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The Club in the Capitols
By John Byrne Barry
- Fighting Fire with Fire in Phoenix
- California Scheming
- Forming Alliances with Family Farmers In the Heartland
- Holding the Line in Lansing
- Winning Rural Allies in Georgia
When Vermont state Sen. Matt Krauss introduced an "audit
privilege" bill that would allow companies that do internal
audits of their environmental compliance to avoid penalties,
Sierra Club lobbyist Ned Farquhar wasn't sure what to think.
On the face of it, such a proposal, which encourages
corporations to comply with environmental rules through self-
policing, didn't seem too threatening. "But the bill was
being pushed in Vermont by companies like General Electric
under the guise of protecting small business," says
Farquhar, "and somehow their altruistic intentions were hard
to believe." Farquhar called on Club State Program
Coordinator Paula Carrell in San Francisco, who briefed him
on the status of various "pollution secrecy" bills in other
states and how such laws could exempt reckless polluters
from prosecution. He was not alone, she told him. Eighteen
states had already passed audit privilege legislation and it
had been defeated in at least 17 others.
Using some of the information that Carrell had collected
from other states, Farquhar was able to educate Vermont
legislators who themselves didn't understand the full scope
of the proposed bill; soon after, it died in committee.
Farquhar's experience is not an isolated one. While the
major media has focused on the Gingrich-led anti-
environmental exploits in Washington, D.C., similar anti-
environmental legislation has been popping up in state
houses from Montpelier to Sacramento. The Club's state
program has been facilitating communication between state
activists to help fight bills from takings to audit
privilege. [See box at right.] "When the state program began
in 1990," says Carrell, a former California lobbyist, "a
number of states had Club lobbying programs, but they were
mostly unaware of what was going on elsewhere."
Today, the Club has state-level lobbyists in almost every
state, from volunteer lobbyists in Kentucky, where the
legislature meets for just four months every year, to
several full-time staff in California, which boasts a bigger
economy than most countries. As a result of better
networking and yearly meetings, Club state-level activists
know each other and frequently share information and
strategies.
Good communication between the Club's state-level volunteers
and staff (and their federal counterparts) is especially
critical, says Carrell, in light of what she calls the
"fundamental betrayal" of deregulation. In Washington, she
says, industry lobbyists are pushing to transfer
environmental regulation to the states. Each state, they
claim, will develop the best approach to solving its unique
problems. "But these same industries are working in state
legislatures to restrict states' authority to set
environmental standards that are more stringent than the
federal minimum."
Indeed, from Lansing, Mich., to Phoenix, Ariz., Club state-
level activists view the move to devolve federal regulatory
authority to the states with alarm. "The general public has
this perception that the environment is in better hands with
power located closer to home," says Lansing-based lobbyist
Alison Horton, "but nothing could be further from the truth
in Michigan." Arizona lobbyist Raena Honan is more blunt:
"It's stupid to think that Arizona will protect the
environment without any federal standards or oversight."
Fighting Fire with Fire in Phoenix
In Arizona, the conservative Republican political
establishment is anxious to discredit the Sierra Club at
every turn. But Raena Honan, herself a card-carrying
Republican - a conservative, scripture-speaking, Christian,
gun-owning environmentalist - knows her opponents find her
difficult to attack. When Arizona's ubiquitous mining
industry pushes for taxpayer bailouts to clean up their
toxic sites, Honan stresses the fiscal conservatism that her
opponents allegedly believe in and exposes the hypocrisy of
supporting corporate welfare.
A journalist, advocate for children with disabilities and
officer in her Republican women's club, Honan joined the
Sierra Club in Phoenix three years ago, just in time to help
Arizona volunteers like Sandy Bahr and Joni Bosh with the
successful referendum that rejected one of the first state-
level takings statutes.
For the past three sessions, she has been fighting a
variation on the audit privilege/pollution secrecy
legislation that Farquhar encountered in Vermont. This
debate is tailor-made for Honan's conservative arguments.
