The latest ruling in the Flanders Mansion case underscores how the issue’s been mishandled by Carmel Mayor Sue McCloud and her City Council followers.

In a recent decision, Monterey County Superior Court Judge Kay Kingsley tartly reminded the City Hall anti-preservationistists that “as a matter of law,” they had failed to abide by the state law requiring them to “analyze the potential environmental impacts of selling or leasing the mansion.”

Unless her decision is overturned, the city will have to pay the legal fees undertaken by the Flanders Foundation in the case, and the November election in which voters approved the sale is effectively overturned.

Oh, and local activist Melanie Billig, who led the fight against the sale, was named Preservationist of the Year by the Association of Monterey Area Preservationists.

All of which has Paul Miller, publisher and editor of the Carmel Pine Cone and dauntless defender of the Carmel City Hall status quo, hopping mad.

EVERYONE’S ENTITLED TO THEIR OWN OPINIONS, BUT NOT THEIR OWN FACTS.

In his most recent issue, Miller launches a two-pronged attack against Billig – presumably for acting in ways consistent with her beliefs and trying to preserve the property – and against Kingsley, for issuing an opinion consistent with her interpretation of the law.

“When the Carmel Hall of Shame opens someday, a whole wing will have to be devoted to the obstructionism and arrogance of Melanie Billig,” Miller opines. “And now, she’s also in the running for the Lifetime Achievement Award for Hypocrisy…

“Taking full advantage of the lawsuit-happy California Environmental Quality Act… Billig has managed yet again to overturn the will of the people of Carmel, whose most ardent ambition for their city is to sell the useless Flanders Mansion.”

One could also argue that the most “ardent ambition” of the people of Carmel is for the people who run City Hall to cut the nonsense, stop trying to bypass the legal process, and resolve conflicts peacefully rather than extend them expensively. As for the Hypocrisy Awards, we have other nominees.

Not content with unloading on Billig, Miller goes on to attack Judge Kingsley, urging that she be impeached because her ruling “amounts to making a legal mountain out of a molehill…

“By ruling the way she did, Kingsley showed a complete lack of regard for basic legal concepts of fairness, equity and common sense,” he adds. “And, by failing even to mention that, just a few months ago, the people of Carmel voted 62 percent to 38 percent to sell Flanders Mansion, Kingsley also showed her contempt for the people she is supposed to serve.”

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

The city would have been better served by listening to the arguments of Susan Brandt-Hawley, attorney for the Flanders Foundation, who previously testified: “There’s nothing in the record that indicates that the city needs revenues, that the city can’t afford to fix Flanders, or most importantly, that at the end of the day, if the city rehabilitates Flanders, that it will be left in an untenable economic position.”

Personally, Miller’s always been a gentleman to me; it’s his views I find outlandish.

I recently heard him say gay rights advocates should “just wait another 10 or 15 years” for their full rights, since after all, the people had spoken by passing Proposition 8. When it was pointed out that courts are bound to follow the law, not public opinion polls, as demonstrated by the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling in 1954, Miller sputtered that he believed that most of the country supported the decision by then. Wrong.

“Impeaching Earl Warren” was a much more popular cause among the Tea Party contingent of the day than the quixotic crusade against Judge Kingsley will ever be.

“Every law should be enforced in a way that benefits the public,” Miller fulminates. “The courts are not places where people are to be jerked around for nothing.”

Well, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what your definition of “nothing” is. As I understand matters, the courts are places where judges and juries are expected to make decisions based on their legal merits, not the opinions of those voters who decide to show up to vote on any given day.

And it’s fair to ask whether there are greater “benefits” from continuing on a course of expensive, environmentally fishy litigation, or pursuing reasonable compromise.

The masters and mistresses of Carmel might want to give these questions some thought, as the people of that community make decisions on which of their current rulers should stay in office, who bears responsibility for the mistakes of the past, and whose words should carry the most weight.

PAUL WILNER is the editor of Monterey County Weekly.