Dennis Anderson: For intrigue, follow the money

The first habitat funding recommendations developed by the Lessard Outdoor Heritage Council will be heard in the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee at noon today. The panel is chaired by Sen. Satveer Chaudhary, DFL-Fridley.

The council approved about $70 million in habitat-expenditure recommendations on Monday. Projects range from about $20 million to secure conservation easements on 187,000 acres of northern Minnesota forests to $13 million for wetlands protection and restoration.

What will happen to the House version of the bill is an open question. The reason: Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul, is carrying the bill in the House -- and, though a member of the Lessard Council, he voted against its recommendations, the lone member among 12 to do so.

The Senate was expected to be a smoother ride for the council's recommendations in no small part because, on merit, the habitat proposals deserve widespread support. The project list was put together smartly by knowledgeable, engaged council members, eight of whom are citizens, the remaining four legislators.

Yet intrigue alone in the Senate has followed the council's final project vote Monday.

That afternoon, for example, only hours after the council adjourned, Sen. Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul, invited other metro senators to a meeting at 11 a.m. Tuesday, at which she characterized the council recommendations as too heavily leaning toward greater Minnesota, meaning outstate, at the expense of the metro.

This is an argument she made to the council as well, more than once, with virtually no support -- that of Hansen being an occasional exception.

At the meeting, Anderson told her metro colleagues she would carry the Lessard Council bill (actually, it's been broken into two bills for procedural reasons), and that while she wouldn't attempt to amend the bill herself, she would be open to amendments by other senators.

Also at the meeting, Anderson complained, as she has before, that some members of the Lessard Council "don't think there is any habitat in the metro" -- a quote I haven't been able to find in tapes of council meetings.

Observers, in fact, of the Lessard Council generally have nothing but praise for its work. Not only did the council ascertain with credibility which among more than $200 million in proposals represented the state's highest and best use of new conservation monies, the council funded $70 million in projects that leveraged another $35 million in matching cash.

Meaning the state will get $105 million worth of conservation work for $70 million -- not bad.

Still, Anderson is widely believed to be intent on changing the council's recommendations, acting in part on behalf of metro parks proponents who want a slice of the Lessard Council's fish and wildlife habitat money.

Ducks. Wetlands. Clean Water. Such was the rallying cry behind two successive gatherings on the Capitol mall in 2005 and 2006 that broke what ultimately was a decade-long logjam that kept the amendment proposal from reaching the statewide ballot.

It wasn't until last November that Minnesotans got a chance to vote up or down on the habitat idea -- one that by then had been amended to also include a one-third share (about $70 million) for clean water, and a similar-sized slice of the pie (divided) for parks and the arts.

In a move adding to the week's intrigue, Anderson said she decided "at 3 in the morning" Thursday to give primary authorship of the Lessard Council bill in the Senate to Sen. Tom Saxhaug, DFL-Grand Rapids.

So it will be Saxhaug -- a hunter and angler long familiar with state conservation issues -- who will present the council bill to Chaudhary's committee today.

But wait.

Anderson called that move by Chaudhary "very odd."

But not to Chaudhary, a hunter and angler and chief Senate author of the bill establishing the Lessard Council.

He and other senators clearly don't trust that Anderson won't change the council's habitat project list, if not this week or next, then later in the session when she regains authorship of Saxhaug's bill to combine it with bills funding the arts, parks and clean water portions of amendment funds.

Stay tuned.