Since Arizona politicians want to be "tough on crime," she
asks, why should they let environmental felons off the hook
with immunity for their environmental lawbreaking? When
Republican legislators heard Honan's argument that
conservatives were using a convenient double-standard, she
says "things got real quiet." That's when she knew she was
making progress. (The audit privilege bill was defeated
earlier this year.)
"Exposing the hypocrisy of my own party is an awful lot of
fun," says Honan. "All you have to do is be there with the
press and the public." By "public" she means the Club's
10,000 Arizona members, who she lauds as "totally the best
volunteers. They hammer their legislature on these bills."
In a state where environmental agencies are underfunded and
politicians urge state officials not to cooperate with the
federal Environmental Protection Agency, Honan believes that
the GOP notion of devolving all environmental authority to
the states is nothing short of irresponsible.
For her, the bottom line is exposing the real motives of
anti-environmental proposals. "They say their agenda is
conservative, but what it really comes down to is 'line my
pockets, please.'"
California Scheming
Next door in California, which has been, until recently, a
leader in environmental protection, Club lobbyist Bonnie
Holmes is trying to stop what she calls "an avalanche" of
anti-environmental bills passed by the Assembly - from a
bill that would weaken drinking water standards to one that
would eliminate the statewide air pollution reduction
requirements of 5 percent per year.
"There's a perception in the California legislature," says
Holmes, who was Angeles Chapter conservation coordinator
before going to Sacramento, "that the environmentalists had
their cake in the '80s, and that now it's time for the
pendulum to swing the other way and for businesses to recoup
their losses."
Businesses are eager to gut California's stronger standards
partly because the state has served as an example for other
states and for federal legislation. The Clean Air Act of
1990 modeled many provisions on California's tough air
quality laws. California's Zero Emission Vehicle program was
copied by states in the Northeast.
"If our opponents can weaken California regulations, then
their next step is to weaken the federal ones," says Holmes.
Fortunately, she adds, the Democrat-controlled California
Senate is likely to stop or amend most of the bad Assembly
bills. Holmes can also count on a strong volunteer activist
structure that can turn on the pressure when it matters
most. "We have a home lobbying network coordinated by Los
Angeles volunteer Joan Jones Holtz that can create a flood
of messages to swing-vote legislators within days."
Forming Alliances with Family Farmers In the Heartland
In Missouri, a state with a tradition of environmental
activism, even anti-environmental legislators ask Club
lobbyist Ken Midkiff for the Club's position on bills before
they vote. "They think we'll report their votes to their
constituents - and they're right," Midkiff says with
satisfaction.
Midkiff, who has worked for the 9,400-member Ozark Chapter
for three years, has helped develop alliances with family
farmers against takings, pollution secrecy and agribusiness
bills. He has also helped establish a model for running
relatively inexpensive radio ads on rural radio stations.
In the last two years, the pollution secrecy advocates have
kept Midkiff and company busy in Missouri, but the Ozark
Chapter's radio ads in the sponsor's district - which ran 10
times a day for five days - generated considerable attention
and helped defeat the bill. The ads "ruined the legislator's
spring recess," says Midkiff, "and he let me know it."
Missouri's legislature did pass a takings bill three years
ago - albeit a weak one that required only an analysis of
the impact of new regulations on private property. It
expires next year, so Midkiff is already gearing up, along
with his family-farmer allies, to defeat a repeat of it.
Midkiff credits this coalition-building with passage of the
state's landmark 1996 law creating substantial new
regulatory authority to prevent pollution from mega-
livestock operations. "It was remarkable that a rag-tag
bunch of environmentalists and family farmers won on this
issue," he says. "This bill was fought tooth-and-nail by
every agribusiness interest in the state."
