During the three decades I've resided in Ventura County, I would have to say the Measure X campaign gets the nod as the most mendacious.

Community Memorial Hospital officials spent $1.5 million to convince voters that a proposed new wing to the Ventura County Medical Center would merely duplicate services available a few blocks away at CMH.

Yeah, right — CMH specialized in indigents.

Yet, among the hyperbole, misinformation and false propaganda unloosed during the anti-X campaign, I don't remember a single reference to the height of the proposed VCMC structure.

Heather Christie, in her June 15 commentary, should have taken a little more time to check her facts:

— Measure X was not a city (Ventura) referendum but rather a countywide election item.

— Measure X was not passed; it was defeated — due in no small part to the fact that county officials who put the measure on the ballot were not only legally prohibited from sinking one dime of taxpayer money into promoting the referendum but were not even allowed to speak publicly in the measure's defense.

— Measure X opposition was hardly a grass-roots effort. Ninety percent of the funds that led to the measure's defeat came from deep-pocketed CMH. Follow the money, indeed.

The Foothill Neighbors, a small group of Ventura residents (only 30 showed up at a recent community outreach meeting) are apparently up in arms at the prospect of losing their views. They not only aspire to halt a construction project that has been under way for five months but they intend to send the project's planners back to square one. To that end, recent efforts seem to be taking a page from Michael Bakst, former executive director at CMH.

The Foothill Neighbors might do well to remember that Bakst, who attempted to dismantle the public-health delivery system in Ventura County in order to benefit his own private hospital, was eventually forced out (2003) after dust-ups with his own fed-up colleagues.

Yes, we are being warned, these well-heeled NIMBYs ("they are writing checks — big checks," according to a June 15 commentary by Camille Harris) are presently primed and "they have a good chance to win" (again Harris) with their own shiver-inducing modus operandi — namely, bullying Ventura County officials into submission via threats of budget-busting lawsuits.

It might be wise for the Foothill Neighbors, however, to "take a trip" all the way "down memory lane." CMH tried the lawsuit route in 1995, alleging that a proposed $51 million VCMC expansion constituted unfair competition. It lost big time — a Superior Court judge ruled in the county's favor, and the decision was upheld on appeal. Unfortunately, all the legal wrangling cost Ventura County a cool million dollars that could and should have been put to better use.

Yet, CMH got its comeuppance with the defeat of Measure O, through which Bakst sought to shift control of $250 million in tobacco settlement money to seven area private hospitals.

Despite being outspent 15-to-1, David Maron, who played the Force-enabled Luke Skywalker to Bakst's Darth Vader, was able to report to the Daily News in November 2000: "It is extremely gratifying to see that the people of Ventura County looked at the issue intelligently and decided that private institutions should not control public funds."

If the Foothill Neighbors are determined to sue somebody, their legal eagles should target the real-estate agents who failed to disclose a project in the works since 1994 that might possibly hamper their horizon-gazing.

Most folks realize that unless you are willing to fork out funds for an easement, there is always the possibility that somebody will build in front of you. It is not, as Harris would have you believe, "a case of eminent domain taking the skies above us." In fact, it is the Foothill Neighbors, who insist on "taking" the sky above VCMC.

Finally, what happens if a viewshed a is actually judged a tangible asset? I wonder if the Foothill Neighbors remember the infamous "view tax" proposed by the cash-strapped Port Hueneme City Council in 1991 — especially with the Ventura City Council eyeing any and all possible sources of new revenue.

Furthermore, in light of a nationwide housing slump, can the Foothill Neighbors' "decline-in-property-values" argument be any more specious? Any harm must be quantifiable.

This worthy VCMC project will house offices and clinics that now crowd trailers, leased office space and/or inadequate campus quarters and provide essential family care, pediatrics, women's health and oncology to some 200,000 poor and uninsured patients.

The expansion is more than a decade overdue. With state money drying up, there is no time to waste. A multimillion-dollar redesign to appease a few affluent NIMBYs is simply out of the question. And that's no lie.

— Beverly Kelley, Ph.D., who writes every other Monday for The Star, is an author ("Reelpolitik" and "Reelpolitik II") and professor in the Communication Department at California Lutheran University. She is married to Port Hueneme Councilman Jon Sharkey. Visit http://beverlykelley.typepad.com/my_weblog/. Her e-mail address is Kelley@clunet.edu.