Val Verde has appealed to its own potential King George, and his majesty has replied with … silence.

Justice, always pictured blindfolded while holding balanced scales, is never shown using fingers to plug her ears in order to block out the pleas from the governed. During our nation’s founding, when our grievances and petitions for justice were ignored, General Washington appointed our first battleships to bear the “An Appeal to Heaven” flag. It’s now time to appeal to Supervisor Antonovich’s Heaven.

I have thus far failed to discover a list of possible donors to our supervisor’s campaign coffers. Perhaps such a list doesn’t exist, but someone is obviously contributing, and I’m wondering if the Chiquita Canyon Landfill is one of them. Shouldn’t his office want this information to be easily locatable for the sake of transparency? That’s one problem right there.

And here’s another. You’d think other media outlets would investigate, but they seem to have forsaken their fourth estate, watchdog status, by failing to inform their community about landfill issues. Strangely, articles regarding this issue seem only allowed on SCVNews.com.

Antonovich is on record as saying business contributions have no effect on his vote. What would then be the motivation for businesses to contribute to his campaigns, as businesses demand a return on investments? Lobbyists don’t come cheap, but business sees them as “the price for staying in business.” Just ask the landfill, whose monetary contributions are felt far and wide, and reported equally far and wide. Antonovich knows his Bible, but his contributors evidently understand the Biblical principle of having to spend money to make money (sowing and reaping) better than he does, because according to our supervisor, his contributors want to buy into his “philosophy” while knowing he won’t buy into theirs.

I’m not making this up. I wish I could discover the dollar amount needed to join his contributors’ philosophical admiration society, and who they are. So, here we have another three problems: He might actually have grown to believe this nonsense, or if not, he expects we will, or that we won’t care.

While reasonable people may disagree on interpretation, one would think the Old Testament stating that the borrower is servant to the lender would be self-explanatory. Guess not. Additionally, the New Testament warns us to avoid even the “appearance” of wrong doing. I know he believes in both testaments, so the following is where I conjecture things went wrong.

President Washington set an example by wanting to serve just one term, only agreeing to a second because of national necessity, rather than for the weaknesses of ego or need for control. Because of this, his former enemy King George pronounced him the world’s greatest man of his age. Washington’s precedent of forsaking power for the sake of principles beneficial to the country was hard to ignore.

But over time we do ignore, or pretend to, that power corrupts, and that even the greatest among us can potentially become contaminated in our thinking if we live in a morally unhealthy environment, like politics. Just as we can potentially become compromised physically if we live in a huge landfill. In both situations, it depends on what “deposits” are received, and from whom, and for what purposes.

Even good politicians can tell themselves they need campaign contributions, because without those, they couldn’t get re-elected, and as good politicians, their good constituents need them in office. This is a rationalization for behaviors which are destructive to our republic. We don’t need any specific individual in office. Rather, we need people who do what is best for the American system, and we need people whose choices make our system cleaner and purer, which means placing the public’s interest ahead of the desire to be a lifelong politician – a king. America shouldn’t be about dynasties, as that is what America fought its way out from. No more kings, remember? Public service should be seen as a civic responsibility like jury duty, not a way of life on the country’s expense account. Just ask Washington, or Cincinnatus.

The good desire to serve can be corrupted into a temptation to do it for the wrong reasons, or for too long. This is where values come in, and they require a specific ordering for a reason. It is just a matter of time before an error in their position is noticed in the order that is used in everything from a child’s building blocks to a high-rise construction project; from personal priorities to political integrity.

I worry about our American system of government when the media and our supervisor choose to ignore these things. It makes me wonder if there’s any difference, result-wise, between an attempt to keep something covered up, something buried in this stinking landfill issue, and plain indifference on the part of our media and supervisor.

Val Verde was betrayed by other council districts over the landfill money that the rest of the council wanted at Val Verde’s expense. Why should Val Verde bother to participate in such a detrimental travesty when even our supervisor’s office claims our council has no part of, and no connection with, county government? How, then, can our council pretend it has authority to enter into a legal agreement with the landfill?

Maybe our so-called advisory council is but a ploy the county uses to get its own way, using our council as a cut-out, and used by the supervisor to voice his own feelings rather than advise him of our community’s needs.

Those casting aspersions on Val Verde residents and our concerns pretend not to know that maximum heights and capacity limits were agreed to by the dump for a reason. They ignore the fact that residents were promised a shutdown at those limits to allay the negative consequences now affecting our community.

Val Verde is currently confronted with the equivalent of a second landfill, which no one here could foresee, due to trusting the landfill, its own council and supervisor. Antonovich knows just as well as the landfill and the media do that the landfill was supposed to shut down, but again, he says nothing. Neither does he speak out against those maligning his own slighted, insulted, but non-donating constituents of Val Verde.

The odors from the landfill could be considered both real and symbolic. When residents are insulted and our supervisor refuses to supervise, makes no reply, something is rotten. Residents vote unanimously for the landfill’s closure, send the supervisor community petitions, write numerous articles and hold rallies. When their pleas to Antonovich are ignored, something indeed smells. I know he says he doesn’t look after only the interests of his contributors, but then whose does he look after? It certainly isn’t ours. Antonovich was a staunch supporter of Ronald Reagan, but I can hear President Reagan saying: “Mr. Antonovich, tear down this dump. And take your fingers out of your ears while you’re at it.”

I will acknowledge that Antonovich, a fellow conservative and believer, has done much good in his multiple decades in office, but he should abdicate his throne just as he has his responsibility to protect our community. But then, this is the same man who campaigned for an unprecedented extension to his own legal term limits. A magnanimous explanation would be misordered values – placing the temporal, personal significance one gets from being a supervisor in a more foundational position than the desire to follow what he acknowledges are eternal truths. Again, the position of values requires a specific ordering for a reason.

It’s too late for Antonovich to be a George Washington. We will have to wait to see if he will end his career with a legacy of an ignoring King George. Believers are admonished to pray for their leaders, and I do so not only for all of our sakes, but for Antonovich’s, too. This is my final appeal to my brother’s honor, conscience, duty – and a final appeal to the same Heaven, whose ruler hates unbalanced scales.

Richard Hood is a Val Verde resident who served one term on the Castaic Area Town Council.