Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 20, 1994 TAG: 9403310272
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARTIN VAN DER WERF ARIZONA REPUBLIC
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The four members of Congress, all Democrats and all key figures in the debate on the overhaul of public-land laws, have agreed not to meet with the Interior secretary or his staff unless all four are present, because they believe they have been misled in individual meetings in the past.
They also have agreed that Babbitt's entire reform agenda - revising mining laws, slowing down the pace of logging, raising fees for concessionaires in national parks - is in jeopardy if he doesn't get tougher on the grazing-fee issue.
``This grazing thing isn't about grazing any more,'' said Rep. Mike Synar of Oklahoma. ``It's about whether people's words are going to be kept. This administration promised reform of basic land laws. We're going to hold them to it.''
Synar, Rep. George Miller of California, Rep. Bruce Vento of Minnesota and Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada sent a letter to Babbitt criticizing his latest grazing proposal and telling him they cannot support it in its current form.
Synar said that if the policy is not made tougher, Babbitt is risking ``personal and professional'' relationships with himself and other members of Congress who support Babbitt's reform agenda.
Synar, Miller, Vento and Reid are all chairmen of committees or subcommittees that oversee public-land policy or the funding of agencies that implement lands laws.
Babbitt's proposal for new grazing regulations would abolish existing grazing advisory boards, dominated by ranching interests, and replace them with ``multiple resource advisory councils'' for each Bureau of Land Management district. Membership in the councils would be split among ranching and other commodity interests, ``bona fide'' environmental groups and other public land users, government officials and members of the general public. Each state's governor would play a role in nominating members, but the interior secretary would make the actual appointments.
Babbitt said the effort is part of an attempt ``to find common ground and new ways of bringing westerners together to find a new equilibrium in the form of a strong livestock industry, flourishing within vigorous, healthy landscape systems.''
The draft policy ``has all but eliminated the concept of national standards and guidelines,'' the letter from the four congressmen says. The result, they wrote, could be a fragmented, undefinable patchwork of policies.
``Our concerns ... are so substantial that we will be unable to support the proposed regulations unless significant progress is made toward adopting the improvements we are recommending,'' the four wrote.
Kevin Sweeney, a spokesman for Babbitt, defended Babbitt's proposal as a ``fair, strict policy'' that is enforceable.
On the other hand, he admitted it is not as tough as a proposal put forward by Babbitt in August or a compromise proposal that Reid introduced in the Senate in October that was defeated by a filibuster.
``If they are going to compare [the new proposal] to the August proposal, there may be a lot of changes and a lot of them may disappoint them,'' Sweeney said.
He added that although there may be minor tinkering with the grazing proposal, ``most of the major decisions have been made.''
The Clinton administration and Babbitt, a former Arizona governor, came into office promising reforms of a number of laws, including those governing grazing, mining and concessions policies in national parks.
Hopes were raised not only for environment-minded members of Congress but for members of environmental organizations, who had watched their agendas wither during 12 years of a Republican White House.
They, too, now appear to be turning on Babbitt.
``I am pretty disappointed in what Secretary Babbitt is doing,'' said Jim Norton, Southwest representative of the Wilderness Society. ``He's weakening his own reform proposals so much that there isn't much reform left in them.''
Johanna Wald, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, ``It does appear that the resolve to make major changes in the ways we run federal rangelands has lessened.''
by CNB