Imagine, I muttered to a diner over my shoulder, if Beckman had said, “In my personal opinion, this plan is bullshit.” The poor guy coughed up his orange juice. Beckman, we both knew, would have been out of a job before he hit the parking lot.
The one-sided presentation of a complex controversy was pretty much a rehash, with updated graphics, of the executive’s surprise announcement days previously at the county office building. Call this one Ambush II.
I happened to be sitting at a table with legislature Minority Leader Jeanette Provenzano, the legislature’s leading opponent to Golden Hill privatization. Fit to be tied, Provenzano went into orbit when Beckman, speaking for Hein again, criticized the legislature for failing to act on Hein’s request to make a decision on Golden Hill.
“Doesn’t the legislature get a chance to defend itself?” she kept sputtering. The answer was no, not that day.
I asked chamber President Todd about that after Beckman ended his 20-minute presentation. (He had promised to take only nine and a half minutes.) The chamber would provide a forum “later” for both sides to be heard, he told me.
“But this [the breakfast] is the palace. You’re not going to get 200 people and all the media at that kind of event.” I said. He shrugged off the obvious. “And when might that [‘forum’] be?” I pressed. “We haven’t set a date,” he said.
Todd, a former legislature chairman, can still dance.
