Close to Home: Bill Kortum’s vision became Sonoma County’s reality

I met Bill Kortum the day I was sworn in as a Sonoma County supervisor. In January 1976, Gov. Jerry Brown had picked me to fill the reminder of Ig Vella’s term - Vella having resigned to become manager of the Sonoma County Fair.

A recall election was in full swing against Kortum and Chuck Hinkle. Had Vella not stepped down he, too, would have been a target.

The recall was being spearheaded by the Sonoma County Taxpayers Association with support of some business, farming and real estate interests, ostensibly over a tax hike in the county budget. The board majority’s real crime, though, was its support for strong land-use planning: sharp zoning restrictions on rural development density, aimed at channeling future growth into our existing cities. Kortum was the intellectual force behind the community-centered growth plan.

After I took the oath of office, Kortum ambled over and shook my hand with a relaxed smile. He was taller than my 6-foot-1, and his head angled down as he looked at me, all of 29 years old.

“Welcome,” he said. “It’s pretty crazy around here.”

Between then and the June recall election, I got to know Kortum well. While Hinkle was enraged at the recall and let his anger show, Kortum was laid back and philosophical. He understood that for his opponents it was about money - fear that the proposed county plan would reduce their incomes, directly or by hurting the economy.

“I think they’re wrong,” he said, leaning back in his office chair. “We’ll have plenty of growth - city-centered. But we’ve got to protect agricultural land from development.”

I’d been reading about Abraham Lincoln, and it struck me Kortum had some of the young Abe’s qualities. Long, loose-limbed, genuinely genial, the easy manner and gentle humor camouflaging deep thought and bedrock passion.

Beyond land-use planning, Kortum’s vision included use of our cities’ wastewater for irrigating cropland. His eyes sparkled and his voice became quietly intense as he described the concept, the pumps and pipelines.

He taught me something that changed my life. My father was a socialist, my grandfather a conservative industrialist. Both agreed that the needs of the human being were at the center of all public policy, all philosophy. One day Kortum and I sat arguing, me stressing that point. He looked at me intently, a smile playing across his lips.

“You can’t really believe that,” he said. “Just look around. We’re just part of a vast, integrated web of life. We can’t care for human beings if we don’t take care of that.”

A deep lover of the outdoors, I had never thought of that. I did then, and it changed my view of the world.

Kortum and Hinkle were beaten in the recall, replaced by forerunners of tea party free-marketeers. Supposedly concerned about taxes, in the summer’s budget hearings, they gave a massive increase to the Sheriff’s Office and gutted the planning staff. But they overplayed their hand: In November, one of the recall-elected supervisors was defeated by Helen Rudee and Eric Koenigshofer won in west county. With my re-election in the 1st District, we had a pro-planning majority. In 1978, the Sonoma County general plan was passed - community-centered growth. At the time, the county’s population was 270,000. It’s now 500,000. And there are still dairies, vineyards, forests and the beauty of a landscape that attracts people from around the world.

Bill Kortum’s plan.

Brian Kahn, a former Sonoma County supervisor, and his wife, Sandra dal Poggetto, have lived in Montana since 1989. A lawyer and author, he is host of Home Ground Radio.