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A BLM National Training Center Telecast
May 29, 1998
This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the telecast.
It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.
| Shea: | Good morning and welcome to the second Natural Resource Forum broadcast. Today, it's our honor to have Senator Dale Bumpers from Arkansas as our guest. Welcome. |
| Bumpers: | Thank you, Pat. |
| Shea: | Joining us live from Salt Lake City is Senator Bennett. |
| Bennett: | Thank you. Delighted to be with you. |
| Shea: | Our third guest is John Leshy, the Solicitor for the Department of the Interior. |
| Leshy: | Glad to be here. |
| Shea: | Our final guest is Cynthia Quarterman, Director of MMS. Welcome, Cynthia. |
| Quarterman: | Hi, Pat. Thanks for having me. |
| Shea: | We recently got the news this morning that Senator Goldwater had passed away. I thought it might be appropriate at the beginning of the broadcast, Senator Bumpers and Senator Bennett, if you might share recollections of Senator Goldwater. |
| Bumpers: | I served with Barry for 12 years -- I believe 14 years before he left the Senate. Have an excellent relationship with him. He and I had political differences and social differences about social issues and so on but we were good friends. I considered him to be a real icon in this country because he said what he thought and he stood up for what he believed. The truth of the matter is it's sort of like the old coke commercial, people are looking for the real thing. In Barry Goldwater, they found it. I was so sad to see he had passed away. |
| Shea: | Senator Bennett? |
| Bennett: | I remember when I first met Barry Goldwater as a young man in 1962. I was working on my father's campaign and went down to arizona to get a little help. And the thing that impressed me about him instantly was his energy. He seemed to radiate vitality. He was always active, doing things. And I followed his career, he and my father were good friends. I think we can credit Barry Goldwater in many ways with sowing the seeds of what came to be known as the Reagan revolution. It wasn't just the conservative ideas because they had been around for a long time but the thing that Barry Goldwater brought to the whole equation was his basic optimism, his conviction that we could prevail. He said that in republican conventions when everybody was sure the republican party was headed for a long, long period of time in the wilderness. And Barry Goldwater never gave up. Never stopped believing. And I think that optimism passed on to the Reagan revolution is a large part of the legacy he's left. He's been a great American icon as Dale has said and we're going to miss him. |
| Shea: | Thanks, Senator Bennett. Our first natural resource forum focused on the history and tradition of the Bureau of Land Management. Through the eyes of Elaine Zielinski and Ed Hastey, Marilyn Johnson and Governor Andrus, we examined the different turning points in the evolution of the Bureau's natural resource management responsibilities. Today's program will focus on the interaction between Congress and the Bureau and the department as part of the executive branch. The united states constitution in article I specifies the broadest powers to legislate in the constitution to the Congress... The House of representatives and the united states Senate. Senator Bumpers has served 28 years in the united states Senate and presently serves on the energy and natural resource committee which has legislative oversight responsibilities and authorization responsibilities for the department of Interior and BLM. Senator Bennett serves on the Senate appropriations committee which provides the critical appropriations that we expend each year. In detailing this program, it is my hope that the many pressure points in the legislative process experienced by Senator Bennett and Senator Bumpers can be articulated while at the same time the enormous administrative responsibilities functioning in the executive branch under article ii of the constitution can be articulated. To begin with, Senator Bumpers, after 28 years, how would you describe the relationship of Congress to natural resource management agency like the BLM? |
| Bumpers: | You gave me four years too many. I may have said 28, but it's more like 24. I was governor four years before I came to the Senate. It is difficult to answer a question -- that's a broad question. Difficult to answer that. But what I would say in prefacing my remarks on that is to say that number one, it was only in 1972 that the National Environment Policy Act was passed. And the environmental movement was nothing at that time. And it's grown by leaps and bounds ever since. And really, Bob Bennett, whom I consider one of my dearest friends -- Bob Bennett came to see me when I was in the hospital and spent time with me. You don't ever forget things like that. He's a dear friend but we have serious differences over the use of western lands. He comes from a state that's loaded with BLM lands, for example. I come from a state that has quite a bit of forest lands. But when it comes to how we're going to manage those lands, what the legislative role in that is, I feel that the legislative role ought to be a fairly dramatic one. I don't know of any other way to handle that except to say that when we pass the so-called FLPMA and everybody watching this show this morning is going to know what FLPMA is so i'm not going to go through all of that but when we passed that bill in 1976, I had been in the Senate a year and a half and quite frankly I was a real -- I hardly knew what BLM was. I can tell you that was a dramatic bill designed to govern the use of BLM lands in this country. And it was calculated to do two things. Number one to give the public some input. I mean, after all, I know this doesn't go down well with the westerners but actually the land belongs to all the people of the united states. And FLPMA was calculated to say we're going to use these lands in accordance with what we're setting out here and most of that was environmental. And it has been the rules and regulations that have been passed by the executive branch since then as I say again, with the environment uppermost in everybody's mind that has generated the most heat and controversy over the legislative role. As I say, everybody in the legislative body -- Bob will tell you he's concerned about the future use of those lands. He's concerned about the environment and the preservation of those lands. We probably have differences about how far you should go in doing that. But as I say, I think the legislature has a broad role in it but then we sort of defer to the executive branch when you start implementing the -- they draft the rules and regulations. |
