In Legislature takes aim at Dayton, environmental regulations, J. Patrick Coolican and Josephine Marcotty have teamed up at the Strib to provide a useful overview of the debate of bills to turn the setting of environmental regulation over to the legislature
Goatroped by lobbyists and campaign contributors, lawmakers would take decision-making from agency staff guided by science and give it to themselves--and the special interests who have admittedly written some of the bills.
It should be enough to have the rest of us joining Rep. Persell's Bull Hockey Umpire Society.
Coolican and Marcotty fill in some of the history of this struggle:
The Minnesota Legislature is muscling in on the power of state agencies in a broad effort to assume more influence over everything from water quality to health and safety regulations. . . .
The bills could trigger a sharp response from both the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees much of Minnesota’s clean water efforts, and Gov. Mark Dayton
Dayton, who vetoed a bill that would have given the Legislature a bigger role in regulatory issues in 2012, said the new proposals would “interfere with the clearly established responsibilities of the executive branch.” . . .
Previous efforts have resulted in the threat of sanctions from the EPA. The state enforces the Clean Water Act and other federal environmental laws at the behest of the EPA. If it fails to do so, the EPA can intervene. The federal agency warned the state in 2011 that rewriting the state statute that protects wild rice without a scientific basis, or failing to adopt it in permits, would trigger a response.
“The state may not issue a permit over the EPA’s objection,” federal officials wrote in a 2011 letter to Iron Range legislators Sen. Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, and Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake. “The EPA has the authority to require the state to take corrective action,” the letter read. Both Bakk and Dill are part of the group supporting changes in the regulatory process. . . .
In his 2012 veto letter Dayton quoted his GOP predecessor, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who vetoed a similar reach into executive powers in 2003.
It would have shifted “authority for conducting rulemaking from the executive branch to the legislative branch,” Pawlenty wrote, adding, “Under current law, the Legislature has granted the Governor’s office final approval authority on all rulemakings. This is sound policy as it provides accountability in a way that does not paralyze either branch of government.”
Read the whole thing at the Strib.
Photo: Rep. John Persell (DFL-Bemidji) begins his famous Bull Hockey speech in the Minnesota House Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee. Watch the video in Persell on water quality: "Bull hockey! . . . That ain't the way we do things in Minnesota."
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