Kamloops has not been at its best this week.

Like a malodorous boil, the dark side of politics in this town has been pierced and exposed in all its hypocritical glory. It is the politics of convenience, the politics of hysteria.

Some people, of course, will consider the decision by Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp. to leave town a victory for democracy. I don’t.

Some welcome the decision to unilaterally decree water meters for all as an example of leadership at City Hall. I don’t.

Running ACC out of town, rather than proof that democracy works, was a clinic in political gamesmanship and political interference. While opponents of the project professed indignation at being called emotional, their entire campaign was founded on the key message, “We’re all gonna die.”

Wrote Ruth Madsen: “Are we going to let CPR burn 100 million toxic railroad ties in our city core and pollute our children and many generations to come and destroy our wonderful city?”

“Well, gosh, no, I certainly don’t think we should do that!” — emotion trumps fact and logic every time, and they played on fear, using the weapons of exaggeration and misinformation.

They claimed ACC would ruin the airshed, when the airshed was never in danger. They claimed toxic creosote would leach into the river, endanger our water supply, pollute the land, when none of that was true.

“What if it doesn’t work?” they demanded, as if there would be some cataclysmic event, like a nuclear plant meltdown.

“Supporters of the project say the risk is small but that’s hard to believe,” said one skeptic. “Bophal, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, these are all events that should never have happened.”

Really, we’re comparing a small gasification plant with catastrophes that took thousands of lives? When such absurdities were shown to be false, when the inconvenient truths of science raised their unpopular heads, science was suddenly no longer so important, and the attack turned from the project to the man.

“He operates out of his basement,” more than one local politician informed me. Ah, yes, the politicians. They were running as scared as anybody, not because they believed there was anything to fear from the project itself, but because the quickly expanding herd behavior pricked their sense of political survival.

Faced with a few dozen objectors and an American professor in their meeting chambers, council decided not to risk the possibility that these highly vocal folks weren’t a majority, and voted unanimously on the spot to oppose ACC. Despite their own consultant reporting the project was just fine, they decided they didn’t have enough information to support it; but apparently they had enough information to oppose it.

At that point, council washed its hands of the entire matter, doing nothing to fill the information vacuum or discourage the politics of misinformation. Like spectators at a bar brawl, they occasionally offered encouragement.

Meanwhile, our two MLAs figured out a rather clever way of getting themselves out of the jam. It wouldn’t have behooved them to throw the Ministry of Environment and IHA scientists — who pronounced the project of no risk to the public — to the wolves. So, they hit upon the idea of trying to stop the provincial funding that was approved almost a year ago.

Suddenly, a funding process that was supposed to be free and clear of political interference became very political indeed.

This week, the same City council that has been cheered by ACC’s opponents as being all about listening to what the public has to say decided that only applies to some things, not others.

The mayor and six councillors (Pat Wallace and Denis Walsh opposed) voted to bring in universal water meters, thumbing their noses at residents who voted against it in a previous referendum.

They should be ashamed of their own paternalistic arrogance. They should be ashamed because, so convinced are they of their own righteousness, they assume they know better than those who already said no to water meters.

If things have changed since 2001, if more people want water meters now than don’t, there should have been no fear of a new referendum.

My own view is that a referendum, either at the last municipal election or the next one, would pass. But council had a moral obligation to ask voters if they’d changed their minds.

Back in 2001, a public-opinion poll showed 51 per cent in favour of meters, 49 per cent against. With such a division, and with the issue being a money matter, those who put it to referendum did so out of a conviction that residents had a right to decide which way to spend their tax dollars.

Three current members of council were in office when the referendum was called. One of them, John O’Fee, wanted meters and voted against a referendum. Another, John DeCicco, also favoured meters but voted for a referendum because he thought people should have a choice. Obviously, he has a different view of democracy now.

Pat Wallace opposed meters then and opposes them now. Back then, council bound itself to the outcome of the referendum. The current council isn’t bound technically by that, but morally is another story.

Back then, there were open houses, a major public forum, and a huge amount of public debate on the issue. This time, not a single open house, no public forum, and little opportunity for public input.

I asked City public works and utilities director David Duckworth why he didn’t do that. “I wasn’t asked to (by council),” he said. “My direction was to bring back a report on how to implement (meters).”

In other words, council never considered going into the community to inform people about how the system would work, to explain the costs, the new utility rates, the timetable, the pros and cons. It was a closed discussion at the council table, and the decision was a done deal.

“Consultation,” so in style during the ACC debate, suddenly was no longer de rigueur.

All of the above, however, was trumped late yesterday afternoon when Madsen issued a “press release” consisting of a supposed Facebook message from Interior Science Innovation Council CEO Bill McQuarrie to Kim Sigurdson in which the status of ACC’s permit was discussed in unflattering terms, at the same time implicating Lake.

That this thing was circulated without the slightest attempt at verification tells you how little value is placed on the facts in this controversy.

I take the duty of government to consult and to be transparent very seriously, and I believe deeply in the public’s right to good information about what government is doing. I believe in people’s right to challenge what’s going on.

But we came nowhere close to getting it right this week.

mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.

www.armchairmayor.wordpress.com