Shocking truths

Ose’s secret past: Mudslinger Rico Oller hit the airwaves last weekend with his most devastating, underhanded attack yet. Oller, who is battling ex-Attorney General Dan Lungren and millionheiress Mary Ose to represent the heavily Republican Sacramento suburbs in Congress, already has tried to link Lungren to terrorists because he favored a Reagan-supported immigration-amnesty bill eons ago. Now, Oller’s TV ads are smearing “liberal” Ose as belonging to the only group more hated than the Baath Party. “Until 1998,” the ad reveals, “Ose had been a Democrat.”

Ose didn’t return a call, but her campaign manager, Beth Pendexter, confirmed that the ad’s charge is, sadly, true.

Fielding a request for comment about the disturbing allegations, Oller campaign manager Steve Davey jumped at the chance to twist the knife. “All of Mary’s money can’t change the fact that she was a Clinton-era Democrat,” he said, implying that Ose all but served in Slick Willie’s Cabinet.

Fellow traveler: Now that the shocking truth about Ose has been revealed to the world, at least she’ll have a shoulder to cry on: fellow former Democrat Roberta MacGlashan. The Citrus Heights councilwoman, who is running to succeed Assembly-bound Roger Niello in the county’s 4th Supervisory District, registered as a Republican about a year ago.

Ironically, although it would appear she made the switch to enhance her chances in the heavily conservative area, that’s not how it turned out. The district, which includes Folsom, Fair Oaks and Citrus Heights, is solidly Republican—as is Bob Walters, MacGlashan’s rival in the two-way race (a third candidate hasn’t mounted a serious campaign).

Walters is a longtime fixture in local GOP circles. He started out working for former Governor Ronald Reagan’s administration and has put in about three decades as a lobbyist. (Curiously, although his campaign bio provides vital information about Walters, noting that he “actively supports the community” and is “a proven problem solver,” the word “lobbyist” makes no appearance.)

Officially, supervisor races are nonpartisan, but this race looks more and more like a GOP primary.

In December, the members of the county Republican Central Committee voted to change their bylaws in order to endorse Walters. The new rule? You’ve got to be a Republican for at least a year to get their backing, and MacGlashan hadn’t been. Many of the most-sought-after Republican supporters—including Niello, Oller, tax hater Ted Costa and the Metro Chamber of Commerce—backed Walters.

Although MacGlashan promises that she’s sticking with her new partisan label, she’s still peeved at the way her new peers have treated her, calling it “unfortunate” and “divisive.” After all, if Republicans are trying to lure new members to join their ranks, why beat up on someone who actually did? “It doesn’t help the party,” she said.

Green pages: It’s not easy being green. Or is it? Sure, Kermit the Frog has his problems, but anyone who’s really paid attention to all those Exxon commercials knows that many endangered species actually enjoy bathing in toxic oil spills. So, Bites wasn’t at all skeptical to learn that a locally produced Green Pages will promote environmentally friendly area businesses. Patterned after a program that was successful in San Francisco (and is thus guaranteed to work virtually anywhere), the Business Environmental Resource Center’s Green Business program is a “partnership between businesses, environmental agencies and utility companies” that will provide companies with “an easy-to-use framework for improving environmental performance.”

So, just how easy is it to be green enough to get that free Green Pages listing? Companies score points in four categories (energy conservation, solid-waste reduction, water conservation and pollution prevention) by adopting measures from a list of close to 200 found on the resource center’s Web site (www.sacberc.org). In the energy-conservation category, for instance, businesses can achieve the required 20 points simply by participating in SMUD’s Greenergy program at the 100-percent level, or they can cobble together the equivalent points from an array of lesser commitments (insulating an electric hot-water heater and hot-water pipes equals one point). The program will initially focus on auto-repair businesses and then expand outward, so don’t go throwing out your Yellow, White and Rainbow Pages yet.