Re: 2/5/01 - USA Today: Town's growth debate is crossing new lines
USA TODAY
February 5, 2001, Monday, FINAL EDITION
Town's growth debate is crossing new lines
John Ritter
HOLLISTER, Calif. -- Not long ago, this was a sleepy ranching town, known for inspiring the brooding Marlon Brando biker-gang movie The Wild One and as a hard-hit victim of the 1989 earthquake. Now it's the hub of California's fastest-growing county and a textbook example of how a city can choke on its own sprawl.
But it's not just population pressure from Silicon Valley or the traffic congestion, overcrowded schools, soaring highway death toll and overwhelmed sewer system that are roiling Hollister in a classic growth vs. no-growth battle.
What really has Hollister buzzing is anonymous Web sites alleging that the publisher of the city's weekly newspaper, The Pinnacle, was involved with hard-core lesbian pornography. The sites also lampooned coverage of growth issues.
The newspaper has often skewered developers and city officials.
The Pinnacle's openly lesbian business partners, Tracie Cone and Anna Marie dos Remedios, sued for libel in an emerging area of Internet law that has few precedents. A columnist for the newspaper, video store owner Bob Valenzuela, joined the suit when one of the Web sites falsely called him a child molester.
"We've really been feeling the emotional and mental toll of being the victim of a hate crime," publisher Cone says. "We're just trying to do our jobs and put out a newspaper." San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill says no crime has been committed, but "we're watching this very closely."
Last month, a bombshell dropped when a subpoena turned up the identity of the person apparently behind the Web sites: former mayor Joe Felice. The news caused a sensation here, but the legal means Cone and dos Remedios used to identify Felice alarmed civil libertarians.
Their lawyer, Gary Clifford, subpoenaed Yahoo, which hosted the Web sites. Yahoo turned over service-provider numbers but no names. A computer expert decoded the numbers and determined that the site originated from a Pacific Bell digital phone line. Clifford subpoenaed Pacific Bell, and the company named Felice, even though it typically doesn't release phone records without a customer's permission or a court order.
Felice did not return several phone calls seeking comment. He has until this week to respond in state court to the libel lawsuit.
Many experts say that anonymous Web site communication is protected under the First Amendment and that until libel is established in court, defendants have a right to remain anonymous.
Lawsuits over anonymous Internet traffic are so new that few cases have reached appeals courts where guidelines could be set. Most cases involve message boards where employees bash their companies. The companies file suit, subpoena to get names, then fire the employees -- essentially sham lawsuits, says Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
"We'd like to switch that around and require some evidence that there really was libel before names are turned over," Cohn says.
The potential for abuse is great, says Ann Brick, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. "As often as not, the reason someone wants to speak anonymously is they fear retribution," she says. "It's the classic problem of a whistleblower."
The courts should require disinterested third parties such as Yahoo and Pacific Bell to give defendants a chance to quash subpoenas, Brick says. Yahoo says it does notify defendants before honoring subpoenas.
The Pinnacle lawsuit seeks to clarify the legality of unwelcome links between Web sites and argues that to link Cone's name to a lesbian porn site suggests an "active association" that is defamatory.
"We've heard from a lot of people who say they've been the target of horrible things on the Internet," Cone says. "We've come to think maybe we can help make a change."
Many here who oppose The Pinnacle's stand on growth are disgusted by the electronic mud slung at Cone and dos Remedios. "I draw the line when it starts hurting people," Mayor Peggy Corrales says.
Hollister's growth debate still festers. The city will rule soon on whether to allow a citizen initiative on the ballot that caps growth. This month, a newly elected slow-growth City Council majority will review a large, controversial subdivision plan and decide whether it wants to annex land for 667 homes. The city is widely criticized for being lax in demanding that developers put in roads and sewers with their subdivisions.
Hollister's population has doubled to 30,000 since the 1980s. Every working day, 12,000 commuters hit the road to San Jose. State Highway 25 north is rush-hour gridlock. Ten motorists died on the two-lane road last year, more than in the previous 15 years combined.
Last year, a grand jury uncovered shoddy home construction and found that subdivisions were going up so fast that the city couldn't keep up with inspections. Housing demand spiked as development spread from southern Santa Clara County. Many fear that a recently approved Cisco Systems campus for 20,000 workers, just 40 minutes away, will aggravate the pressure.
Traffic is so bad through town that people in north Hollister drive 12 miles to Gilroy to shop. The sewer system was so overtaxed that the regional water quality board had to give the city emergency permission to use industrial treatment ponds.
The run-up in real estate prices isn't far behind that in the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Pinnacle ran a front-page story this month about working-class families taking their equity and plunking down cash for homes elsewhere. Affordable housing is tight.
Unrest was building before The Pinnacle started reporting relentlessly on the city's growth policies. But the newspaper provided a forum, and the slow-growth movement coalesced after Cone and dos Remedios took over a year ago.
They aren't popular among builders, landowners and others with a stake in more growth.
Because their sexual orientation became news with the appearance of the Web sites, they had felt an undercurrent of homophobia. However, they have many supporters -- unsolicited, a reader started a legal defense fund -- and the newspaper's advertising has grown substantially.
"We are gay and we are journalists," says dos Remedios. "We're not gay journalists. To be put in the position of being spokespeople for lesbians, it's not a role we'd have picked out. But we care about this newspaper too much to stand by and let someone attack it and make us fearful. That's why we felt we had to fight this."
Copyright 2001 Gannett Company, Inc. |
