In politics, it’s easy to call out the “other” party. Calling out one of your own is harder.

I arrived at my “D” designation from an “R” upbringing. Policy and personal values informed my choice. Those values now inform my decision to call out my friend and fellow Democrat, state Sen. Stan Gerzofsky.

Stan has waged a long, quiet, successful battle for enormous control in Brunswick. Every councilor serving Brunswick from 2005 to 2006 remembers the quiet coup resulting in our town losing not just control, but the mere opportunity to participate effectively, concerning redevelopment of the former Brunswick Naval Air Station.

We naïvely thought we had little choice but to privately concede control to then-Rep. Gerzofsky, and Steve Levesque, head of the redevelopment effort. We were dependent on our legislative delegation for too many things, such as state aid to education and partnership in the development of Maine Street Station.

We consoled ourselves thinking Brunswick would benefit from redevelopment no matter who was calling the shots.

While working to revise our Comprehensive Plan together with Brunswick citizens and businesses, I watched Stan play councilors off one another, making temporary alliances to gain more control. Stan is a masterful political practitioner, with his own jujitsu: the quid pro quo, the quid pro no quo, and the no quid, no quo.

At every turn, the council chose not to fight Stan publicly. At every turn, it was the wrong decision.

In one example, I’ve watched for six years as Stan and Levesque played a shell game with the base’s natural resources.

At each step, Levesque claimed ignorance of important natural resources that were wellrecorded prior to the base closure. I watched, incredulous, as he told the Comprehensive Plan Committee, then the Town Council, then the Planning Board, that the next planning step was when habitat information would be taken into account to draw development parcels.

Each time, the information was newly unknown to him. This continued throughout the process, until he proclaimed that it was now too late.

Conservation values are apparently easy to overlook when they purportedly stand in the way of economic development. And who would stand up in the face of such persistent manipulation of the process?

Ultimately, natural resources were kicked down the road until only minor local protections and state standards applied. Then our Legislature actually acted to remove base redevelopment efforts from state site review. The net result: Brunswick’s opportunity to protect known habitats while appropriately siting ample development — a stated goal of our town’s Comprehensive Plan — evaporated.

Not content, Stan introduced legislation to prevent town managers from participating on a quasi-state authority, intending to thwart Brunswick’s efforts to even have an adequate presence in redevelopment discussions.

Equally as troubling are persistent efforts in Augusta to remove financial benefits from Brunswick for base redevelopment.

In 2012, the LePage administration mysteriously attempted to change the Tax Increment Financing statute to dictate that Brunswick would have to give 80 percent of tax revenues to the base redevelopment authority.

This session, Stan is openly joining forces with LePage to prevent towns from collecting property tax from aviation interests. The rationale is that redevelopment is a regional issue, but there is no state authority governing Bath Iron Works, for example, or other large employers. The real purpose of these efforts is to take away Brunswick’s local control and participation, minimize the influence of locally-elected officials and concentrate power. The consequence is that Brunswick citizens will permanently subsidize the costs for services to base businesses — without even being consulted.

Brunswick citizens are largely unaware of these machinations, which determine the future of an enormous portion of our town. Many in the know feel powerless. Still others oppose tax collection, local control and environmental stewardship anyway.

The base redevelopment is a once-in-forever opportunity. Yet decision making is concentrated in the hands of two men whose track record indicates they don’t want to collaborate and will ignore Brunswick’s stated values when it serves them.

Natural resources by the wayside. Corporate giveaways handed out in Augusta, paid for by Brunswick citizens. Virtually no public oversight. A fiefdom within our borders.

Whose vision is this? It is not Brunswick’s. It is not responsible or responsive to our citizens. And that makes it wrong.

This power-grabbing harms everyone, especially the effort to redevelop the base. If this behavior does not change, I’ll work to elect someone who will do better in 2014, even if that means running myself.

Meantime, if action continues to usurp Brunswick citizens and our locally-elected officials of their proper role, I will seek a citizen’s referendum to bring overdue attention to this despotic behavior.

JACQUELINE SARTORIS served on the Brunswick Town Council from 2000 to 2007, including on the Comprehensive Plan Committee. She is a vice chairwoman with the Brunswick Democratic Town Committee and former senior planner with the Maine State Planning Office who practices law in Brunswick.