| Shea: | I'm going to go to Senator Bennett. I want to -- one quick question to you Senator Bumpers. What is your most fond memory of those 24 years that you've served in the Senate? |
| Bumpers: | I hate to say this on a BLM show but saving the Manassas Battlefield because it's the only time in the 24 years i've been in the Senate where the Senators sat down at 9:00 At night and sat there and you could have heard a pin drop for three hours until midnight and I didn't think when I started that debate to save the Battlefield I had a prayer. But because people didn't have a -- as I say, they didn't have a dog in the fight, they didn't have money in a campaign, they could do whatever they wanted. They listened and at midnight I won the victory. We call it the Third Battle Manassas. |
| Shea: | Having just take be our boys out there, I want to thank you. It is a tremendous place. |
| Bumpers: | That's very important to every American. |
| Shea: | Senator Bennett, in your service to date and in your knowledge from watching your father, what would you say the role of the Senate and the Congress is in natural resource management? |
| Bennett: | I will not disagree with Dale and much of what he said. I think the passage of NEPA and FLPMA was a wise thing to do and I agree with him that it was aimed at opening the process up. The conviction that my constituents have, however, is that in opening the process up to other voices outside the state of Utah, unfortunately the executive branch has succeeded in shutting down the opportunity for people in the state of Utah to speak. And yes, the lands do belong to everybody in the united states but that doesn't mean the people who live on them make their livings from them, and in many ways, provide stewardship for them, have to be frozen out and ignored on the basis of somebody who sits to use a phrase that one of the leaders of the environmental group has used, sits in a carport in phoenix and pontificates about what should be done in a place where he's never been with lands he's never seen and dealing with people whose lives are being seriously affected. So the tension has come in my view, not necessarily because the Congress and the executive branch have moved in the environmental direction. The tension has come because there's a perception, some cases, I think reality, other cases may be perception but there is a perception that in an effort to preserve the environment in lands, in my state, the people of my state are being kept out of the debate. Their contribution to the pristine nature of the lands in their past stewardship is being ignored. And they find that very offensive and that's what gives rise to much of the heat of the debate. |
| Shea: | Let me ask you the same question I asked Senator Bumpers. In your tenure to date in the Senate -- |
| Bennett: | Much shorter than his. |
| Shea: | Recognizing you'll continue on undoubtedly, what would you say your fondest memory to date is? |
| Bennett: | Well, Dale might be surprised to learn that legislatively, the experience that gave me the most temporary exhilaration was when I joined with him and we passed the concession bill in the Senate 90-9. |
| Bumpers: | Bless you, robert. |
| Bennett: | I realized after the fact that I was much too young and green a Senator to realize how many toes I was stepping on when I helped mobilize the republicans on the committee. Dale easily got a majority of the democrats to vote for that bill. I got a majority of the republicans to vote for that bill. And then it went on to the floor and the leader, Senator dole, joined with us and we got 90 votes. Frankly, for a freshman Senator in his first term in a minority party, that was kind of a real rush. Now that i'm in the majority, I have to work a lot harder. I'm sure there are other memories that will come but you ask that question of dale and that was the first experience that came to my mind. |
| Bumpers: | Pat, let me interrupt. If it hadn't been for Bob Bennett -- I worked 18 years on trying to change the parks concessions bill and not until Bob Bennett came to the Senate, did I have a ghost of a chance of succeeding. And the scenario he described to you where we got a 90-8 vote on the Senate floor, never went through the House but right now, I don't want to preempt anything but Bob Bennett and craig thomas and I have been negotiating for what, three months, Bob? |
| Bennett: | At least. |
| Bumpers: | We have agReed on something that I think is really -- I may put that when I leave the Senate, that may be the high watermark. |
| Shea: | I do think that's consistent with what we're trying to achieve with this program and that is to talk about some of those discussions that go on and how there's never a single day when something happens in Congress. It's more of an evolutionary process. And speaking of evolution, I wanted to ask John Leshy who has served twice in the Solicitors office, first in the carter administration and now in Secretary Babbitt's Solicitor, also has worked on the hill. Where would you say, John, the biggest challenges are from the executive branch perspective of dealing with Congress on natural resource questions? |
| Leshy: | It's gotten a lot more complicated. I think natural resource management, generally. We used to have a lot of open space and places for all kinds of different uses to take place. Now we find out they all tend to conflict with each other. Even something as simple as recreation where it used to be we'll set aside these lands for recreation now we find recreational uses conflicting. The snowmobilers don't like the hunters and vice versa. Life is a lot more complicated. You lay on to that the role of science and what science is now telling us that's different from what it used to be. We used to put out fires. Now we find out that's not such a good thing. We have to be concerned about endangered species habitat and that sort of thing. It is just -- then you multiply the influences and the constituencies and the interest groups and open it up to public participation as certainly has been done in a dramatic way in the last 25 years and it makes the role of the executive branch and the natural resource manager just lots more complicated and more difficult and more complex. Grappling with these issues and trying to get change in a system that changes pretty slowly. Deliberately so. |
