Buried deep in Tony Kennedy's excellent reporting in Political feud disrupts Minnesota outdoors and environment commission, there's this nugget:
[Tom] Hackbarth [R-Cedar} said his only motivation for cutting some projects from the LCCMR bill and adding others was to improve the overall package. Both he and McNamara emphasized that LCCMR recommendations are subject to legislative scrutiny. The projects they added to the bill without LCCMR review were meant to address “emerging issues,’’ Hackbarth said.
“I didn’t just whack things out because I didn’t like them,’’ Hackbarth said.
According to state records, Hackbarth was absent for 12 of 13 LCCMR meetings last year, including the all-important selection of appropriations. The package passed on a vote that included no audible dissent, with McNamara in attendance.
Hackbarth said he attended last year’s first meeting of the commission, when co-chairs were selected. He was nominated as a co-chair, but House DFLer John Persell of Bemidji received more votes.
Hackbarth said he stopped going to the meetings because he thought it was wrong for the commission’s House co-chair seat to be filled by a DFLer.
This is astonishing copy. The man who would be co-chair quits attending meetings after losing the co-chair gig to a colleague who spend his career working as a water quality specialist and environmental policy analyst.
As we noted in After line-item vetoes of special-interest raids on LCCMR funds, McNamara slithers off ballot, Governor Dayton line-item vetoed a number of the measures Hackbarth slipped into the bill. Kennedy reports:
The outdoors and environment commission that vets the use of more than $40 million a year in Minnesota lottery proceeds remains unsettled after a highly contentious wrap-up to its most recent funding cycle.
When the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) meets Tuesday in St. Paul, members will review discord in the legislative session that unraveled 18 percent of the commission’s recommended
Normally the Legislature embraces all but a thin margin of projects sanctioned by the commission. But this year, House Republicans authored a combination of cuts and replacement projects that were met by a resounding batch of line-item vetoes from Gov. Mark Dayton.
In the end, the LCCMR’s $46.3 million natural resources bill was reduced to $37.9 million, and key participants are still feuding.
“I think it’s irresponsible behavior,’’ LCCMR co-chair Nancy Gibson said Friday in her assessment of major changes penned by Republican Rep. Tom Hackbarth of Cedar in a committee chaired by Rep. Denny McNamara, R-Hastings. The two legislators also are voting members of LCCMR.
Gibson commended Dayton for nixing the replacement projects favored by Hackbarth and McNamara, saying some were unconstitutional and none were reviewed by the commission. “He [Dayton] closed the door on abuse, which I think is great,’’ said Gibson, who originally was appointed to LCCMR by Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Read the entire article at the Star Tribune to get the full picture of Tom Hackbarth's big pout.
Photo: Tom Hackbarth, who pushed another unvetted idea in a different bill: blaze pink for firearm season deer hunters.
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