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About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 16, 2016)
6 CapitalPress.com Editorials are written by or approved by members of the Capital Press Editorial Board. December 16, 2016 All other commentary pieces are the opinions of the authors but not necessarily this newspaper. Opinion Editorial Board Publisher Editor Managing Editor Mike O’Brien Joe Beach Carl Sampson opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion O UR V IEW About that new BLM plan for making plans ... W hen the Trump administration gets in the saddle Jan. 20 one of the fi rst items on its “To Do” list should be tossing the Bureau of Land Management’s new Plan for Making Plans into the dumpster. Again, the Interior Department of Sally Jewell has joined the legion of other bureaucrats in generating massive plans, rules and regulations that completely overwhelm their targets. The BLM’s “Planning 2.0” rule joins the Waters of the United States regulations and the Food Safety Modernization Act as telephone book-sized icons of overregulation. Planning 2.0 is 367 pages of bureaucratese that shrouds what should be a simple process in, well, more process. The federal government owns plenty of public lands — too much, in our opinion. The BLM The BLM now says it wants to be fl eet afoot. “Under the current system, it takes an average of eight years for the BLM to fi nish a land use plan. Too often, by the time we’ve completed a plan, community priorities have evolved and conditions on the ground have changed as well,” Courtesy of Public Lands Council BLM director Neil Kornze said Cattle and greater sage grouse share public land in Idaho. Grazing advocates are in a press release. “This update concerned about changes to the Bureau of Land Management planning process, to our planning rule allows for which were released in fi nal form Dec. 1. a more streamlined process that able to work out any “plans” they also increases collaboration and alone manages 245 million acres transparency.” need. in 12 Western states. That’s 10 So the planning process will Note the word “local.” The percent of the land in the U.S. shrink from eight years to, what, federal bureaucracy can best Come to think of it, what, fi ve years. That’s still a lot of be described as a 3,000-mile- exactly, is the purpose of paper-shuffl ing and spinning of long screwdriver that tells local planning how to deal with every agency managers what to do. We wheels. square inch of what the federal The plan also puts national believe those managers should be government owns? allowed to actually manage land. environmental groups on equal We may be naive — we’ve footing with local residents. That’s what they’re paid for, not been called worse — but local It should be noted that many sponsoring dog-and-pony shows BLM managers, in conjunction for the benefi t of the Washington, environmental groups apparently with local residents and local seek to set aside every corner of D.C. crowd. government offi cials ought to be O UR V IEW federal land as nation monuments or parks. If you doubt it, take a look at the mega-land grabs they have proposed for Oregon. The environmentalists want to designate 2.5 million acres in southeastern Oregon as a national monument — and double the size of another national monument in Southern Oregon. Just wait until Planning 2.0 opens the fl oodgates for more of their scheming and dreaming. BLM lands are supposed to be managed for multiple use. What the environmentalists want is the opposite of that. They want exclusive use and the ranchers, many of whom have lived and worked there for generations, can just go away. It took two years for the folks at BLM to write this new plan for making plans. That, in our opinion, was time wasted. California species protectors don’t let facts get in their way By DAMIEN SCHIFF For the Capital Press he California Endangered Species Act is one of the strongest environmental laws in the Golden State. It’s not surprising that the California Legislature want- ed to make preservation of at-risk species a top priority. The Act does so principally by forbidding the “take” of any listed species — a regu- latory requirement that often can have signifi cant negative effect on property values. But with the power to impose such heavy burdens comes an important respon- sibility. The state agencies that administer the Califor- nia Endangered Species Act must be diligent in ensuring that species that are currently protected do not linger longer than necessary on the lists of protected wildlife and plants. T President-elect Donald Trump has named fast food executive Andrew Puzder as Labor secretary. Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press Key requirement Labor, EPA choices offer relief from overregulation P such as the Waters of the U.S. rule. enforcement.” We resident-elect Donald Perhaps his major sin in the take that as a sign Trump’s nominees to lead the eyes of his critics is that he is not that the “hot goods” Department of Labor and the convinced of man’s role in the shenanigans the Environmental Protection Agency earth’s changing climate. Labor Department leave farmers and ranchers with Scott Pruitt With Alabama Attorney General has employed in the little to complain about. current administration Luther Strange, Pruitt opposed the Andrew Puzder, chief executive efforts of a coalition of Democrat won’t be tolerated. offi cer of CKE Restaurants, the attorneys general to investigate Puzder opposed the Obama parent company of the Hardees and energy companies and think tanks administration’s attempts to double Carl Jr.’s fast food chain, has been for disputing the science behind the salary threshold that exempts nominated for Labor. the “settled” theory of man-made certain supervisory workers from Puzder, a lawyer by training, overtime. While he