| Shea: | In the preprogram, we interviewed each of you and one of the comments you made in that interview which I thought was really astute was that there are a number of different centers of power. Certainly on the budget side we have our own budget process within the department then OMB then we go through the Congress. Congress has the authorization committees, the appropriations committees and now the budget committee. And I have to say that your observation about how many different centers of power there are is something that really struck home for me. |
| Leshy: | I think frankly we could debate this a long time but I think that's consistent with the way the founding father set the government up. They very much stressed concentrations of power and sought to create a system where lots of different institutions had some power. We've opened up public land management to the court system for example in a way in the last 30 years that didn't exist before. Now the judiciary has a role to play. You've got different Senators on the hill, different in the executive branch. We can't do things at Interior without consulting with the forest service or noa in the chamber of commerce. It makes change difficult, cumbersome, slow but it also is a strength of the system in a way because we've had the most stable government in the world for the last 200 years. I think that's a large part of the reason. |
| Shea: | In thinking about this program, Cynthia, I was very interested in getting somebody like me that was on the line so to speak with an agency in trying to manage it. Given of the rest of us, your experience as the director of MMS, where would you think some of the opportunities are in terms of that interaction between Congress and the executive branch in natural resources? |
| Quarterman: | I agree with John that the challenges are truly great but I think the opportunities are even greater today. Just in the five years that i've been with MMS, I have seen a real change in the way people think about government. I think a few years ago there was a lot of concern by people about government employees and that has, I think, gone away to a large degree. The changes within government caused by the administration -- vice president gore's reinvention efforts have changed the way the employees within the Interior think about themselves and the jobs that they do. They think that it's important to serve the customer and the customer is the public. And they concentrate a lot of effort on doing that. Technology has taken us miles and years away from where we were a few years ago so that even though we've downsized our forces, we've really concentrated our energies and the opportunities are outstanding. We've been working towards consensus and we continue to do that and I think the opportunities with the Senate and with the House, the biggest ones are are for us in the future to work closer together. I think in the past, we have all done our respective businesses and not taken the time to sit together and think about how we should resolve these resource management issues. During the '70s and '80s, much of the foundation for management of lands was put into place and now is the time for us to implement it within the executive branch to smooth out the problems and to go back to the Senators and Congressmen and start talking about ok, now that we've had these laws in place, how can we smooth the rough edges. And work together on that rather than being confrontational about it. |
| Shea: | I do think as we were talking this morning, when you and John and I were having breakfast, that the use of technology -- I mean everybody that i've talked to in BLM and the people i've met at MMS or office of surface mining are feeling an enormous pressure that they're doing much more with far less in terms of dollars. Part of that has been able to be accomplished in my judgment because we can use technology. This kind of broadcast is one example, the use of e-mail and the internet is another. But I think we're still going through the transition stage and I think you with MMS have really moved us in the direction we need to be doing. |
| Quarterman: | When I walk through the halls and visit my field offices today, each of our inspectors in the field can get information on every company that's available to them. The auditors are looking at appeals decisions passed over time where they would have had to go back in archives. Everything is right at their fingertips. That is an amazing change that allows people to be more productive I think. |
| Shea: | I do want to talk about royalty but before we do that, oregon sent us a question I want to pose to Senator Bumpers and Senator Bennett about exactly what Cynthia and John were talking about and that is the legislative framework was really established in the '70s. You were talking about FLPMA but NEPA is certainly part of that. There are a whole series of legislative acts. We're trying to come up with regulations. As we go through those regulations, what role do you envision Congress playing? Are they ones who will sit off to the side until they're completed or should there be a constant interaction going on as the regulations are being formulated? |
