Democracy is not a spectator sport

Once upon a time, in a mindset long, long ago and far, far away, some progressives believed the solution to democratic governance and environmental protection was to properly recruit and vet political candidates, work to get the best candidate elected, let them do their job and pretty much stay out of it between elections. Today we are facing the results of those misjudgments. We have allowed politicians and "business interests" to dominate state and federal decision-making. The consequences are likely to be disastrous for the earth and all its inhabitants. Here's some Minnesota background that, we suspect, could readily be extrapolated to just about everyplace else in the world.

it takes all of us, farmers to techies, to govern Minnesota

Photo by J. Harrington

Last year we read a book by Grant Merritt, Iron and Water: My Life Protecting Minnesota’s Environment.

Merritt enthusiastically embraces the need for citizen action. In the book he quotes Abraham Lincoln from a debate with Stephen Douglas: “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” Merritt follows Lincoln’s dictum with the observation that, “In order to make that possible, it is crucial to let the public know what is going on.” Merritt himself was a highly successful publicist, accessible to and frequently quoted by reporters.  He said he learned early in his political career to “speak in headlines,” and he was not shy about using the media to promote his views.

A few years before that, we had watched in dismay as the legislature disbanded the Citizens' Board that had been nominally in charge of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Some attribute the motivation for that to disgruntled legislators from Minnesota's Iron Range.

Iron Range legislators: Cross us at your own risk 

Those legislators are the real culprit behind changes to the MPCA and State Auditor's office. 

Others argue that the decline of the MPCA Board involved a number of detrimental changes over many years.

Why do Minnesotans put up with this?

Some very smart, well-informed people must have written the environmental laws of Minnesota in the 1960s and 1970s.  The Citizens’ Board seems to have been designed to keep the MPCA from becoming overly bureaucratic, self-serving, and too closely tied to the interests it was supposed to regulate.  These, of course, are the normal evolutionary tendencies of a regulatory agency, kept down only by constant effort.  No wonder the Chamber and “big-ag,” etc, wanted the Citizens’ Board gone. 

Minnesota and its Pollution Control Agency is now faced with Appellate Court judicial findings of "... substantial evidence of procedural irregularities not shown in the administrative record ...," and the likelihood of additional documentation of such problems as a result of a review being undertaken by the Office of the Legislative Auditor.

Could all of this have been avoided if the Minnesota Legislature had left well enough alone and not supported the efforts of former Governor Carlson to diminish the authority and independence of the Citizen's Board? We can't be certain, but the odds, in our opinion, are in favor of better, more balanced decisions, transparently arrived at, if we had a pollution control agency truly governed by the citizens of Minnesota, not a few bureaucrats readily influenced by legislators or industries interested in regulatory capture.

Legislation to reestablish a Pollution Control Agency Citizens Board did not make it through the 2019 legislative session. If we truly care about Minnesota's future and a healthy enjoyable environment in Minnesota for our descendants to enjoy, it's up to us to make sure that legislation gets enacted next year and signed by Governor Walz. We can envision few better ways to create #OneMinnesota than having a stronger, clearer role for citizens in running the state. There needs to be more seats at the table to manage our response to the climate emergency we face.

The Obsoletion of a Language

By Kay Ryan

We knew it 

would happen, 

one of the laws.

And that it

would be this

sudden. Words

become a chewing

action of the jaws 

and mouth, unheard

by the only other

citizen there was

on earth.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.