Perhaps because of these successes, Midkiff isn't alarmed at
the move toward transferring regulatory authority from the
federal government to the states. "It's easier to pressure
state and local officials than the EPA or other federal
officials," Midkiff says. The chapter used this reasoning to
help defeat a bill prohibiting the state from having
environmental laws stricter than federal regulations. In a
Club-sponsored radio ad, an announcer asked listeners: "Who
would you rather have make environmental policy? Missourians
or federal bureaucrats?"
Holding the Line in Lansing
Midkiff's attitude toward devolution wouldn't work in
Michigan. With both chambers of the state legislature and
the governor's office dominated by anti-environmentalists,
Mackinac Chapter Director Alison Horton doesn't spend much
time wandering the halls of the capitol in Lansing. The
political climate has become decidedly unfriendly to
publicinterest groups, leaving the Sierra Club with a
massive challenge - being heard. So Horton, fellow staffer
Anne Woiwode and chapter volunteers are shifting their focus
from buttonholing legislators to getting the word out to the
press and the people.
Before the current administration, Michigan had a
progressive polluter-pays law for cleanup of contaminated
sites. One of the first major moves of Gov. John Engler's
(R) administration was to seriously weaken it, shifting the
burden to the taxpayers, leaving needed cleanups
underfunded. The administration also succeeded in putting a
pollution secrecy statute on the books and, after passing a
takings measure, badgered the legislature into a record-
breaking $100 million payout in a precedent-setting takings
court case.
To combat the state government's hostile stance, the
Mackinac Chapter celebrated Earth Day by announcing a
Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality whistleblower
protection program. The Club offered anonymity to state
employees who came forward to talk about how they were
prevented from doing their jobs. The administration "came
unhinged" at this announcement, says Horton. "The DEQ
spokesperson said the Sierra Club is a green organization
because we have mold on our brains. The governor's press
secretary accused us of being on a witch hunt."
Michigan's environmental organizations alternate the job of
appearing in legislative committee hearings to take the
abuse. Since the lower house is just a few seats shy of a
Democratic majority, which would break up the anti-
environmental monolith, Horton says the upcoming election is
especially critical. "We used to think of ourselves as a bi-
partisan state and some of the best laws on the books came
under Republican leadership, but there's not one real GOP
friend of the environment now," she says.
Winning Rural Allies in Georgia
In Georgia, however, environmentally-minded legislators
aren't split along party lines. Mostly, the division is
between rural and urban interests. "We still have a large
rural population that is friendly to us," says Georgia
Chapter lobbyist Neill Herring, "because they perceive us as
'the only people down here looking out for rural Georgia.
On rural preservation issues, the Club has even found allies
in the Forestry Association and the Farm Bureau. But the
state Department of Transportation, is still trapped in a
'50s growth mentality, says Herring, and thinks any problem
can be solved with more lanes.
Herring launched his political career when, as a carpenter,
he fought the power company's rate-hikes to pay for a
proposed nuclear plant. That's when he first encountered the
Georgia legislature, where he has now been representing the
Sierra Club and other clients for nine years.
Working with volunteer leader Mark Woodall, Herring and the
Club defeated a pollution secrecy bill in March with a
little help from what he calls a "freak political accident."
A farmer discovered that an underground petroleum pipeline
was leaking under his orchard, contaminating the water, and
that the leak was exempt from federal pollution reporting
requirements. That farmer - ironically a member of the
legislature - learned that under the secrecy provisions of
Georgia's audit privilege law, the pipeline company could
withhold evidence he might need in a lawsuit against it as
"privileged."
Devolution of federal programs to Georgia would have the
effect of "wholesale abandonment of regulations," says
Herring, "When Georgia does the right thing, which is rare,
they always blame the federal government for making them do
it." For more information on the Club's state program,
contact Paula Carrell at (415) 977-5668; e-mail:
paula.carrell@sierraclub.org.
Thanks to Raena Honan and Bill Craven for their
contributions to this story.
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