| Bumpers: | It would be better to have interaction while the regulations are being drafted. That prevents a lot of fires having to be put out later on. I don't know -- for example right now, what happens oftentimes in the Senate and House -- let's take an example, FLPMA... The real crux of FLPMA was to say that we will manage these lands and the Secretary has the responsibility of making sure there's no undue -- and this is the language of section 3908. He's charged with the responsibility of saying we'll manage these lands and we will not allow them to suffer any undue or unnecessary degradation. That's a high responsibility to put on the executive branch. We in Congress did that. That's what the law says. So when the Secretary starts drafting laws saying here's the way we're going to manage this land, he'll save himself a lot of grief if he'll talk to the chairmen, ranking members of the committees involved in these issues and saying here is the thrust of what we want to do. And if we sign off on that, he can be, you know, fairly well-assured these regulations will be ok. Now, if he doesn't do that, if he goes ahead and drafts the resolution, hands them to Congress and says here they are, here is a 90-day comment period. If you want to comment, send us a letter, he's going to create -- he, at that point, it's going to be difficult to get this done because first thing's going to happen. Somebody will offer an amendment on the committee or on the floor to say the issuance or the implementation of these rules will be stopped until -- and they'll set some date until we have a hearing until we do all of these kinds of things. This is really almost like being a member of the state department. It is a matter of diplomacy. |
| Shea: | Or there will be report language. |
| Bumpers: | Exactly. Report language is easy. |
| Shea: | Senator Bennett, what do you think the role ought to be or the relationship should be? |
| Bennett: | Well, I agree with Dale. As his description is exactly right of the kinds of problems that we get into. The other thing that comes to my mind is I contemplate this is of course what happens when the constituents come back to my office or to any other Senator's office and you find the legislation is written like this. The regulations are written like this and then the enforcement goes just right off the chart. You get people out there in the field who take it upon themselves to say well, this is the way I think this regulation should be enforced and I have no check whatsoever on me and you get some really wild kinds of stories then they come back to the Congress. They come back to my office. And say Senator, fix it. Well, the only way I can fix it is to get mad on the Senate floor or make a phone call or send a letter. And start meddling in really what should not be a legislative activity. But because part of our job has evolved into being some sort of ombudsman, when our constituents feel wronged and in many cases they've been ledge mately wronged, you get the cycle back. If we can get the executive branch to understand that they need some kind of ombudsman device of their own so that there is a safety valve that it doesn't always come to Congress, they won't be in quite as much hot water with Congress as they always seem to be over some of these specifics. |
| Bumpers: | To give a graphic description of what i'm talking about and a lot of BLM employees ought to pay attention to this. This was a secretarial discretion. Bruce Babbitt had started last year to implement you in rules governing mining. Under that section I mentioned on FLPMA, so-called 3908. Harry Reed, Senator from Nevada comes in because Nevada is the biggest mining state in the country and offers a resolution -- an amendment on the Interior appropriations bill saying bruce Babbitt cannot do anything further until all 12 western governors give him permission to. |
| Shea: | I'm very familiar with this. |
| Bumpers: | Of course you are. That's the effect of saying this is the end of any new rules to regulation governing mining. I went ballistic. That's the sort of thing that drives me nuts. I came to the floor of the Senate. After getting most democrats committed to it and I had gotten a lot of republican votes, too, I said to say that the Secretary ought to consult with these governors is fine but to say that if one of the 12 governors doesn't like this can veto it, effectively scraps all of that part of NEPA -- I mean of FLPMA. So that's the kind of thing you're asking me about. |
| Shea: | That's a great example. I got caught in the middle of it as we call -- I called every governor, talked with them. But you didn't get the governor. You got the staff person. And then you never were sure if the staff person had passed it on to the governor and then when at a certain point, people got upset because we hadn't "consulted." So there was no active definition of it. |
| Bumpers: | We worked that out. Harry Reed and I sat down. I said harry, I think i've got the votes to keep this from happening. We said the Secretary will consult with all of those governors and ask for their input and opinion and they're entitled to that. No one governor out of 12 ought to be able to veto. |
| Leshy: | That's a good example for a number of reasons. A lot of people think the executive branch is sitting there loving to write these rules and make all of these decisions. But, you know, the rule making process is actually an essential part of the governing process to give industry the regulated industry, some predictability and certainty and stability in this stuff. We have a legal obligation as Senator Bumpers points out to prevent unnecessary or undue degradation from hard rock mining. We could implement that by licensing all of the BLM managers to make their own decisions about what unnecessary or degradation is. You would have a lot of arbitrary decision making. The industry wouldn't know what to do. The industry welcomes the idea of rules that fill in the details and tell them what they can and can't do. Obviously those are controversial when we come back to the specifics of what they can and can't do. As a result of the Reed amendment, I think we're going through the most open process. We're posting every roughdraft of the rule we have on our internet. So everybody has access to each stage of our decision making process. I hope we can finish it. |
| Shea: | Senator Bennett, let me ask you a question there because you've had experience in the executive branch in the nixon administration and now as a Senator. What do you suggest on the regulation side that the role of staff be? Because I think that's one of the confusions that happens oftentimes for BLM employees is that they believe that the proper consultation has been made but they've in fact only talked to one staff person rather than perhaps two or three. |
