Scurvy Doings in the House
Speaker Dennis Hastert and his deputy, Tom DeLay, had a chance to show the American people that GOP House leaders actually could bring themselves to do the right thing on the environment every once in a blue moon. Did they seize that opportunity and run with it? Nope. Not a chance.
The golden moment came with the retirement of Rep. Jim Hansen (R, UT) as chairman of the House Resources Committee. (That’s the one that used to be the Natural Resources Committee until Don Young [R, AK] took it over in ‘95 and changed its name.) Hansen’s departure left Rep. Jim Saxton (R, NJ) as the senior GOP member of the committee and thus—by venerable House tradition— next in line to replace Hansen.
Rep. Jim Saxton (a member of REP America’s Honorary board) just happens to be a pro- conservation moderate, and from New Jersey no less, provoking howls of protest from Western congressmen. Junior committee members John Duncan (R, TN) and Richard Pombo (R, CA) immediately leaped into the fray, jockeying for the top spot.
After bitter behind-the-scenes wrangling —during which time REP members faxed letters of support for Saxton to Hastert’s office—Saxton “voluntarily” agreed to step out of the Resources race and chair an unrelated subcommittee instead.
Chairman now of the Resources Committee is Pombo, best known for the ‘95-’96 “Young-Pombo” bill, which sought to destroy the Endangered Species Act. He’s also the author of a book called This Land is Our Land: How to Win the War on Private Property (St. Martin’s Press, 1996; ISBN: 0312147473).
Speaking of retiring Chairman Hansen... on November 13, he filed a bill that would exempt military lands, private property and all plant life from the Endangered Species Act. So it sounds like we won’t be much worse off with Pombo at the helm.
Heroic Doings in the Senate
We’re proud to raise a loud REP cheer for Senator John McCain (R, AZ) for co-sponsoring with Senator Joe Lieberman (D, CT) a bill that, in essence, takes the global warming bull by the horns.
McCain and Lieberman’s bill calls for a domestic “cap-and-trade” system for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Designed in consultation with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change— large companies (Alcoa, Boeing, BP, Shell, DuPont. etc) which have banded together to look for solutions on their own—the bill would establish mandatory emissions limits and national targets while still allowing companies to buy and sell permits to emit gases.
Finally, somebody within the GOP is stepping up to address this critical issue. REP urges all Republican senators to support the McCain-Lieberman bill.
Bring This Good Bill Back!
Before the last Congress ended, now-retired Rep. Ben Gilman (R, NY) introduced a partnership approach for protecting from urban sprawl two million acres of forests, farms, rural communities and public lands stretching from eastern Pennsylvania, through New Jersey and New York, and into northwestern Connecticut.
The Highlands Stewardship Act is a model for bringing together the private sector, communities and government. It would ensure that the Highlands area maintains its high quality of life and secures its economic future.
The bill would have economic benefits as well—providing clean drinking water for 11 million people in the Philadelphia, New York and Hartford metropolitan areas.
The bill’s other GOP sponsors included Jim Walsh and Sue Kelly (NY), Rodney Frelinghuysen and Michael Ferguson (NJ), and Nancy Johnson (CT). It enjoyed the support of GOP Governors George Pataki (NY), John Rowland (CT) and former Governor Mark Schweiker (PA).
REP hopes the sponsors will reintroduce their bill promptly in the 108th Congress.
Outrage at the NPS
Just as this Green Elephant was going to press, we picked up a report that the Bush Administration may be about to contract management of our national parks out to private corporations, removing the career professionals whose dedication has kept the parks viable through budget cuts and other attacks from hostile politicians.
According to the highly credible Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), Gale Norton’s Interior Department has identified 11,807 National Park Service (NPS) jobs that will be contracted out to the lowest bidder over the next ten years. According to PEER, these are “the maintenance folks, the biologists, the archaeologists, the environmental specialists, interpreters. In short, everyone but the law enforcement rangers and the park managers.”
What makes PEER’s report of this development particularly disturbing is the news that a Denver-based engineering/ management consulting firm, CH2MHill, was contracted on November 2, 2002, to study each position being considered for privatization... at a cost to the taxpayers of $3,000 per job.
As PEER reports: “The NPS did not put this lucrative purchase order out for bid, did not solicit alternative sources, and did not consider performing the evaluations with its own staff. Moreover, the contractor is not neutral. CH2MHill conducts a multi-billion dollar business in operating and maintaining military and Federal facilities. Nothing in the purchase order precludes CH2MHill from bidding on the jobs it recommends be privatized. It is a sweetheart deal.”
The money for this sweetheart deal was not appropriated by Congress. Rather, as PEER reports: “The NPS is scavenging other funded programs and seeking to divert monies from repair and rehabilitation projects for park buildings. This is the agency that has screamed ‘maintenance backlog’ for decades and now is trying to divert monies from maintenance.”
Republicans for Environmental Protection's first reaction to this report was disbelief... followed promptly by anger and disgust. We will let REP members know if the NPS moves forward with this plan... yet another call to battle.
