Conservation Program Reductions Draw Fire
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
June 21, 2001
By Michael Grunwald and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
President Bush will visit Alabama today to promote the centerpiece of his environmental agenda: the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In a speech at Oak Mountain State Park, he will trumpet his administration's unprecedented $900 million budget request for the fund and insist that environmental activists have dramatically underestimated his commitment to nature.
The green theme of his speech, his aides say, will be "Funding Our Priorities."
But the fine print of Bush's budget suggests more complex priorities. The president kept his campaign promise to propose "full funding" for the land and water fund, which helps federal agencies and states buy open space and build recreational facilities, but he did so while cutting or eliminating an array of related conservation programs. A GOP-controlled House subcommittee has already rejected his approach, which would undo a bipartisan compromise forged last year to steadily increase overall conservation spending.
Even the administration's budget officials acknowledge that their full-funding of the land and water proposal would create some empty conservation accounts. One $100 million wildlife grant program would vanish. So would a $30 million program to protect urban parkland. A $60 million effort to preserve forests would be cut in half. An analysis by the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife contends that overall, the Bush budget would cut $150 million from the congressional conservation plan this year -- and $2.7 billion over six years.
"The Bush plan is all smoke and mirrors, robbing Peter to pay Paul," said Mary Beth Beetham, the group's director of legislative affairs. "It puts aside money for the land and water fund, but only by starving important programs."
The administration contends that its proposal for next year increased funding on conservation programs by nearly $100 million -- from $1.46 billion to $1.54 billion -- using a slightly different definition of conservation. The Bush budget does cut funding for every key federal environmental agency regardless of conservation emphasis, but his aides say that money isn't the whole picture.
"The president's philosophy is based on a commitment to bolstering conservation, and at the same time empowering states and local communities to determine which conservation initiatives are most valuable for them," said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan.
Administration officials contend that the Bush environmental budget allows states to divide a larger pie, and they expressed frustration that environmental advocacy groups appear to prefer to lobby Congress instead of 50 state legislatures.
For Bush, the land and water fund has been an especially important political symbol. During the campaign, he promised to seek "full funding" for the program, a 1960s leftover that has never received anything close to its authorized maximum of $900 million annually. He vowed to give states more money from the fund -- a 500 percent increase this year -- but also more flexibility. In the past, the fund's 38,000 grants to states have been directed toward soccer fields, parks, hiking trails and other recreation facilities, but Bush wants to let states funnel the money into wildlife programs, wetlands protection and other land-use priorities.
When Bush released his budget in April, his aides repeatedly touted the land and water funding as "historic" and "unprecedented" proof of a new kind of environmentalism. "This historic budget fulfills President Bush's commitment to investing in America's natural resources and provides the states not only with historic levels of funding but with unprecedented flexibility to use that funding," said Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton.
But at a recent budget hearing, several Democratic senators complained that Norton was using the land and water fund as an excuse to cut all kinds of environmental programs, from abandoned mine reclamations beloved by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the Appropriations Committee chairman, to biodiversity research in the home state of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the majority whip.
Pam Hayes, Interior's deputy budget chief, acknowledged yesterday that much of the new land and water funding came at the expense of other programs specifically authorized by last year's bipartisan conservation compromise. "It sends a great signal. It's a unique thing. But you've got to see it in the reality of the entire budget," she said. "The president wanted to pass his tax cut, and he had other priorities. So we didn't have the money to fund everything we might have liked."
Some of those other priorities have provoked furious lobbying by environmentalists and other interest groups. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has fought Bush's proposal to zero out the $30 million Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery program. The National Association of Counties hates Bush's plan to ax a $50 million Payment-In-Lieu-of-Taxes fund that reimburses counties that have large swaths of tax-exempt federal land.
Environmentalists warn that the shift from federal mandates to open-ended grants to states will produce a shift in emphasis from conservation to recreation. Even the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, which represents the state agencies that will benefit from the increased land and water funding, opposes Bush's proposed reductions in overall conservation spending. "They're fully funding one conservation program, but they're defunding others," said Gary Taylor, the association's legislative director. "That doesn't really help much."
So far, congressional leaders have agreed. A House Appropriations subcommittee approved a budget that will increase conservation programs in accordance with last year's compromise, with less money for land and water but none of Bush's cuts. Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), who took over the Senate environment committee after leaving the GOP, suggested that he will support a similar approach, accusing Bush of skimping on environmental spending.
Bush will be in Pelham, Ala., today, promoting his plan to boost the state's land and water grants by 387 percent. As with similar environmentally themed trips to Sequoia National Park and the Florida Everglades, he will also be seeking to enhance his environmental image after a series of decisions that were attacked by green groups at home and abroad. These included a broken campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and a halt of tighter arsenic standards for drinking water.
His allies acknowledge that Bush is cutting some conservation programs as well, but they complain that all conservation programs are not created equal.
"Just because they're liberally bent doesn't mean they're the Holy Grail," said Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), the former chairman and current vice chairman of the House Resources Committee. "He isn't getting credit for the things he's done."