| Bennett: | It has been my experience that very often staffers are more ideological than their bosses. Staffers are more rigid than their bosses, more protective of what they consider to be their boss's position than their boss would be. I go back to the concession bill, just before we had that meeting in the energy committee, where the bill was put together and passed, Senator Bumpers staff had told my staff absolutely not on one particular issue. I can't remember what it was now. That shows how burning and important it was. So I said to Dale as we were getting ready, i'm going to have to offer an amendment to this bill myself. Here is a situation that I can't live with in the way the bill is and i'm going to off they are amendment. And Dale said explain it to me and I did and he said that's perfectly reasonable, Bob, let's put it in the bill. I think it's important that you keep the principals involved to the time they can allow so the staffers really do know what the principals are of aer here. I don't think Dale's staffer was doing anything improper. He was protecting Dale's position as he understood it and had never had the opportunity to discuss this to the degree that I think it should have been discussed. Staff is essential. We can't write our own legislation and we can't get involved in the monitoring of the regulations. But the Senator should not leave everything to their staff because when they do, they end up shortchanging the process. |
| Quarterman: | Pat, this is an example of one of those opportunities I was talking about where Congress and the executive branch should work much closer together. I think the example that Senator Bumpers brought forward about writers of appropriation bill is very important. We just had a very similar situation happen with a piece of rule making that we were going to go forward with. And had done a great deal of consultation not only with our constituents but also with the Congress and at the last minute, a rider was put on appropriation to stop it. Senator Bumpers, thank you for sponsoring that legislation to appeal the rider. Even with the best of effort going forward, trying to do the right thing, consulting everyone, sometimes things don't happen as we would like and I think a lot of that could be resolved if we had had a conversation before the rider went forward. |
| Shea: | I think that's a great example, too. Because for people who are not familiar with the rules of the Senate, as I recall, that rider was put on a flood appropriations bill even though it related to oil activity offshore. And I think most people think that there has to be a certain germaneness but that's not the case. The beauty, if you will and sometimes the disadvantage of the Senate is the Senator can offer it at any time. |
| Bumpers: | We routinely ignore the rules of the Senate. [ Laughter ] |
| Shea: | I also think in the interviews done before this, Senator Bumpers made the point that when the Congress works the best is when there's the least focus on money. That is there aren't vested interests outside Congress that have some interest in the legislation and they really are able to come up with some pretty ingenious solutions. We recently -- you know, with this royalty and kind question, I think they saw the reverse of that. And that is where there are vested interests who have made some significant contributions, that does make a big difference in the outcome. |
| Bennett: | Let me step in here for just a minute because I read that in Dale's transcript. We can't have this all sweetness and light. We have to disagree about something. |
| Bumpers: | Let's go at it, Bob. |
| Bennett: | I think it's less a matter of when there's money involved -- money in terms of campaign contributions and special interest working, than an issue that can be easily demagogued. I made the point in my interview with you that we can have issues that are involving a tremendous number of special interests but the issues are sufficiently complex that they can't be reduced to a quick slogan and therefore, they can't be easily demagogued and that is the time when you get good legislation usually as opposed to something that regardless of how much money is there, can be turned into a bumper sticker or a ten-second sound byte and the temptation to summarize it as a slogan instead of deal with it as a problem is irresistible regardless of which party you're in. |
| Bumpers: | The only thing I would say is that Bob and I have a profound difference. There are two kinds of money interests. One is, for example, mining. The mining companies have a big stake in the rules and regulations on mining. And they have a big stake in defeating my efforts to change the way we handle mining in this country. That's one kind of economic interest and incidentally when Bob Bennett comes to the floor and takes issue with me as he does every year on mining, he's also defending the people that he says work in the mines. Those jobs are important to him just are jobs in Arkansas and any area are important to me. When you take a state like Utah or Nevada, where so much of the land is federal and a lot of jobs do depend on the viability of the industry, the mining industry, mining of the lands, I can understand that perfectly. That's one kind of economic interest. The other is campaign contributions. And of course, there, as I say, Bob and I have a strong difference. I have favored public financing of campaigns since i've been on the Senate. I know Senator Bennett is very strongly in favor essentially of the present system. And as I say, we just have a fundamental difference on that but to say that campaign contributions play no role or that the very legitimate interest he takes in the jobs, mining or forest or management or anything else in his state, has on employment, he would be a lousy Senator if he didn't take the position that he's going to save as many jobs as he can as long as it's commensurate with not raping the land and the forest. |
| Shea: | Cynthia, any perspective from your most recent experience? |
| Quarterman: | Well, in addition to the rider we were talking about in the appropriations bill, the royalty legislation that's before both the House and the Senate of Congress is one where I think money unfortunately played a large role in terms of bringing forward a bill that most people wouldn't understand why we were doing it. It is a case where we've tried to take royalty in kind within the government and have found that we lost money, the one time we did. We're trying it again. Smoothing out the rough edges. In the interim, Congress has come in and suggested that we take all of our oil and gas in kind. From a common sense business perspective, would you ever think of doing such a thing when you lost money in the past? I think not. I'm concerned that sometimes the constituents who have moneys available to them can force issues to go forward that the American people don't want to see happen. |
