SPEECH TO NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE OUTDOOR
RECREATION LIASON OFFICERS
Saratoga, New York
October, 30,
1999
It’s a pleasure to be here this afternoon. It’s nice to be able to welcome a group to beautiful upstate New York who can really appreciate it. While "NASORLO" may sound bureaucratic, I know that "outdoor recreation" is the heart and soul of your organization; it’s what makes you tick, and you couldn’t come to a better place with that interest in mind.
You also couldn’t pick a better time to have "outdoor recreation" in mind as a policy concern. Throughout the nation "open space" has become a rallying cry, and the success rate of open space referenda in last year’s elections demonstrated conclusively that people are willing to put their votes – and their money – where their mouths are.
And the rallying cry for "open space" has been heard even in Washington, overcoming the protective din of cars on the Beltway. As a result, "open space," which was barely on the agenda in the capital a couple of years ago, is now becoming a central concern.
There are many reasons for the increasing visibility of this issue. One reason is a mixed blessing – sprawl and its attendant problems have become so apparent that almost no one can ignore them. Second, the resulting ballot initiatives across the country have captured the attention of Washington politicians, including those who would otherwise try to trivialize the issue as the pet obsession of wooly-minded, anti-growth environmentalists. Third, the broad appeal of the issue has made it a focus of Presidential candidates and of the President, who now sees land conservation as a way to secure his place in history. Last but hardly least, the steady and increasingly forceful efforts of groups like Americans for Heritage and Recreation, led by folks like Jane Danowitz (who is here) and our own Commissioner Bernadette Castro, have focused attention on the issue and its salience for particular constituencies.
There are other reasons as well, but the sum total of their effect has been that, without anyone really noticing, open space has marched up the D.C. policy agenda. When I think of the way this happened, I’m reminded of a conversation in one of Ernest Hemingway’s novels in which one character asks his friend how he went bankrupt. "Two ways," the friend responds, "First gradually, and then suddenly." And I think that’s also how open space ceased being a bankrupt issue. lots of hard work and lots of individual realizations gradually accumulated to make "open space" suddenly appear on the agenda.
So, what does that mean in Washington, beyond a lot more talk? The most honest answer is also the one that’s most vague: "That remains to be seen." But let me outline where things seem to stand right now and what you might do to move this issue forward.
The most important federal program with regard to open space is, of course, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). As you well know, when the Fund was created back in 1964, it was supposed to receive $900 million from off-shore oil revenues [also known as OCS, outer continental shelf revenues]. But actual spending has fallen far short of that authorization, and the state side of the Fund has not been funded at all for several years.
There are two separate, if related, battles going on now in Washington about LWCF. The first is an appropriations fight to decide how much should be spent on the Fund in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Appropriations fights are becoming an annual, prolonged and painful ritual and this year’s is certainly fitting that mold. Indeed when people ask me whether I think Congress should move to a two-year funding cycle, my joking answer is, "What for? It almost takes us two years to come up with a budget now."
At any rate, the signs in this year’s fight over the Interior appropriations bill, which includes LWCF – the signs are quite positive. First, the House passed an amendment – and I was a leader in fighting for this – to include $30 million for the state side of LWCF. This amendment passed over the strenuous objections of the powerful, well-liked chairman who wrote the bill, Ralph Regula. Then the Senate included $20 million for state-side in its version of the bill.
The conference report emerged with $20 million. I’ve heard some carping from the interested community about that figure -- and I know the money won’t be able to go all that far -- but nonetheless the $20 million appropriation is an astounding and significant victory. It means that despite the desire to meet strict spending caps, despite the opposition of an influential Chairman, despite the Congressional desire to shut down, not expand programs; despite the growth of a property rights movement that frowns on all land purchases – despite all those things, state side LWCF was funded for the first time in several years. That’s real progress and it can be built upon.
Now the conference report has passed the House and Senate but it has not yet been sent to the President because he has said he would veto it, largely because of anti-environmental riders. And I agree with the President, by the way, that those riders do not belong on the bill, and shouldn’t be passed in any form. But another reason for the veto threat is that the Congress did not fund LWCF at the level the President requested in his "Lands Legacy" initiative.
Again, this is remarkable, when one stops to think about it. A President who was perfectly happy to propose no money for the ste state side of the Fund year after year is now making funding for that program into a cause celebre. How times change.
The outcome does remain to be seen. Negotiations between the White House and the House and Senate are continuing in hopes of reaching an agreement that can be passed by both bodies and sent to the President, avoiding the formal step of having him veto the current version. All the rumors indicate that there will certainly be money added for Lands Legacy. And, apparently, the White House is pushing the program so strongly that Senators, in particular, are beginning to use it as a "bargaining chip" – offering to accept more money for LWCF if the President will meet some of their needs and preferences in return. Not a bad story, so far.
