There is something particularly offensive about charitable foundations established by those who made billions of dollars through their success in the private sector, when they then use that money to fund efforts to make it harder and harder for other people to own or use lands. In essence, they fund efforts to either expand government ownership or restrictions on land, or to create quasi-governmental “land trusts” for the purpose of taking lands and place them out of the realm of private ownership. When you look at a map of the United States, it’s stunning the percentage of raw land in our nation that is government owned, or is partially or totally restricted in its use by… people.
This background is important because it puts into context a power-play by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation to advance their agenda of restricting people-use of lands – or in this case, actually, the ocean. The Packard Foundation has invested countless millions of dollars into promoting the creation of “marine reserves” off the California coastline. The Packard Foundation was a big supporter of the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act (MPLA), which sets the broad framework for placing major restrictions on people-use of massive areas off the California coast. Over the past few years, the Packard Foundation funneled over $18 million to the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation just towards moving the process of creating these offshore marine reserves forward.
Enter into this agenda of a controversial player in the Packard machine – one Michael Sutton (pictured). Sutton currently serves as a member of the California Fish and Game Commission – one of the less impressive appointments of Governor Schwarzenegger. Strongly advocating for appointment by the environmentalist community, Sutton is now using his public position to advocate the goals of his financiers at the Foundation – voting on the details of implementation of the MLPA – working to restrict areas where people can work or play.
How is this possible, you ask? Isn’t it a conflict of interest to vote on major projects of interest to your employer? The Central Coast Fisheries Conservation Coalition, a sportfishing and commercial fishing interest group, thinks so and has filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission over the matter – which the FPPC is currently investigating.
But in order to follow all of this, you literally need to have a chart (actually, there IS a chart which I found courtesy of Google – you can see a larger version of it attached below). Sutton was hired by the Packard Foundation in 1999 (coincidentally the year that MAPA was adopted) from the World 
Wildlife Fund (which receives major funding from – you guessed it – the Packard Foundation). In 2004, Packard moved Sutton over to the position of Vice President and Director of the Center for the Future of the Oceans at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This is all on Sutton’s short biography on the State Fish and Game Commission website.
It’s significant to note that the Executive Director of the Aquarium and Vice Chairman of its Board of Directors is Julie Packard, daughter of the David and Lucille Packard (and now a blogger on the Huffington Post).
The Packard Foundation has and continues to heavily donate money to the aquarium (if they haven’t give $200 million already, they are close). Sutton takes down a salary and benefits from the aquarium that approaches a couple hundred thousand dollars annually.
I guess I would aim some general criticism at Governor Schwarzenegger for nominating someone to this key commission who so obviously a tool, and bought and paid for. The Democrats in the State Senate get some blame as well for his confirmation.
The investigation by the Fair Political Practices Commission is appropriate and hopefully will conclude that the web of back-door organizational funding all emanating from the Packard Foundation, which clearly conflicts Sutton, will cause at minimum for him to have to stop voting on issues where he has a conflict. Frankly, he ought to be off of the Fish and Game Commission all together.
The Central Coast Fisheries Conservation Coalition has said that they are prepared, beyond the FPPC complaint, to vigorously fight against this unfair situation – as well they should. Frankly, anyone in California who believes that we should have fair, ethical standards in government should be outraged at this situation and express their displeasure to the FPPC.
It is an ongoing war to fight these big foundations who have aggressive ideological agendas, we’ll have to take them on one battle at a time…
LINKS ON THE WEB:
In doing online research for this story, I found a couple of interesting columns on this matter – a three parter by Ed Zieralski, a columnist for the San Diego Union Tribune. You can see those here, here and most recently here. Also there is a column from Alastair Bland in the Sacramento News Review here.
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