| Shea: | John, you were wanting to make a comment earlier. |
| Leshy: | I wanted to get back to Senator Bennett's point about the potential for demagoguing certain issues. Unfortunately a lot of the public lands issues lend themselves to that. We saw a recent example where the united states invented the concept of national parks. The united states has taken the lead for the last 40 years in exporting that concept around the world, trying to persuade other nations to do that. We've done through this world heritage convention. All of a sudden, that has now become the focal point of the management of the public lands. Loss of American sovereignty which is totally untrue but we've had this big public debate over this issue. Frankly, I think just from a demagogic standpoint, trying to take a very innocent program that's done wonders around the world and been the shining example of American leadership and turning it into something different. It's been very unfortunate. |
| Shea: | Senator Bennett, I want to come to you if I may. In the interviews again, it was fascinating to me and as you know, having represented the press for many years, i've had to take hard hits about what they do and when they do it but it was fascinating to me to see your perspective of the role of the press and Senator Bumpers's sense of the role of the press. I do think there is a common thread there and that is that 10-second sound byte, has become, if you will, besides money, the mother milk of politics that we've become so caught up in the need to put forth a message that sometimes the deliberative process has been compromised by that. But would you give us a summary of what you think the press does in the area of natural resource management? |
| Bennett: | Well, as I said in the previous comment, in a democracy, all of the power lies with the people. And that means the most important political power when you have so many people is access to the people. How can I, as a politician, talk to my constituents? And I have two ways. I can either buy an ad and talk to them for 30 seconds or I can go through the press. And if the press decides that they don't like what i'm going to say, they can keep me off the air. I say "they." They are always somebody who puts you on the air but in terms of getting the widest possible audience, there are only certain channels you can go through. And if somebody who controls that channel says "a," I don't want Bennett on the air because I don't like his views and i'm not going to let him say what I think he'll say so i'll find some reason to keep him off or "b," yeah, i'll put him on the air but i'll put him on the air with a commentator who will attack him in every turn, make him look bad, every politician is at the mercy of the press lords, if you will. In order to get his or her message to the constituency in order to appeal for support. The only way around that that we have is advertising. And that's one of the reasons why i'm not in favor of mccain feingold and the other things that come along that would limit my ability to buy an ad and use my first amendment rights to say what it is I want to say because that makes me all the more dependent upon the press channels and it gives them that much more power in controlling my access to get to my voters. |
| Shea: | Senator Bumpers? |
| Bumpers: | Well, pat, first of all, my bill -- I have a bill in the Senate and have had since early last year on public financing. And most of the developed nations of the world do a combination of the two but a lot of them rely heavily on public financing. My thought is number one, we would not spend 30% to 40% of our time raising money if we had public financing. Number two, you wouldn't have the press and I agree with Bob to some extent on this. You wouldn't have the press every time you cast a vote going to look at your contribution list to see who benefitted from your vote that gave you money last time. That's one of the things the press loves because it sells newspapers. And you could eliminate that. And thirdly, you would not take away the thing that Bob is concerned about. You would not take away his right to buy television time. He would still get television time. He could still spend his money however he wanted to but it would be based on money from -- it would be based on money that would come from the public coffers. People would contribute through the tax code. I don't want to turn this forum here into an issue on campaign finance. All i'm saying is anybody who thinks that we vote up there without paying any attention to who's giving the money in our campaigns is naive. And i'm not saying it will always be a perfect -- it will never be a perfect system even public financing but you can take away the argument of the press that the reason he's voting this way is because of some obscure arcane reason. If had you public financing and incidentally public financing has worked beautifully in the presidential race so when people sit around saying I don't want my taxes going for campaigns, if you look at the way it's worked in the presidential race, it has worked extremely well. But I don't think you'll ever get rid of the problem until we do this. |
| Shea: | I'm sure one question most of the BLM people are having watching this is any advice any of the panel would have as to how they as public servants should deal with the press. There's never an occasion that doesn't arise where some BLM employee is confronted with a press person and I think the common and very understandable fear is that if I talk to the press, they're going to convey a story that's not what I said. And so the tendency is to not say anything and then one of the advocacy groups steps in and creates a perspective that is beneficial to their point of view but has nothing to do in many instances with good public policy. Any advice to the BLM employees on that? |
