Special Commentary: Asking Tough Questions is Critical, Attacking with Impunity Is Not

When I started the Vanguard in the summer of 2006, it was a personal low point in my life.  What my wife and I had gone through for the previous six months changed my life permanently.  It was at that low point that the Vanguard was born.

While there were specific public policy reasons behind the creation of the Vanguard, there were also two very basic goals.  First was the belief that the community needed a news source that would not simply stop at the press release – two sources for the story and one opposing viewpoint to balance it out.

The second was the need to have a public space where people – unencumbered by fear – could post their viewpoints.  The resultant debate, in my view, was hampered because people were afraid to come forward out of fear of criticism or ostracism or perhaps worse.  And so, anonymity was a critical defining feature of the early Vanguard.

I learned a lot of things – particularly since I had journalistic training.  The early Vanguard was a no-holds-barred effort that readily mixed opinion with news into a hybrid.  Everyone was fair game and we took no prisoners.

What I learned was that people are not persuaded, usually, by opinion.  Opinion is important as it adds context and can state things that a straight news story cannot.  But, at the same time, most people like to get the facts and draw their own conclusions.  For the last several years, that is where we have been moving.

Over the years, the Vanguard has grown in both importance and in audience size.  It has become a place where the leaders of the community get their news and information, and also a place where they learn about where the public stands on a given issue.

But there is another lesson that I learned about this.  If you post on a sports forum, it is unlikely the person you criticize – a player or a coach – is going to read your comment.  And even if they do, the impact is probably minimal.

Davis is different.  Davis is a small community still.  The people that get criticized here will read your comment and, if they do not do so directly, someone who knows them will forward the comments.

Public officials need to be scrutinized – there can be no doubt.  But I think the line has to be drawn more clearly between legitimate criticism based on evidence and facts, speculative criticism based on some evidence and a lot guesswork, and plain old conspiracy theories.

In an open society, true conspiracy is difficult to come by.  There are too many points of information and too many cooks in the kitchen to truly withhold information.

As we examine the current situation, it is easy to see mistakes.  There is little doubt that the optics of the $2 million deal, who was involved, and the fact that it never made it to the public realm make the situation ripe for speculation, criticism, and perhaps for some conspiracy theory.

But, as I laid out on Thursday, there is little evidence of conspiracy.  I spent six weeks working on this piece.  For most of the first five weeks, I attempted to get those involved to go on the record or release a statement.

Part of the reason those involved were not likely to come forward, I think, had to do with the uncertainty as to how the public would respond and, in particular, the segment of the public who post on the Vanguard.

There have been a few comments that were over-the-top.  I would argue that most comments were responsible and within the bounds of decency.

I have a few thoughts on culpability here that I want to share.

First, David Morris has taken a lot of heat here.  But, as someone pointed out here, we need to step back and understand that David Morris was at most times a man out of his element here.  This is a professor and a researcher.  He is not a developer, a PR guy, or a politician.

He has two things going for him.  He has a passion for the need in Davis to have a space where local startups can get venture capital funding, and he developed an innovative approach to solving that problem.

If I were to criticize it would be that he needed to bring people on board with him sooner, who had the expertise and experience to help him to implement his ideas.  But do we really want to discourage him or people like him from coming forward?  We need new ideas and approaches, even if in the end we decide against him.

Second, I am much more critical of George Phillips’ role in this.  Unlike David Morris, he should know better.  He is, in effect, a PR guy.  He should have realized that the optics of this would be off if this came out and people wanted to know exactly why they gave $2 million to David Morris and what exactly was in it for ConAgra.

At the end of the day, we have their explanation and we have guesswork.

That said, I think, in the defense of Mr. Phillips, Davis is a challenging environment for an outsider.  Even people as skilled as Rob White and Steve Pinkerton have had moments of challenge.  What works in other environments can backfire here.

Third, another group I at least have to question are all of the people that Mr. Morris has told about his idea and ostensibly the $2 million and have said nothing.  I understand the counterpoint from many in terms of trying to figure out when and what the duty of public officials is to divulge critical information.

I don’t actually have a great answer.  The problem, I think, comes back to Robb Davis’ article about information asymmetries.  For strategic information, not all stakeholders were given access to the information and so not even the public officials were necessarily all on the same page.

I am shocked really that, in this community, this information could be withheld for so long.

That leads me to my fourth point here.  Why is this information coming out now?  Several people asked me why it was important to know where the information comes from.  I actually believe it is a critical question.

First, I invite everyone who hasn’t to read the Davis Enterprise‘s article on this matter that came out on Wednesday.  There are really three sources for that story: David Morris and George Phillips, with Mayor Joe Krovoza as the contrary view.

If you read it carefully you notice that there is something missing from that piece and this is not meant as a criticism to the author, but rather an illustration here – there is no protagonist.  You have two people who are responding to what one can only assume is some sort of unidentified source of information, but what we have is essentially their getting to justify their actions without an accusation that their actions were somehow wrong.

That does not make for a compelling news story and it also does not give the reader an understanding as to why this information is important right now.

In this society we have taken pains to protect whistleblowers from the consequences of whistleblowing.  Unfortunately, our safeguards are often insufficient and, in the workplace, the whistleblower suffers from retaliation.

At the same time, a perfectly functioning whistleblower protection system might insulate people from scrutiny whose motivations may not have been nearly as pure as they claim.

I think it is a perfectly legitimate question to attempt to understand the motivations for why this issue was brought to light now, when the whistleblower knew about it for perhaps two years.

In addition to those four critical actors are a number of people who really were not involved.  Sadly, some have been dragged into this issue and, on a few occasions in the last few days, there has been some rather pointed criticism.

I think inquiry, questions and speculation have their place, but if we are to cast stones, it needs to be based on firm evidence, not hunches and guesswork.  Let us hold our fire until we have the facts, and then we can rightly point the finger.

We are not there yet and everyone needs to take a collective deep breath and see what else comes out.

In short, we still have a lot of questions about what went down.  There was a time when I believed that this might bring down the Cannery Project itself.  Right now, there are three members of council who have yet to support this project as currently proposed.

However, the biggest outcome of this is probably a reason why ConAgra kept this in the dark – they now will have no choice but to come forth with the second grade-separated crossing and more.

—David M. Greenwald reporting