Checks and Balances
Good public decision making requires safeguards and friction to thwart bad decision makers wielding power.
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Photo by Adam Kool (via Unsplash)
The official government website for Yosemite National Park in California describes its grandeur this way: [1]
Not just a great valley, but a shrine to human foresight, the strength of granite, the power of glaciers, the persistence of life, and the tranquility of the High Sierra. First protected in 1864, Yosemite National Park is best known for its waterfalls, but within its nearly 1,200 square miles, you can find deep valleys, grand meadows, ancient giant sequoias, a vast wilderness area, and much more.
So it makes a ton of sense why a private developer might want exclusive access to the park from their property.
We found out this week the federal government has been negotiating a land swap to grant this lucrative favor for more than a year. This from reporting by the New York Times: [2]
The Trump administration has proposed trading away a small parcel of land in Yosemite National Park in California so a private developer can gain access to the park, according to federal officials and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The potential deal has alarmed conservationists and former National Park Service officials, who say that Yosemite, the crown jewel of the nation’s park system, should be off limits to development.
The original reporting from NOTUS provides more details about the behind-the-scenes discussions: [3]
The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves. Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests.
If preservation of our national parks is important to us, we may want more of a check than relying solely on decisions from federal administrators (these especially…).
But believe me, there are plenty of officials out there at all levels of government that don’t like the public finding out who they’re discussing things with and what they’re doing. And generally, they don’t want anyone else – especially the public – getting in the way of their decision making.
What I found interesting about this… - we had a similar thing happen in Thousand Oaks thirty years ago.
There was a proposal being circulated to sell off public park land to a developer for a private for-profit sports complex. [4]
City officials said the public was worried about nothing and that proposals to include the voters in such public decisions would be “an over reaction and unnecessary, since it is driven by fears of a contemplated project that all present evidence indicates will not proceed to any sort of City entitlement filing.” [5]
While public outrage stopped the proposal in its tracks, voters knew they couldn’t rely on raising awareness every time these kinds of proposals came up. Voters needed more checks in place to prevent truly unpopular plans from even being tried.
Stemming from this controversy, Linda Parks - then a Thousand Oaks Planning Commissioner and eventually went on to become Mayor and later Chair of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors – authored an initiative to guarantee that, if parkland or open space is developed for other purposes, the voters have to approve. [6]
See… in Thousand Oaks and in Ventura County, open space lands are important enough to protect and make sure that, if we irreversibly use open space for other purposes, the public is behind it.
That’s why I sit on the board of Save Open-space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) in Ventura County, the very organization that Linda Parks co-founded to include the voters in these important public decisions. [7]
Public officials consistently say that such checks aren’t needed. They claim we should trust them, and we certainly grant them authority to make public decisions on our behalf, so some level of trust is warranted.
However, when these officials through their actions take advantage of that trust, we should absolutely consider adding more checks and balances to align public decision making with what the public wants.
These are just the mechanics of how we choose to make public decisions. For some decisions, we’re fine with having officials – whether elected or appointed – to make decisions on our behalf or pass a vote by simple majorities.
In other instances that the public thinks is important, we may want there to be a greater consensus among decision makers, justifying some level of a supermajority.
And in still others, we may want to remove these officials as the final decision makers, since they’ve proven not to be trusted any longer when handling such matters.
We had such a situation in Thousand Oaks over the past couple of decades - city council majorities used to appoint their favorites to the council when vacancies opened up instead of holding an election, even when voters clamored for their right to vote. We had to pass the Thousand Oaks Right To Vote initiative to take this power away from them. [8]
Our parks and open space – national, state, and local – are precious and should be protected; it’s shameful that some private land swap arrangements are being negotiated using these public lands. But we can – if we take the right actions and use the right tools – create more checks and balances and make these types of unpopular decisions harder.
Notes and Sources
[1] “Yosemite National Park – California,” National Park Service, retrieved August 29, 2026, https://www.nps.gov/yose/index.htm
[2] Shawn Hubler and Maxine Joselow, “Trump Administration Looks to Give a Swath of Yosemite to a Developer,” New York Times, August 28, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/28/us/trump-administration-yosemite-private-developer.html
[3] Anna Kramer, “Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer,” NOTUS, August 28, 2026, https://www.notus.org/agencies/trump-administration-yosemite-private-developer-deal
[4] Miguel Bustillo, “Sport X Marks the Spot as Target of Irate Citizens,” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1996.
[5] Memo to City Council from Mark G. Sellers, City Attorney, “Subject: Impacts of a City Ordinance Requiring Two-thirds Approval at an Election Prior to Change of Use or Sale of Public Land,” March 26, 1996.
[6] Ordinance 1265-NS, City of Thousand Oaks, adopted June 18, 1996, https://weblink.toaks.org/WeblinkPublic/DocView.aspx?id=1141271&dbid=0&repo=CTO
[7] “Who is SOAR?” SOAR: Save Open-space and Agricultural Resources, retrieved August 29, 2026, https://soarvc.org/about/who-is-soar/
[8] Ordinance No. 1580-NS, City of Thousand Oaks, adopted July 17, 2012, https://weblink.toaks.org/WeblinkPublic/DocView.aspx?id=1140924&dbid=0&repo=CTO
Decisions with Mic Farris
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