| Bumpers: | I feel like i'm dominating too much of this conversation. I personally think they do very well. When I see a forest service or BLM spokesman quoted in the paper, it is almost always very thoughtful and compromising. Saying we're doing the best I can. These people have the responsibility of using -- god just gave us one planet. He just gave us one environment. We don't get seconds on it. We either save it or we destroy it. And these people are charged with the responsibility that we have given them for saving it. And what they're saying is this doesn't go down well with you. It doesn't go down well with you and I recognize that but our responsibility is to save the land, to use is it but make sure we don't degrade it unnecessarily and we don't destroy it because our children have rights, too. I think, as I say, I couldn't have -- I don't have criticism with the way most people handle themselves. Think the quotes I see are pretty good. |
| Shea: | Senator Bennett, any thoughts? |
| Bennett: | Well, the advice I try to follow in my own relationships with the press, be as honest and straightforward as you possibly can, even if you think you're going to be embarrassed. I've discovered somewhat to my surprise that looking at a reporter and saying I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about improves your press relationships rather than trying to pretend that you know something. You're always embarrassed. Gee, you're a Senator, you're supposed to know everything. And I tried that a little at the beginning of my campaign and I got more embarrassed and so I quickly have said and have always said to my employees, tell them the truth. And the other thing that I was told a long time ago by an old friend I try to live by, maybe you can't do this if you're a federal employee, never go off the record. Always say everything on the record and you find that produces a tremendous restraining force on you in what you really are going to say. |
| Shea: | Let me, if I may, raise a different topic and then direct it to John. I think one of the frustrations that people in the BLM feel is most of the people there are not lawyers. And they feel oftentimes that they're moving down a track, getting a problem solved, getting the local people or the state people or sometimes federal advocacy groups satisfied then when it goes in for Solicitors review, it gets changed. Sometimes I understand it. Sometimes I don't. How would you describe for BLM people their relationship to the Solicitors office since it with all the legislation and all the regulations we're doing oftentimes can be a very complex question. |
| Leshy: | We're here to help. And the basic rule, I think is consult early and often. So that you don't sort of put an entire package together and then come to us and say now, is this legal? We want to be involved in the front end of these efforts to make sure that, you know, life is more complicated than it used to be as I said. There are more legal hoops to jump through in terms of doing regulations for example. And our lawyers have to be involved and want to be involved all the way along. Not at the end because that's when it just gets frustrating for all. Our job is to keep the department and the BLM and its programs out of court or at least avoid disabling court orders and injunctions and that sort of thing and make sure we're following the law. It really is the function of our office to help and the more -- the sooner we're consulted and the more often, the better. |
| Shea: | One of the things you've done in your stewardship of the Solicitor's office is create the dispute resolution as a great emphasis and I think that can serve oftentimes in that early consultive process, identifying where there are issues that are capable of mediation or even arbitration to avoid the litigation costs that go on. |
| Leshy: | We want to be a part of the movement going throughout society now because everybody recognizes litigation is expensive and often frustrating for all involved. Think the success the department has had of a lot of these collaborative approaches to these difficult natural resource problems demonstrate the value of sitting down with the stakeholders and trying to achieve solutions everybody can walk away from feeling they got something and not rushing off to court. |
| Bumpers: | Pat, one point Bob will be interested in, in the Escalante Staircase, there's an agreement Bob and I haven't had a chance to read it between the Interior and the executive branch and the governor of Utah. I hadn't looked at it but I think it's going to work out just fine. Now, there is a case where i've seen you make speeches about the trust lands and that 1.7 Million acre monument that the president set up and which was just an anathema to you but here is something that looks like it will turn out ok because reasonable people began to work something out. I'm not committing on this program to being for it because I haven't looked at it. |
| Bennett: | We're depending on your vote, Dale. [ Laughter ] |
| Bumpers: | Doesn't it deal with one of the things that was controversial to you? |
| Bennett: | Absolutely. It is one of the demonstrations of good faith I very much welcome on the part of the administration. Because that's one of the promises the president made when he created that monument. The thing that affected us all about the monument was not necessarily its creation but the fact that none of the rest of us was consulted and we never had an opportunity for input. As leon panetta call said when he called me to tell me about it, he said now we've got three years in which to pick up the pieces. I don't think that's a good way to do business but it's done. And now this is one of the pieces that we have picked up and I think quite successfully and i'm hoping that it will work itself out properly. |
| Bumpers: | You know, pat, it is an interesting anything. Bob Bennett, we're very good friends. I say we have some political differences but I have spent my entire 24 years in the Congress trying to get more lands in the federal ownership in my state. [ Laughter ] |
| Shea: | I'm sure he would be happy to create -- |
| Bumpers: | We're a small state. We don't have all that much. I think we've -- i've added between 300,000 and 400,000 -- counting the 100,000 of wilderness which we just set it aside. I've gotten 40,000 bought on land exchanges, another couple thousand. I want to save it and I know that's where it will be saved. |
| Shea: | I know Senator church for whom I worked shortly before he passed away said to me his proudest accomplishment was the wilderness, the frank church wilderness area in idaho. One of those things that always -- |
