2 weeks Ago By Nick McConnell
Solano County Supervisor Mitch Mashburn’s most often repeated rallying cry seems simple on the surface. “I would prefer that things remain locally controlled; that we have a say in our own destiny,” the Board of Supervisors’ Chair told The Reporter after Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting on the Solano Shipyard proposed by California Forever. Mashburn has repeatedly made this simple plea about local control on a variety of key issues, including Battery Energy Storage Systems, agriculture, water rights and land use.
But just under the surface, Mashburn finds himself forced to navigate a complex tapestry of interests on the municipal, county, state and federal levels. “We have seen examples in our state where the municipality has lost land use authority and the state has stepped in and taken that away from them, and then issued orders and did what the state pleased and what the state chose to do,” Mashburn said. Mashburn used the example of Huntington Beach, a city which the state government sued in 2023 for arguing that state laws forcing them to build housing were unconstitutional.
The state won it’s case over Huntington Beach last October, when the Federal Court of Appeals found that the city broke state housing element law. “Huntington Beach officials’ continued efforts to advance plainly unlawful NIMBY policies are failing their own citizens — by wasting time and taxpayer dollars that could be used to create much-needed housing,” Governor Gavin Newsom said at the time. “No more excuses — every city must follow state law and do its part to build more housing.
” Mashburn said he has little recourse to fight for local rights at the state and federal level, as removed from the process as any other citizen who might send a letter to an assembly member or congressman. “If somebody was going to pass legislation at the state level that directly affected Solano County, and I have an objection to it, other than maybe getting to put in a letter and send a letter to object to that, I don’t get to go testify like people do today,” he said. However, according to the Indivisible guide to California legislative processes , anyone can testify during public comment in the California Assembly and Senate committee hearings during public comment.
Also, as discussed at a board meeting with the county’s state and federal lobbyists earlier this year, Mashburn visited Washington D.C in person weeks ago. At the February meeting, he requested that lobbyists set up appointments for him with congress members, particularly congressional Republicans.
“We need to go to our delegation in DC and talk to them,” Mashburn said in February. “They know our problems, they understand them.” Mashburn praised local processes for their accessibility to the public and opportunities for feedback.
“If I want to have a say in what goes on at the local level, I have to keep that control at the local level, because I don’t get a say at the state level,” Mashburn said. “This is the last true bastion of true democracy right here. On any given Tuesday if you don’t like what I do, you can come in here and pull a card and I’m going to give you three minutes to tell me that you don’t like what I’m doing and I’m a bad man.
” State and federal regulators often cite obstructionism and red tape as reasons for exemptions to or revocations of local control. Still, Mashburn sees no reason to speed up or streamline the permitting processes for the proposed shipyard. “I don’t want to rush it because I think that somebody is going to step in, but I want all of the public to be aware that there’s history out there, and there is potential out there, and we have to be vigilant” to make sure state and federal authorities don’t step in, he said.
Mashburn argued that any project should have to check all of the boxes at every level of government, ensuring “everybody is happy about what is going on.” He also said that any entity hoping to build should have to prove its financial ability to build the county’s infrastructure. Mashburn then said that higher levels of government should control financing for large scale infrastructure projects.
“The states and federal governments are set up (to) control the purse strings, they control the investments on things of this scale,” he said. Mashburn said that impacts perceived by the county, however, should have to be mitigated, and that businesses as well as the state and federal governments should have to respond to the concerns of locals. The five counties along the Sacramento River Delta, Contra Costa, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Solano, and Yolo, account for 4.
5 million people, Mashburn said, larger than 23 states in the 2020 census and approximately equal to the population of Kentucky in that year. “I just want to make sure that, again, because we have a history of this, that there is not some legislator at the state level or at the federal level who says ‘oh I’m going to drop some legislation on this,’” Mashburn said, pounding the table for effect. Mashburn said state or federal overreach on the shipyard would be “draconian.
” “There is nobody here standing here saying ‘not in my backyard,” Mashburn said. “We’re saying ‘in our backyard, but our way. We want to have a say in what you build in our backyard, but we’re not saying you can’t build it here.
’” Ultimately, Mashburn said higher levels of government should listen to Solano County about its local needs rather than dictate to the county about statewide and national needs. “Just do it right and listen to us,” he said..