The second battle in Washington concerns the long-range future of LWCF, and there, too, the signs are positive. As you well know, a number of bills have been introduced to make LWCF funding permanent and automatic, most notably Chairman Don Young’s Conservation and Reinvestment Act, or CARA.
Again, this issue was barely on the radar screen a year ago, and today there are a proliferating number of bills on the subject. Not only that, Administration officials, particularly Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, are out on the hustings demanding permanent funding. This is impressive, given that the President never even proposed the idea in his own budget.
So now we have members of both parties, from across the ideological spectrum, endorsing permanent funding. For example, back on Earth Day, the moderate Republicans released our top 10 priorities for the coming year, which we called the "TR 10" – named for our hero, Teddy Roosevelt. Guess what item topped our list: permanent funding of LWCF.
I should mention that I released the TR 10 at a news conference with my dear colleague, friend and mentor, Senator John Chafee. His passing last Sunday is an enormous loss for the nation, and this group in particular should mourn his passing deeply.
There was no finer man in Washington than John Chafee and you had no greater friend in there. In fact, the Nature Conservancy is one of the charities to which the Chafee family is directing contributions in the Senator’s honor. If not for this engagement, I would be attending his funeral this morning, and I will be at his memorial service in Washington.
In any event, the momentum for permanent funding is growing across the political spectrum. Indeed, the whole reason that LWCF was included in CARA was that it was a clear way to attract a large bloc of votes to a bill largely designed to accomplish an entirely different objective – setting up a separate, new program to funnel large amounts of oil revenues to Alaska. LWCF was quite rightly viewed as a potent sweetener to buffer an otherwise bitter pill.
So are we going to get permanent funding? Here, too, the outcome is uncertain but the signs are increasingly positive. CARA, as introduced, had a number of objectionable aspects from an environmental perspective, and so most moderate Republicans have followed my lead and refused to co-sponsor it, even while we promote the underlying concept.
That has helped encourage Chairman Young to negotiate changes in the bill to bring on those of us who have environmental concerns. For at least two months, Chairman Young has been working with Congressman George Miller, the senior Democrat on Young’s committee and a leading liberal voice in the House, and Congressman Richard Pombo, a conservative California Republican who is perhaps the House’s most vocal and effective property rights advocate to try to cobble together a compromise.
The last I heard this week, they weren’t there yet, but their meetings were becoming more frequent and the rumors were more positive. Clearly, if those three gentlemen can reach agreement, there won’t be too many members of either the House or Senate who can’t live with it; Miller and Pombo pretty much span the political spectrum between them.
If those negotiations are not successful, then, frankly, chances of moving forward before the 2000 elections are probably slim. Moderates won’t vote for a bill that contains unreasonable property rights language that would hamstring the federal side of the LWCF program. I await the results of the negotiations anxiously, in both senses of that word.
Even if the environmental negotiations conclude successfully, several budget issues will still have to be resolved because CARA spends almost $2 billion in revenues every year that are now going into the Treasury. But no matter what happens this go round, the issue of permanent funding is not likely to go away.
I also hope that any agreement includes a program to help states buy lands of national significance, such as the lands being put up for sale by paper companies in the Northern Forest of the Northeast. I know that some in this room have concerns that such a program might take money away from the state side of LWCF. But there may be other ways to fund the national needs program. And we can’t let institutional concerns blind us to some of our most pressing conservation needs, such as protecting large tracts of open space that the federal government is unwilling or unable to own.
So what role can all of you play to ensure that outdoor recreation is the ultimate winner in these appropriations and permanent funding battles? Quite simply, you need to work these issues with your state’s Governor -- the Governors are a powerful lobby in Washington these days -- and with your state’s Congressional delegations. Time is of the essence. Call and write and visit and get others to do the same. Talk to Congressional staff. Get to Members of Congress when they’re back home – like I am today, and like most Members are every weekend. Perhaps think of a press event you could do with your Representative at a park or playground that was built with state-side LWCF funds or at a site that would be helped by new funds.
What should your message be? First, that LWCF will make a real difference back home and that permanent funding is needed to guarantee the steady and predictable stream of financing you were promised 35 years ago. Second, I would make clear your interest in an acceptable CARA bill. We don’t want more folks co-sponsoring the bill until it’s cleaned up; additional co-sponsors now would only slow the momentum of the negotiations.
You want Members to say that they would enthusiastically support the bill if and when excessive property rights restrictions are dropped and other environmental concerns are addressed.
With your work, we will succeed in fully funding LWCF and addressing the concerns of all those Americans who have put "open space" on the political map. We will honor the memories of Teddy Roosevelt and John Chafee and Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson and all the other leaders who moved the conservation ethic forward. And we will leave to our children a healthier, greener, and more livable world.
Thank you.