Dennis Anderson: Politicians creating false land crisis

Minnesota legislators, always looking for a whipping boy, decided this session to create the impression that of the many problems confronting the state -- most created by the Legislature -- the continued acquisition of lands to benefit fish and wildlife, and on which the public may camp and otherwise recreate, is of utmost importance.

The attack is being couched many ways, the latest being that the Department of Natural Resources doesn't know how much land it owns or how it's being managed. So why add more?

For many legislators, the assertion is a smokescreen and beside the point.

Does the state Transportation Department know how many roads its owns and whether potholes in each are identified, much less being repaired?

Does the Pollution Control Agency know the whereabouts of every polluted river and lake in Minnesota and whether they're becoming dirtier or cleaner?

Of course not.

This manufactured land conflict is instead about power and money, specifically about the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council and the Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).

The Lessard-Sams Council suggests to the Legislature how millions in habitat dollars should be spent from the Outdoor Heritage Fund, while the LCCMR recommends to the Legislature conservation expenditures from lottery receipts.

But many legislators don't like sharing power and council seats with citizens and often attempt to undercut them.

Example: Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, recently successfully offered an amendment in the House to remove all $4.2 million for land acquisitions in the LCCMR recommendations, including $2.2 million to buy key land inside state parks, $1.2 million for purchase of land in metro "conservation corridors" and $355,000 for aquatic management areas.

The money was shifted instead to state park maintenance.

Recall that when voters established the lottery in Minnesota, the promise was that proceeds would be used to improve the state for fish and wildlife, land and water -- and, therefore, people.

Rukavina -- you guessed it -- sits on the LCCMR, the very commission he undercut with his amendment.

"I was very disappointed in the amendment that passed and disappointed it was offered by a member of the commission," Mary Mueller, a citizen member from Winthrop, Minn., told Star Tribune outdoors writer Doug Smith. "What they did was remove our core habitat work, and that was part of a compromise. A lot of us would have liked to have seen more acquisitions."

Attacks on the Lessard-Sams Council -- on which citizens outnumber legislators -- have been more circumspect.

Last year, for example, the Legislature changed the definitions of "protect, enhance and restore," key words in the Legacy Amendment that govern how the Legislature can spend the $50 million to $75 million that will be deposited annually in the Outdoor Heritage Fund during its 25-year life.

Seeking repeal

The Lessard-Sams Council, by contrast, believes, generally, that protect, enhance and restore mean direct in-the-ground projects that benefit fish, game and wildlife.

In the Legislature this session, hunters, anglers and other conservationists are working to repeal the definition changes. Failing that, they want a repeal measure to come to a vote on the House and Senate floors so legislators who vote "no" can be targeted in the fall elections.

Whether that occurs or not, look for more attacks on land acquisitions by legislators. They know firsthand that money is power and know similarly that if tens of millions of dollars are spent for habitat acquisition each year, the Legislature will be shorn by exactly that amount in cash they can distribute as they wish.

Doubt this?

Rukavina also tried to get the House to prohibit the LCCMR from acquiring land in its next funding cycle. And Rep. Marty Seifert, R-Marshall -- a guy who thinks he could be governor -- tried on the House floor to delete all LCCMR appropriations, give the $26 million to the DNR and reduce the DNR budget similarly, putting the money instead in the state's general fund.

Attacks will continue

I concede that some counties, notably those in northern Minnesota, have vast amounts of state and federal land and probably don't need more.

But acquisitions proposed by the Lessard-Sams Council and the LCCMR hardly target these.

Lac qui Parle County, for instance, in west-central Minnesota, is 84 percent cropland and only 4 percent state wildlife management areas. And Lyon County -- Seifert's home grounds -- is 84 percent cropland and 2 percent state wildlife management areas.

Nearly 60 percent of Minnesota voters approved the Legacy Amendment, and a larger percentage reauthorized the state lottery to help the environment.

Be alert also for media leaks by House members disparaging the Lessard-Sams Council and for the creation of more false crises requiring -- at least in some legislators' minds -- the further reallocation of Outdoor Heritage Fund monies.

It's your money. Guard it.