Dennis Anderson: Do-nothing legislators perfect the art of inefficiency

Someone once said people get the government they deserve. But as regards the Minnesota House Cultural and Outdoor Resources Finance Division, that can't be true. No Minnesotan -- farmer or business owner, student or senior citizen, free or prisoner -- deserves this bunch.

This is the committee formed by House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher to consider legislation proposed this session following passage last November of a constitutional amendment to benefit the state's outdoors -- specifically its fish and wildlife habitat -- and cultural heritage.

Thursday morning, following another of the committee's gatherings -- in which nothing was accomplished, but disaster nevertheless seemed just around the corner -- one observer was heard to say, "A dozen people at random picked out of the phone book could do a better job."

An aside: Ineffective government of the type displayed by the Cultural and Outdoor Resources Finance Division (a subcommittee of the House Finance Committee) has grown more pervasive in Minnesota in part because the media have allowed it. Too compliant by half, Minnesota print and broadcast outlets historically have failed to cast a bright enough light on, and incisive enough criticism of, state government.

Too often they cower when they should be calling a spade a spade.

Here's a spade: The House Cultural and Outdoor Resources Finance Division, chaired by Rep. Mary Murphy, DFL-Hermantown, has moved so painstakingly slow this session, and so apparently aimlessly, that it seems now, in the session's waning days, poised to pass whatever is last put before it.

Good luck to one and all if that includes House File 1086, which was heard in Murphy's committee last week.

The council was named for Lessard by the Legislature last year in honor of the 10 years he worked to place the outdoors and natural heritage amendment on the statewide ballot.

Kahn -- who in past legislative sessions has proposed to give 12-year-olds the right to vote -- says state law prevents councils from being named after living people.

Trying to help, I called Lessard to see if he could put Kahn's mind at ease vis-à-vis the council name.

"If it will speed things along, I'll go ahead and die," he said. "I want to chip in any way I can."

Know this about the Lessard council -- established last year by the Legislature to recommend to lawmakers how to spend approximately $70 million in fish and wildlife habitat funds: Comprising eight citizens and four legislators, it is, hands down, the best and most effective governmental body ever to consider conservation in Minnesota.

The council's list of projects, worth $70 million, leveraged another $35 million in matching funds. Talk about governmental efficiency.

But if you hear brakes screeching and progress grinding to a crawl, that would be Murphy's committee considering the council's recommendations.

And teeth gnashing?

Those would be the choppers of onlookers to Murphy's committee as they wonder just how exactly its members could be so uncurious and so apparently ready to swallow whole the legislative gobbledygook that has been proposed to it.

HF 1086, for example, is such a confusion of intentions, so wandering in its reach, so heavy in the burden it attempts to place, directly and indirectly, on the Lessard Outdoor Heritage Council, that -- were council members not the dedicated conservationists they are -- doubtless they would resign from the panel in frustration.

What it is instead is an attempt to shackle the Lessard council with burdensome bureaucratic and habitat-definition protocols, thereby hindering its mandate to improve the status of the state's fish and wildlife.

Short of Speaker Anderson Kelliher stepping in to bring order to chaos, there might be little hope for conservationists this session in the House. It's too wacky in the extreme.

Better that hunters, anglers and other conservationists place their bets on the Senate.

Fare thee well to session's end, Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis. We'll need you.

Pogemiller might not hunt, and he doesn't fish much. But he's a straight shooter. That's good enough.