In Wednesday's hearing by the Minnesota House Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee on the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's (MPCA) budget overview, Republican House members trolled Commissioner John Linc Stine about the composition and workings of the agency's Citizens Board.
Since the Citizens Board required Riverview Dairy to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement to go ahead with its "Baker Dairy" unit in Stevens County, House and Senate Republicans have insisted that the decision--the only one of its kind asked of a large feedlot since the agency (and board) were authorized in the late 1960s--has had a chilling effect on agriculture in the state.
There's one chilling effect that Bluestem has been able to identify: the contribution of at least $45,000 in cold hard campaign cash to the Minnesota state House Republican Campaign Committee (HRCC; year-end report here) by members of the Fehr family, owners of Riverview Dairy. (Some might add in an additional $2500 donated by Mitch Fehr, to make the total rise to $47,500).
This thinking was in full flower in Wednesday's hearing (audio here); Bluestem has sampled a few choice moments for our readers.
Chairman McNamara as chief troll
After Dan Fabian grilled Commissioner Stine about membership of the board, committee chair Denny McNamara (R-Hastings) said in a substanceless rant about the board:
McNamara: I guess I would like to understand better the logic of this. It seems like--and I often visit with Mr. Merritt, who has a long history with the agency dealing back with me back when I was a college student and there was scary things happening in this state and I often say you didn't dare go in the Mississippi River when I was a kid.
We're much better today. We have a process much better and I don't think this process is serving the state correctly today.
I would like to know what your authority is. I think there's a real responsibility. I don't know if the Citizen members have an obligation but I think this needs a lot of work and I'm really really troubled where it's at--this is not similar things in DNR and BWSR or other agencies in our purview and we need to fix this.
This is broken. This is broken. There's not a good process here and I would like to see us work together to get it fixed.
McNamara sees the improvement in Minnesota's environment, crediting it to "the process," but then attacks the process and the Board, which has been a feature of the agency since its founding. It's hard to see what's "broken," but McNamara keeps digging, pointing to another board with citizens on it:
McNamara: Are they, the members, subject to the open meeting law similar to like members of the Lessard Sams are in limiting the conversation between the Citizen Board members, Mr. Stine?
Stine: Mr. Chair, yes they are.
Not much pay dirt there--and Stine responds:
McNamara: Thank you--
Stine: And if I could comment--
McNamara: I would ask you to and I apologize, you're a couple of minutes over, I probably now with my points probably have some folks who want to make points with you and the room, so if you're okay, I hope you can stay for a few more minutes. Commissioner Stine.
Stine: Thank you, I'll be happy to stay for a few more minutes, Mr. Chair. I do want to differ with your opinion that the Board is broken.
I find that the Board adds value to the deliberations of the agency and to the quality of the agency's work. In my experience, Board members come with a very serious attention to the work that they're doing. They understand that the staff of the agency worked there in many cases their whole career on developing their skill and their technical abilities in the work that we do and it isn't been my experience that the Board members take off on tangents to specifically go after the work of our staff.
We ask--when I meet with a Board member, when a Board member is appointed, the Commissioner's Office meets with the new Board members and we provide them with two things. One is sort of a history of the Board and the Board's decision-making roles. We also give them a packet of legal information about their duty.
Among the more humorous things about McNamra's implications about the board members' lack of expertise is that ag rep and farmer Kathy Draeger, who serves as the antis' poster child for all that they think is wrong, wrong wrong and broken, broken, not only farms with her husband, holds graduate degrees in soil science and water resource science, as well as years of work in Iowa and elsewhere in ag-related issues. Bluestem is puzzled just what the issue might be.
Listen to the exchange here:
Frank Hornstein: A personal story
After McNamara spoke, Representative Karen Clark (DFL, Minneapolis) raised a few questions unrelated to the Board, then Frank Hornstein (DFL-Minneapolis) shared his personal experience with the board 22 years before as residents of Dakota County wrestled with a plan by their county commissioners to build a garbage incinerator.
Here's the audio:
Hansen: empowering citizens over lobbyist stakeholders
The committee DFL Lead, Representative Rick Hansen (South St. Paul), followed Hornstein's personal story with a larger point about the inherent value of empowering Minnesotans--citizens who get it--to serve on boards.
Hansen says:
Thank you Mr. Chair and Commissioner. In the last year, I've become familiar with a term that I hadn't heard before and it's called "regulatory capture." And that's a term that was first used in the financial industry where the people being regulated become so comfortable with the people that are regulating them that objectivity disappears.
. . . I think that this whole discussion on the Citizens Board you know at best some Minnesotans may think that something that was done back in the Seventies is quaint and outdated. At worst they may think that its time has gone.
. . .[H]aving been here ten years, I looking at things we've passed, both sides of the aisle, we tend to institutionalize stakeholder involvement in boards now more than we did in the Seventies, the Eighties or the Nineties.
We actually write into statute special interests being on boards, rather than citizens being on boards, rather than having that objectivity of just regular Minnesotans. And I think if anything if we talked to our constituents, regular Minnesotans are--get it. They get what's happened.
They get that it's often the powerful or the connected that have a seat at the table rather than them., and so having citizens involved (and what is that level of involvement) I think is important.
But I think that we as a legislature and as a government have to look at how we are writing special interests into decision making all the time here with boards and commissions, and what the role should be--whether it should be Minnesotans who are there at a board saying, "What's best for Minnesota?" versus people being on boards saying "What's the piece of the pie that I get for my interest? What is my interest going to want out of this decision?"
That's a bigger discussion, so I'd be happy if we have that discussion. I think there are bills in front of us now and there have been bills in the past--what is the best way to involve Minnesotans in the decisions, rather than just involving the people who are paid to be there to represent that thing?
And Mr. Chair, you know that in the past I've offered amendments for some of these boards that say no lobbyists should serve. I think lobbyists could serve on the Citizens Board. I don't think they should because they have a different role if they're representing that.
So we need to talk about how we involve Minnesotans rather than how we involve "stakeholders" and what happens here--and I know there are plenty of people who are upset with a decision, that's why we're having this discussion--but I think we should talk about the process and who is involved in making decisions, and how we can better that for all of Minnesota.
Here's the video:
Photo: Representative Denny McNamara
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