News of the Week
December 10-17, 2015
by KELSEy BRuggER @kelseybrugger, KEIth hAmm, LÉNA gARCIA @lenamgarcia, tyLER hAyDEN @TylerHayden1, and NICK WELSh, with Independent StAff
Imam Yama Niazi of the Islamic Society of Santa Barbara
transportation
Abdication of Responsibility
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LAW & DISORDER
A Santa Barbara man who in June destroyed his next-door neighbor’s home and tried to ax him to death was sentenced 12/15 to 13 years in state prison and ordered to pay an undetermined amount of restitution. Police estimated the property damage at over $100,000. Rudy Collaso (pictured) was previously sentenced to 12 years in state prison for a 1996 voluntary manslaughter out of San Diego County. He was deemed incompetent to stand trial in his Santa Barbara case and sent to Patton State Hospital, but was “restored to competency” and pleaded guilty to the charges. pau l wel lm an
Carrying a banner that read “Standing on the side of love,” Santa Barbara leaders from the Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, and Christian faiths led “Not in Our Name,” an interfaith peace walk and candlelight vigil for the victims of the San Bernardino shooting. The Monday-night walk from the county courthouse to De la Guerra Plaza united nearly 200 interfaith community members who, like SBCC Admissions Advisor and Muslim Akil Hill, were there “to stand in peace.” Among the group of rabbis, reverends, and a Vedanta nun, Christian Pastor David Moore of the New Covenant Worship Center expressed African-American solidarity with Muslim Americans. “We know what it feels like to feel the hate,” Moore said. “This country — Léna Garcia belongs to you as much as to anyone else.”
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‘Not in Our Name’
news briefs
Judge Blasts Analysis for Freeway-Widening Project
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THE INDEPENDENT
trans to find these impacts environmentally “significant” — a legally crucial distinction — only that the agency justify any finding it made with evidence and analysis. How long this will take and how much it delays the freeway-widening effort remains very much an open question. The widening project has been the focus of intense political and economic heat throughout the South Coast for close to 20 years. In some ways, the feud between former allies
tional congestion the freeway widening would cause by allowing so many more commuters on the road from Ventura and other points south to the South Coast.“My initial review of Judge Anderle’s tentative ruling reflects what I believe our residents want: a good project that will reduce traffic congestion during commute times from the county line to their workplace,” said Schneider. When Caltrans certified the environmental impact report (EIR) in August 2013, the City Council balked at filing a legal challenge. Instead, a paper environmental group with only a handful of members — the Transportation Futures Committee — lodged a complaint. Attorney Marc Chytilo, a specialist in environmental law with an enviable track record of success in Judge Anderle’s courtroom, has led the legal charge since. Under state law, the environmental impacts of any project must be mitigated or avoided if they are deemed to be “significant.” If they can’t be feasibly mitigated, decision makers are allowed to make “findings of overriding considAttorneys Marc Chytilo and Ana Citrin eration,” but only after acknowledging the negative impacts and decreeing Santa Barbara Mayor Helene Schneider and that they are outweighed by the benefits. ChytCounty Supervisor Salud Carbajal — who ilo argued that the additional traffic generated share not just the same birthday, November from the south by the freeway widening would 18, but the same ambition to replace Lois back up around Salinas Street and create a jam Capps in Congress — is rooted in unresolved all the way to Goleta. differences over the negative consequences This, in turn, would prompt commuters to of the freeway widening and efforts to miti- take to city streets in greater numbers, seeking gate those impacts. Schneider and City Hall relief from freeway congestion. This doomshave long objected that Caltrans’s environ- day scenario has been embraced by transpormental analysis failed to consider the addi- tation planners at City cont’d page 13
december 17, 2015
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by N i c k W e l s h ntense, wiry, and conspicuously devoid of any facial hair, Judge Thomas Anderle can in no way be mistaken for Santa Claus, but for critics of Caltrans’s proposal to widen Highway 101 from Santa Barbara to Carpinteria, Anderle’s ruling this week qualified as an early Christmas present. In a strongly worded, 76-page decision, Anderle found the environmental analysis conducted by Caltrans to be “legally flawed” and “defective,” ruling that the report “utterly failed” to address the increased congestion the freeway-widening project will generate for nine Santa Barbara intersections — 15 when looking at the cumulative impacts. Anderle concluded “there is no evidence” Caltrans ever considered the actual impacts to the intersections in question but, even so, that the state highway-building agency consistently concluded “the overall benefits” of the project far outweighed any potential problems. “It was an abdication of Caltrans’ responsibility,” Anderle concluded, “to consider and resolve every fair argument that can be made about the possible significant environmental effects of the project.” Absent an appeal by Caltrans or its local partner in the $425 million freeway-widening effort, the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG), Anderle’s ruling means a portion of the environmental document must be reexamined and recalculated. Anderle emphasized he was not ordering Cal-
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Maurice Joyles (pictured), convicted of robbing, abusing, and trying to kill his 80-yearold friend on New Year’s Eve, was sentenced on 12/15 to six years and eight months in state prison. Judge Brian Hill heard a victim impact statement from Christine Woods, Joyles’s former girlfriend and the grandniece of his elderly victim, Frank Herold. She called Joyles a “sociopath.” Joyles’s attorney read his client’s statement of apology, but Judge Hill said he didn’t see any remorse from Joyles. Hill also ordered Joyles to pay $100,000 in restitution to Herold, who, leaving the courtroom, said, “I’m glad it’s over.” Julio “Candyman” Diaz — the Santa Barbara doctor found guilty of over-prescribing addictive painkillers that fueled his patients’ addictions and deaths — was sentenced 12/7 to more than 27 years in federal prison. Diaz, 67, was found guilty of 79 drugtrafficking charges. The counts were related to Diaz’s Milpas Street clinic, where many of his patients paid cash in exchange for copious amounts of painkillers like OxyContin, Xanax, and Norco.