does not oppose climate change. joined the Carl Jr.’s organization “Reasonable minds can increases in the minimum wage, in the 1990s and is credited with disagree about the science behind he has warned that such increases putting together a deal that solved global warming, and its fi nancial problems. disagree they do,” Later he helped it buy the We take that as a sign that the “hot Pruitt and Strange said Hardees chain, and again goods” shenanigans the Labor in a statement. “This came to the rescue when the company fell on hard Department has employed in the current scientifi c and political debate is healthy, and it times a decade or so ago. administration won’t be tolerated. should be encouraged. Not one to strictly It should not be silenced observe political with threats of criminal correctness, Puzder is prosecution by those who believe should not price young people and also responsible for the chain’s that their position is the only correct unskilled workers out of the labor controversial marketing campaign one and that all dissenting voices market. — either a plus or a minus, must therefore be intimidated and EPA nominee Scott Pruitt, the depending on how you feel about coerced into silence.” attorney general of Oklahoma, bikini-clad models suggestively Neither Puzder nor Pruitt deny is probably Trump’s most devouring hamburgers and chicken that there’s a role the agencies sandwiches. We assume all relevant controversial pick at this writing. The Sierra Club compared putting they’ve been nominated to lead. wage and work safety laws were But they don’t support regulatory Pruitt in charge of the EPA to observed. putting an arsonist in charge of the overreach, or thuggish and The New York Times quoted overbearing enforcement actions. fire department. an associate who said Puzder saw They should provide farmers, Pruitt is a tough critic of the “a role for government to provide ranchers and processors with some agency, and has joined litigation to advice to employers, rather than block what he has termed overreach, welcome and justifi ed relief. simply deterrence by ‘gotcha’ Recognizing that, the Leg- islature inserted into the state’s endangered species law the re- quirement that the Department of Fish and Wildlife review the status of protected species ev- ery fi ve years. Moreover, based on the outcome of the status review, the department is required to petition the state’s Fish and Game Commission for an appropriate change in the re- viewed species’ status. Sim- ilar status-review provisions are found in the federal En- dangered Species Act, as well as many state acts, including those of Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico and Montana. The trouble is that, for many species protected under the California law, their man- dated status review is decades overdue. In fact, there are cur- rently well over 200 protected species for which a fi ve-year review is overdue. To rectify this blatant der- eliction of governmental duty, the California Cattlemen’s As- sociation fi led suit earlier this year in state superior court, represented by attorneys with Pacifi c Legal Foundation. The lawsuit argues that the depart- ment has an important public duty to perform the mandated status reviews. Reviews needed? The department, however, has taken the position that it need not do the status reviews. The agency gives two main reasons for its position. First, the agency contends that the remedy for the as- sociation, or, for that matter, any other person or entity that wants the status reviews done, is to petition the commission for a delisting of any species that may no longer warrant listing. Guest comment Damien Schiff Second, the agency argues that it simply does not have the money or time to do the reviews, and that the courts should not order it to rework its internal priorities. Neither of these arguments is convincing. To begin with, the depart- ment has the logic of the Act backwards. An interested par- ty should not have to petition for a delisting to obtain a fi ve- year status review. Rather, it is precisely the information that would be contained in a department review that would inform any delisting petition. Second, the Department should not be able to pick and choose which Fish and Game Code provisions it wants to abide by. The fact is that all state agencies consider them- selves to be underfunded. Were the department cor- rect, no agency could ever be forced to comply with the law; it need only respond that it doesn’t have enough money. But protection of endan- gered species is an important legislative policy which the department should not be able to avoid so easily. Debate not academic The debate is not just aca- demic. The federal Endangered Species Act contains a simi- lar fi ve-year review provision and, not surprisingly, it was the custom of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to ignore the obligation. That changed following the lawsuits brought by Pacifi c Le- gal Foundation. As a result of court-ordered reviews, many species have been proposed for status change. At least seven federally list- ed species for which a status review has recommended a change are also protected under California’s endangered spe- cies law. It doesn’t take much imagination, then, to conclude that there may be many spe- cies improperly listed under the state act. For every species that is improperly listed, department resources are being expended unnecessarily. These resources could be used, instead, to pro- tect those species truly in need of regulatory protection. The cattlemen’s lawsuit aims to vindicate the interests of landowners and environ- mental advocates — in short, the public interest — in seeing wildlife laws faithfully execut- ed. That’s a result that all juris- dictions should follow. Damien Schiff is a principal attorney with Pacifi c Legal Foundation.
