I’d like to suggest, however, that if public money is going to be spent, it should be spent on the type of development the public wants, not necessarily the type the developers want. The discussions about putting private roads into limbo as quasi-public roads have taken place behind closed doors.

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I want to talk about the county’s current inclinations about growth and development. I used to think that the fears about the current Board of Supervisors opening the safe for developers were overstated, but we’re starting to see some signs that the construction industry may be picking up. That’ll have to wait for a future edition, however.

Robert Novak, the TV journalist who was involved in Karl Rove’s revelation that Valerie Plame was a CIA spy, must be feeling the stress of his situation. CNN took him off the air after he committed the unspeakable crime of saying "bull bleep" while the cameras were on him. A foolish mistake, for sure, but it’s amazing that almost fifty years after Lenny Bruce was being bounced from one jail to another for swearing in night clubs, people still believe that placing certain alphabetical characters in certain sequences is not only offensive, but illegal. I persist in the naive believe that freedom of speech means the freedom to speak offensively if I want to. If you don’t like what I’m saying, you don’t have to listen, but you don’t have the right to shut me up, let alone throw me in jail.

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Interesting things continue to be revealed about John Roberts as he gets shuffled along toward confirmation as a Supreme Court justice. The neo-cons still are with him, but they were a little surprised to learn that he once did some pro bono work, successfully, on behalf of a gay rights organization taking a case to the Supreme Court. Even some Republicans in the US Senate are talking about wanting Roberts to answer specific questions about his judicial views before he’s confirmed. Although I’m quite sure the Bushwhacker never would make a judicial appointment of which I would approve, I don’t think it’s fair to expect someone who’s appointed to be a judge to tell how he or she might rule on some case in the future. The essence of being a judge is to hear the case at hand, apply the law, then decide. If I were nominated to serve on the Supreme Court, I might have a pretty good idea how I would rule on some issues, but I sure wouldn’t admit it to a Senator. With all due respect, Senator, I think I’ll wait until I hear the evidence in the case.

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