| Bumpers: | I want that to be my legacy. The wildlife refuges, the purchases, the money I got from the appropriations committee. I want my children to know what I was doing up there trying to preserve something for them. |
| Leshy: | I've worked on these issues for more than a quarter of a century. We're going to lose a great champion in the Senate. Come next year in Senator Bumpers. |
| Bumpers: | I ask for people to send money now that -- |
| Leshy: | He's left a rich legacy not only in the parks created but in fiscal reform that he stood four square for, the oil and gas, old lottery system no longer exists because he protected the interest of the nation's taxpayers in finally persuading his colleagues to vote to reform it. He has been a champion for mining law reform. He's also stopped many bad things from happening in his time in the Senate. The nation doesn't have any idea the debt it owes this man. |
| Bumpers: | John, you are very kind. |
| Shea: | As I predicted, we're about out of time. I would like to begin with Senator Bumpers and ask him for a few closing thoughts about natural resource management around what we might do with Congress. |
| Bumpers: | Let me go back to where I started in the beginning. FLPMA and its counterpart, the forest lands management act, we did the same thing in the forest service we did for BLM, FLPMA and the forest management act. In both of those, the thing we did was design to try and apparently we have not succeeded because of what Bob Bennett has said and I know this is probably true and he feels very strongly about it as do his western compatriots but the real -- what shall I say -- crowning star in those two bills was inviting public participation. That was sort of strange to me when I came to the Senate. I didn't really quite know what we were doing but I decided how can you ever really lose by inviting the public to come in and comment. There have been times when that has worked very badly. There are organizations in the country who have abuse their appellate rights for example in sales of the forest for timber cutting. About 20% of those are appealed, contested. That does not seem to me -- 20% of the challenges to forest sales doesn't seem too much to me to have public participation. In the case of FLPMA and that's the BLM people who are watching this, I would say to all of them, don't be too depressed when some of these guys give you a bad time. After all, you have the responsibility. They have a right to participate. That's what we did in FLPMA. And so we're trying to save this land and we're depending on you to implement the rules and regulations that have been enacted to do that. And as I say, I would like to compliment them. I think they're doing a pretty good job. |
| Shea: | Senator Bennett? |
| Bennett: | Well, i'm willing to join in complimenting the BLM. I think they're doing a pretty good job. The BLM directors that i've dealt with since i've been a Senator, have all been very thoughtful, exemplary public servants. And many of the BLM employees that i've dealt with, same thing can be said. That having been said, I, like Dale, economy back to what I said in the beginning, that there is a sense and I can document it with particulars, that people who live on the land, who have had stewardship of the land for as long as five generations, are automatically branded polluters and spoilers by people who have never seen the land. And it's wonderful to have a reverence for the land when you're many miles away from it. Don't assume that those who live on it don't have their own reverence for the land and their own determination to save it for their grandchildren. And that, to me, has been the ultimate source of the friction over this. I've never used the words "war on the west" in any attack on Secretary Babbitt because I think that's unfair, it is a demagogic way of dealing with the issue but I do think there is a misunderstanding of the motives and attitudes of the people who do live in the west and who live there and that's what's given rise to much of the controversy over how these things should be handled. |
| Shea: | Thank you. John? |
| Leshy: | One of the things that makes these issues so much fun to work on is this sort of creative tension that has always existed and probably always will between the local concerns and interests that Senator Bennett expressed and the national interests in how the lands are managed. With the mobility of the population and the rise of tourism, the western lands are an asset of world class value. How we reconcile those is often difficult. I guess I would say in closing that from the standpoint of the BLM employee -- one of the things that burns me up the most about working in the government is to hear faceless bureaucrat. BLM employees are not faceless bureacrats. By in large, many of them grew up in the west. They know the lands. They were educated in western schools and they are doing their best, day by day in very difficult circumstances to try to manage these lands and reconcile these competing interests in the best way they know how and I think they're doing a very good job and don't get enough credit for it. |
| Shea: | Cynthia? |
| Quarterman: | I think these gentlemen have said it very well and demonstrated what we started out with which is the opportunities that are available by working together both on a national level and a local level. The key here is for us all to work together. |
| Shea: | Thank you. As we come to our conclusion, on behalf of the 9500 BLM employees, I want to thank each of our panelists for taking the time to be here with us today. I think we have each learned important perspectives about how working for the federal government is a very demanding job but a job with many rewards. The legacies we are creating will survive, if we are successful, for many, many generations to come. I thank each of you for your thoughts. I remind our viewers that our next natural resource forum will feature Secretary Babbitt as moderator, Mike Dombeck as Chief of the Forest Service, Bob Stanton as Director of the National Park Service, Jamie Clark as Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and myself as the Director of BLM. The topic will be Natural Resource Management in the 21st Century. I look forward to seeing you on June 18th for the third and final Natural Resource Broadcast. Thank you and be careful. |
| Announcer: | This broadcast has been a production of the BLM National Training Center. |