The following is an editorial from KHTS AM-1220 Owner, Carl Goldman

As our city celebrates its 20th anniversary of cityhood, it is taking undue heat from a local group, “the Santa Clarita Valley Ethics Alliance”.   Their goal they say, is to help improve ethics in Santa Clarita.

An e-mail, inadvertently sent out by city staffers, on behalf of the Mayor, attempting to explain the process of the Henry Mayo Hospital expansion project, triggered the formation of the alliance. While this e-mail certainly points to a one-time flaw in communications at the City, it by no means crosses over into unethical territory.

In our watch over the city for the better part of 17 of its 20 years, we have found its officials to be very transparent with the flow of information. Have they made mistakes in the past 20 years?  Of course they have. Who wouldn’t with the amount of decisions and information they deal with on a daily basis? But unlike many other entities, when they do make a mistake, they’re the first to admit it. Our quality of life wouldn’t be close to what it is today if our city hadn’t formed two decades ago.  

KHTS applauds citizens and our media for being a watch dog for government. But in this case, we advise caution in not creating a witch hunt over what appears to be a communications, not ethics gap.  Many of the [view:node_ad=5] handful of leaders of this new ethics coalition are familiar faces for grandstanding on other issues that turned out to be more detrimental to the quality of life in our valley than helpful. 

We urge a bit of caution before too many of us get on the band wagon. Let’s enable our city leaders to tighten their internal communication systems in a positive manner, not from a defensive position.  That way, I believe our City Manager and Council members will be able to establish guidelines that will improve their ability to manage rather than hinder it, because of a knee jerk reaction to a minor group of vocal activists.

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