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Document 28 of 338.

October 8, 2000 Sunday

SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1608 words

HEADLINE: La. sees big coastal bill washed away;
CARA fails in Senate despite wide support

BYLINE: By Bruce Alpert; Washington bureau

BODY:
WASHINGTON -- Sponsors of a bill that would have provided $45 billion over the next 15 years to protect environmentally sensitive areas, build urban parks and establish wildlife refuges and other conservation programs were finally forced to surrender last week.

Despite having the support of three quarters of the House, two thirds of the Senate, President Clinton and all 50 state governors, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act fell victim to a small but powerful knot of opponents and a legislative deadline that eventually turned its own momentum against it.

The bill, the biggest investment ever in land and water conservation programs, was especially important to the Louisiana congressional delegation, which had earmarked up to $200 million a year to begin repairing the state's damaged and disappearing coastline.

Given the failures of previous efforts to redirect federal offshore oil and gas royalties to conservation efforts, the bill known as CARA seemed to be in a surprisingly strong position as Congress began the final weeks of this session.

The House had approved the bill overwhelmingly in May, and the Senate Energy Committee, despite a membership that included seven of the bill's most vocal critics, approved it in August.

Optimism rose when President Clinton, surrounded by mayors, Little League coaches and land-preservation advocates who had formed one of the more effective grass-roots lobbying efforts of the 106th Congress, used a Rose Garden ceremony to declare his support.

Their finest hour sours

But only hours after the president's announcement, the proposal was in deep trouble. The bad news was delivered by telephone.

George Frampton, Clinton's environmental adviser, asked for an honest assessment of whether House-Senate negotiators would consider adding the CARA legislation to an Interior Department spending bill. Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, was blunt: It will never happen, he said.

By the next day, one of the committee's members, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., had written an alternative proposal that provided for solid increases in conservation financing, but with none of CARA's guaranteed financing and with far fewer benefits for Louisiana.

"He's an old U. of Washington football player, and he saw the hole and ran through it, realizing that CARA wasn't going anywhere, and putting together the bill with the help of his staff and delivering it the next afternoon," Dicks spokesman George Behan said.

CARA supporters were outraged that their three years of work could be replaced by a bill put together literally overnight.

With about two weeks left before adjournment and a pressing need to pass the bills that keep government running, much of the momentum that CARA had created was suddenly transferred to this alternative. Many supporters figured it was their best chance to get something passed this year.

Some blame the White House for endorsing the Dicks compromise while publicly embracing CARA. Some blame Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, who never formally endorsed the bill. Others blame Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., a sponsor of CARA, who never brought CARA to the floor.

Opposition mobilizes

But plenty of bills with popular backing stalled this year: measures promoting campaign finance reform, a prescription drugs benefit for seniors and closing gun control loopholes, to name a few.

"The legislative process this year has been exceptionally -- what shall we say -- constipated," said Norm Ornstein, political analyst for the American Enterprise Institute. "It's been harder especially in the Senate to get anything done."

There are several factors, Ornstein said, including Lott's inability to keep his GOP caucus together, and the partisan nature of an election year "in which the stakes are higher than in any we've seen in our adult lifetimes."

CARA's defeat was accomplished by a small band of opponents able to take advantage of the legislative process, particularly the procedural rules in the Senate that let a single member wield enormous control. They used the threat of delaying tactics as Congress was rushing to adjourn to keep CARA off the Senate floor, then used the process for negotiating final spending bills to adopt their own alternative.

Part of the opposition came from the appropriators , who didn't like the idea of giving up control of such a large chunk of money, which would now flow directly to the states and local projects. The other faction in opposition included lawmakers from Western states who feared the money would set off a federal land grab.

Proponents might have been able to overcome the Western opposition but couldn't get past the appropriators.

Landrieu champions La.

The idea for CARA came a little more than three years ago, when a panel at the Office of Minerals Management said the federal government ought to return a percentage -- it suggested 25 percent, or about $1 billion -- of offshore oil and gas royalty payments to the states where the production occurs. It's only fair, the panel said, because the government returns 50 percent of royalty payments to the states from federal land-based resources.

The panel noted that Congress had created the Land and Water Conservation Fund in 1964 with the goal of using revenue from offshore oil and gas operations to buy land and water assets.

Congress never came close to fully financing the program, which is authorized at about $900 million a year.

CARA would have fully financed the program and also included coastal impact assistance for oil-producing states such as Louisiana, a wildlife management program and money for historic preservation, youth conservation corps, endangered species and urban parks.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., the bill's chief sponsor, said the fact that Louisiana would be a major benefactor was more than reasonable, given that the state produces more than 80 percent of the offshore oil and gas royalty allocations that would pay for the bill. Also, she said, it has the most urgent needs.

"Since 1930, Louisiana has lost more than 1,500 square miles of marsh," Landrieu said. "The state loses between 25 and 30 miles each year -- nearly a football field of wetlands every 30 minutes. By 2050, we will lose more than 600 square miles of marsh and almost 400 square miles of swamp. That means the nation will lose an area of coastal wetlands about the size of Rhode Island."

Disparate forces unite

But Landrieu credits the bill's clear benefits for all 50 states with helping to produce a coalition of about 5,000 organizations and groups that were able to drum up support for the bill in a number of ways. The coalition won endorsements for CARA from more than 200 major newspapers.

"It was very effective in getting groups that normally don't work together to stick together," said Jack Caldwell, secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources. "We all understood, that while we may not have an interest in every provision in the bill, that we needed to advocate for all the provisions if we were going to move the bill forward."

Throwing in the towel

But the bill went nowhere in the first year after its introduction.

The Senate was waiting for the House to act, and the House was stalled by a host of issues, mainly how to alleviate the concerns of private-property advocates without causing environmentalists to oppose the bill.

Reps. Chris John, D-Crowley, and Billy Tauzin, R-Chackbay, and other bill supporters met every week for nine months to try to get an agreement.

Finally, they achieved a most unlikely alliance. The bill would be sponsored by conservative Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska., chairman of the House Resources Committee, and liberal Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., two protagonists who fought regularly and often on almost all environmental legislation.

The bill passed the House in May by a 315-102 vote and headed to the Senate.

Landrieu worked it hard, talking about CARA to members wherever and whenever she encountered them. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., started to refer to CARA as "Mary's third child."

She maneuvered it past a hostile Senate committee, but it would never reach the floor. Landrieu tried some last-minute procedural maneuvers of her own, but the alternative proposal and the adjournment deadline finally forced her to throw in the towel.

Alternative bill falls short

How much Louisiana will get on the alternative Dicks measure isn't known because the decisions on allocations, or even whether to spend the money, will have to be made by the congressional appropriators. And the money won't go directly to state and local agencies but will be dispersed mostly by federal agencies.

Dicks said he hopes the CARA supporters will eventually get over the bitterness of their legislative defeat and realize that it was through their efforts that Congress was persuaded to double previous allocations for land and water conservation.

But Landrieu said the alternative is too flawed to give CARA supporters much solace, given that they had pushed for guaranteed financing, with key decisions on how to use the money left to state and local organizations.

"Not all of that environmental work takes place in Washington, D.C.," she said. "A lot of this work takes place in our hometowns all across the nation, with our governors' offices, with our mayors and our county commissions, on ball fields and soccer fields, on cleanup days and Earth Days.

"That is the hope that CARA would bring that will be left on the table."

GRAPHIC: Sen. Mary Landrieu Failed bill she sponsored was biggest-ever conservation allocation Rep. Norm Dicks La. stands to gain much less from the Washington congressman's alternative bill

LOAD-DATE: October 24, 2000

Document 28 of 338.


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