DFLer Hansen says he's being pushed out of Legacy council

For two years, Rep. Rick Hansen has been the most outspoken critic on the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council, the advisory body that recommends how hundreds of millions in Legacy amendment money for the outdoors is spent.

Now Hansen is in danger of being thrown off the council -- a move he said is being slickly engineered by those upset with his questions on spending. Although Hansen, a DFLer from South St. Paul, is supposed to serve until 2013, new language could cut off his term now.

"There's not a strong tolerance for dissent," said Hansen, the only "no" vote the past three years on the council's funding recommendations.

Hansen's problems on the Lessard Council, which in three years has recommended $231.4 million in Legacy funding, are rooted in deep philosophical differences with some of the panel's other members. Eight of the council's 12 members are private citizens, and some are affiliated with such outdoors groups as Pheasants Forever that have gotten panel recommendations to receive Legacy money.

The friction is part of the high-stakes drama that started in 2008, when Minnesotans passed a constitutional amendment to increase sales taxes over the next 25 years to fund projects for the outdoors, clean water, parks and trails, and arts and culture.

A third of the estimated $257 million available next year will go to outdoors projects, nearly all of it passing through the Lessard Council.

Some panel members attempted to remove Hansen from the council last summer, calling his actions often counterproductive. That move came after Hansen declined to sign a letter of support for Lessard Council chair Mike Kilgore. An earlier news report had questioned Kilgore's role in the decision to pay for a $36 million plan to preserve 190,000 acres of forest with Legacy money. Kilgore, who voted for the proposal, served as an adviser to a private foundation that donated money to the project. Hansen was quoted in the article, criticizing the project and how it came about.

Hansen has campaigned against what he viewed as pet projects that were pushed for by the state's many outdoors groups. Many of them, he contends, had little value and did not fit what he considered the purpose of Legacy money.

The latest controversy emerged last month when, over the objections of Hansen and others, the Lessard Council recommended that the panel's four legislators serve at the pleasure of House and Senate leadership, who could end their terms at any time. Currently, the legislators -- including Hansen -- serve fixed terms that end in 2013.

When the Lessard Council made its funding recommendations last month, Hansen cast the only vote against it.

The proposed change in terms now goes before a Republican-led Legislature, and with Republicans assuming control of the House and Senate, Hansen said his chances of remaining on the council are in jeopardy even though a council seat is guaranteed to a member of the DFL minority in each house of the Legislature.

After the Lessard Council's vote, Hansen referred to the provision as the "get rid of Rick Hansen amendment."

Lester Bensch, another council member, said the move was mostly procedural and added: "Rick needs to just kind of put his paranoia to rest."

But at a forum on Thursday, Hansen said he was introduced as a "retiring member" of the Lessard Council, and immediately protested.

Cox said Hansen was reading too much into what was merely a housekeeping move. But he acknowledged that Hansen has been at odds with the Lessard Council's majority. "He never voted for one of our appropriation bills, that's all I know. I think he was the lone dissenter every time," said Cox, who said Hansen gave few indications he was willing to compromise. "He made it very clear he did not want people to question his position."

Darby Nelson, another Lessard Council member, said that while Hansen was "a major player" on the panel, he had early on rubbed some members the wrong way. Nelson said that at the council's first meeting Hansen introduced a proposal to "put a bunch of money" into a conservation project that others on the panel had "no idea" was coming.

"[People thought], 'What's this guy doing, you know? Is he screwing up the council?'" said Nelson.

David Hartwell, a Lessard Council member, sided with Hansen in an unsuccessful attempt to block the new language last month, but said he opposed the move because he believed the panel should recommend only spending, not policy. He said he never viewed the new language as being aimed at Hansen.

"I heard no discussion at the meeting, before or after, about it pertaining to Rick or anyone else, specifically," said Hartwell. "I think Rick [is] reading too much into this."