Political News:

Darby Nelson: Final Passage!

05/21/09
Darby Nelson, a member of the Lessard Outdoor Heritage Council and president of the board of Conservation MInnesota, reports on this week's final action on the first spending bill from the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment

Late Monday night the legislature made history by passing the Legacy funds bill by overwhelming margins. Money from the Outdoor Heritage, Clean Water, Parks and Trails and Arts funds is now allocated.

Candidly, I believe legislators tried very hard to keep the faith with the voters in allocations from all four funds, insofar as they understood voters’ expectations. Individuals will always differ in where they think the dollars should go. We must remember two important things. The amount of money available fell far short of actual needs. We simply could not fund everything everybody wanted. Secondly, this is the first round of twenty-five years. Twenty-four years remain to make everybody happy.

Overall, LOHC council members are pleased with the outcome. All our funding recommendations survived, and much of the undesirable policy in the House bill was removed. In fact, the senate got lots more of their stuff that we favored in the final bill than did the House. The bill is certainly not perfect and we hope to see changes next year.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Northern Tall Grass Prairie project will go ahead unhindered by House language that had earlier put the project in jeopardy. Unfortunately, the council’s request that our small grants program be administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation was rejected. The DNR is to administer the fund instead, at least for this first year.  Give and take. That’s what conference committees are all about.

Kudos to Senator Ellen Anderson for her strong support of council positions in the negotiations. Special thanks to Senate Majority Leader Pogemiller for all his work advocating the LOHC position.

Listening to corridor conversations, I sense that in the end legislators recognized that our short time frame influenced our process, which led them to judge our work more kindly than otherwise might have been the case.

I would be remiss if I did not describe some strange happenings that last day. First, Senator Chaudhary, a strong advocate for sportsmen and the LOHC, was interrupted as he presented I think the game and fish bill. Senator Anderson asked if the senator had noticed that one section of his bill called for the elimination of the LOHC. Since the senator would strongly oppose such a measure, the question became how the language had gotten into the bill. Was it a prankster’s attempt to insert a bit of humor into the highly stressful final days of session?.

 At another point in the day, when the Legacy funds committee had reached agreement, nobody could find the copy to be xeroxed. Finally an alternate copy was discovered, but Chair Cohen had to apologize to folks in the packed room for the delay. Do gremlins inhabit the capitol?

So, does LOHC now get to go on vacation? Far from it. We meet Thursday to listen to public comments about our process. Hopefully people will tell us both the good and suggestions for change. Tasks for the summer include doing site visits to become more familiar with the resources of the state in need of protection, enhancement and restoration. (Hopefully we can incorporate public listening sessions during these visits.)

We also need to begin work on our strategic plan, refine our process, and start evaluating funding proposals for round two (which must be completed by late fall.)

I will continue my weekly blog describing what we are doing and learning in coming months. I hope you stay tuned.

 -- Darby Nelson