Ret. Judge Goldin on the RWQCB: ‘The Most Incredible Kangaroo Court I’ve Ever Observed’

Forty-plus years of experience in the law did not prepare Martha Goldin for the travesty of justice she witnessed at the RWQCB’s Jan. 22 CDO hearing.

If retired Judge Martha Goldin was still sitting on the bench today, this is what one might hear her rule on the Regional Water Board’s CDOs against individual Los Osos homeowners:
    “I’d heard about the CDOs and the proceedings before the water board,” Mrs. Goldin addressed the Feb. 1 LOCSD meeting at the Community Center. “I was curious to see for myself exactly what was going on, so a week and a half ago I attended the water board meeting and hearing on one of the CDOs.
    “Calling it a hearing is gracing it with something it is not,” said Mrs. Goldin in biting tones from the podium. “Nobody on the board heard at all. It is the most incredible kangaroo court I have ever observed in my life.
    “There is no process. There is no notice—it changes from minute to minute, from day to day, from one notice to another. There is no opportunity for people who have been accused to present a case—15 minutes. The water board sits as first the accuser, they bring the proceedings. Then they sit as the judge. Then they sit as the jury, and then they sit, supposedly, as the body that will remedy the situation, but instead as the executioner.”
    Mrs. Goldin has the credentials to speak. She served as a judge of the Superior Court for 16 years. Prior to that, as required by law, she was an attorney—for 17 years. She retired from the bench in 1996, and remained active as a judge until the end of last year.
    She added: “And they have the gall to sit there and say, ‘Well we never said somebody would have to move out of their house.’ Yet if there is no sewer built by 2011, the drop-dead date—‘Thou shall not use water.’ I think this is 2007… Try living in your house without using your water…
   “Folks, get with it. Find out about the CDOs and become part of the total community of Los Osos to help solve a very serious problem of which the water board, regrettably, seems to be part of the problem, instead of part of the solution.”