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Lawsuit charges county with discrimination |
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Written by Administrator
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Friday, 21 May 2004 |
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A question of transportation
Lawsuit charges county with discrimination
5/21/04
By MELINDA BURNS
NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER
An environmental watchdog group this week filed suit against the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, alleging that the regional transportation agency discriminates against people of color by refusing to provide bus and van services for thousands of Santa Maria farmworkers.
The lawsuit by Our Children's Earth Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit organization, contends the association is illegally spending $3.5 million of state transportation funds on road repairs instead of on public transportation for the poor.
"It's pretty egregious what's happening here," said Tiffany Schauer, the foundation's executive director, a former attorney for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "A government agency is allocating funds for highway purposes, not public transportation. This action is absolutely the opposite of what the law intended."
The lawsuit was filed in Santa Barbara Superior Court on Monday by Santa Barbara attorney Marc Chytilo, who is representing the foundation. On Thursday, county Supervisor Joe Centeno, who represents the unincorporated Santa Maria Valley on the 12-member association board, defended the agency's actions, saying that a bus service would serve only farmworkers and not the general public.
"The route would be out in the rural areas, and nobody else could use it but them," Mr. Centeno said.
Another problem would be bus access to the fields along dirt roads, Mr. Centeno said. He said he met this week with grower representatives and transportation advocates to try to help the farmworkers. Perhaps a nonprofit group could provide buses, he said.
"It's extremely tough," Mr. Centeno said. "We're expending the effort to at least look at it."
Dozens of impoverished Santa Maria strawberry pickers, most of them Mixtec Indians from Oaxaca, Mexico, were rebuffed earlier this year when they petitioned the association board for bus or van routes to the fields. Most of the $143 million strawberry crop in the valley is harvested by Mixtec immigrants.
The farmworkers said they would be willing to pay $1 or $2 a day for transportation to the fields. As it is, they said, they pile up in haphazard car pools driven by unlicensed workers, with each rider paying as much as $5 one way.
"We tried to dialogue with the association, but they did not want to hear it," said Jesœs Estrada, a plaintiff in the case and a spokesman in Santa Maria for the Binational Indigenous Oaxacan Front, an advocacy group. "We told them a lot of farmworkers have to walk to the fields. They did not look into the possibilities or pay any attention to us."
A third plaintiff in the case, David Pierce of Lompoc, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Coalition for Sustainable Transportation, a nonprofit group, said Thursday it had received a $5,750 grant from the Fund for Santa Barbara to conduct interviews with farmworkers and help them clarify their transportation needs.
By law, the state funds that are the subject of this week's lawsuit must be spent on public transportation for the poor and disabled unless all such needs have been met or it would be unreasonable to meet them. Last month, the association board unanimously decided that a farmworker bus service was ineligible for state funds because it would benefit only a "limited set of individuals."
The board's vote allowed Santa Maria and Lompoc to continue spending their share of the funds -- about $3.5 million yearly -- on road repair and maintenance. The South Coast, Guadalupe, Buellton and Solvang spend most of their share on improving bus services.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit claim that the association "discriminated against the Mixtec and agricultural laborer community by treating them differently than any other subpopulation in the county."
There's a safety issue, too, they said. In the unincorporated North County, north of Los Alamos, the California Highway Patrol impounded 600 vehicles from unlicensed drivers in the first 10 months of 2003. Unlicensed drivers caused 60 accidents during that time, killing four people and injuring 52.
"In the absence of basic public transit, unlicensed and uninsured drivers have few alternatives but to drive illegally, risking theirs and the public's safety," the lawsuit states.
Our Children's Earth Foundation has recently been active in the Santa Barbara area, joining the Santa Barbara ChannelKeeper and Get Oil Out in a successful lawsuit forcing the EPA to update expired water-quality permits at 22 oil platforms offshore of Central and Southern California.
"We're definitely establishing a presence in Santa Barbara," Ms. Schauer said. "The public assumes that because there are laws on the books, the government is doing what it should do. Our organization focuses on government accountability more than anything else."
Two Santa Maria farmworkers head home after a day's work in the fields off Blosser Road. There is no public transportation to and from the fields for thousands of farmworkers living in the valley.
Source: http://www.newspress.com/mixtec/052104farmwork.html
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