# Dennis Anderson on MN legislature and outdoors



## Bob Kellam (Apr 8, 2004)

Dennis Anderson: 'Wait 'til next year' is getting tiresome 
Dennis Anderson, Star Tribune

Walk through Minnesota's state Capitol, 100 years old, and you'll readily encounter big ideas, big egos and big money. You'll also find lobbyists for teachers, beer distributors, farmers, the poor, the rich, even bait dealers. But not so easily will you bump into someone who cares about wildlife and wild places -- the truly voiceless of our time.
At the Capitol on Monday, a Senate committee chaired by Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, deep-sixed a bill that would give Minnesotans a chance to vote in 2006 whether they want to sufficiently fund stewardship of the state's woods, waters and fields.
To Marty and his pals, including the bill's sponsor, Sen. Tom Saxhaug, DFL-Grand Rapids, tabling the measure a week after the DFL's Senate boss, Sen. Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, told 5,000 people on the Capitol mall the bill would pass this session earned little more than a shrug.
"I'll make it a priority next year," Marty said, convincing no one.
Like many of his legislative colleagues, Marty at this time of year concerns himself not with the steelhead that pool at the mouths of the Stewart and Knife rivers along the North Shore, the wood ducks that tumble into the flooded eddies of the Whitewater River in the southeast, the mallards that court atop the Florida sloughs in Kandiyohi County, or the lesser scaup that rest briefly in the northwest en route to their Canadian breeding grounds.
That the wood ducks can't find acorns because so many oaks have been cut, that Lake Superior's steelhead represent only a remnant of their once proud population, that hen mallards search in vain for the protein they need to develop eggs, and that some of the bluebills will bear no young because they no longer can find freshwater shrimp while migrating through Minnesota, might interest the heretofore faceless constituencies these critters can find among the populace.
But these problems trade too little in the Legislature's currency of intrigue, subterfuge and deal-making to matter very much to many who serve at the Capitol in St. Paul.
So, next year.
Right.
Even school kids know Minnesota legislators have little credibility as custodians of the state's manifold natural wonders. Lawmakers have considered themselves over the years less as keepers of the state's resources for future generations than as brokers doing the immediate bidding of extractors, profiteers and their many apologists.
Cut, ditched, plowed and now paved, the state has been offered up piecemeal, evidence of which gathers each year as polluted streams, algae-covered lakes, deformed frogs, vanished muskrats, chemical-laced groundwater and, yes, too few ducks.
So when Marty, et al, failed to consider seriously on Monday a bill that would place on the 2006 ballot a constitutional amendment to dedicate funds to natural resources conservation, even the politically naive knew a deal had been cut.
Perhaps Johnson, the Senate majority leader, was testing the resolve of the proposed amendment's many supporters. Perhaps he wanted to hold a card in reserve, unsure how future negotiations might play out with House Republicans. Perhaps he worried that, absent a reconfigured amendment proposal, the cash-strapped state might not be able to fund a companion plan that would clean up the state's polluted waters.
Or perhaps Johnson was just foolin' when he said he wanted the bill passed this session.
If so, he, Marty and Saxhaug might be surprised to find that supporters of the dedicated-fund idea have forgotten not at all this spring about the long-unserved needs of the state's steelhead, wood ducks, mallards and bluebills and other critters. Prepared now to throw political hard balls, these conservationists have been busy building and combining data bases, sortable by legislative districts, to leverage, for the first time in Minnesota, interests common to hunters and hikers, bird shooters and bird watchers.
Teddy Roosevelt often noted that conservation is the rightful province of politicians. And nothing Roosevelt ever said suggested such work could occur, or should wait until, next year.
Roosevelt, circa 1916:
"Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying 'the game belongs to the people.'
"So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction.
"Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations."
Dennis Anderson is at 
[email protected]


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## cootkiller (Oct 23, 2002)

Could be one of the reasons ND enjoys such awesome outdoors.
I guess we should thank Minnesotans and their legislators for making ND one of the last great frontiers for Outdoor activities.
It is a year round playground that no amount of enticement of increased income from another area of this nation would I ever leave.
I would rather be poor and live from paycheck to paycheck and enjoy this beautiful surplus of outdoors then live without it and have a surplus of cash.
It is my choice. One that too many young people are missing when they move away to the cities or other "greener pastures". My "greener pasture" is right our my back window.

cootkiller


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## Dick Monson (Aug 12, 2002)

Amen coot.



> Lawmakers have considered themselves over the years less as keepers of the state's resources for future generations than as brokers doing the immediate bidding of extractors, profiteers and their many apologists.


 It's a disease that has no boundaries.


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## birddog131 (Oct 28, 2004)

Jeezus: I think ol' coot nailed it: It is a sad day when I cant' misconstrue ol' coots meaning: But I do think he hit it. Apparently: Constituants aren't that important......This was a slap in the face to all here in MN: Apparently emails and phone calls from outdoorspeople isn't enough: I hope at some point, these politicians are held accountable; maybe come election time!


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## Matt Jones (Mar 6, 2002)

That's why I like Anderson's idea of a citizen's committee that oversee's funding dispersal and the like in MN. The problem with the DNR is that they are run by politicians, so that's who they work for. They need to work for the sportsmen of the state, and that's who they should be run by and answer to....not big farming, big business and politicians.


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## Scraper (Apr 1, 2002)

It is sad what MN has become.

It also highlights what a great job the ND G&F does. Hug a ND G&F employee next time you see one. Here I come, Doug!


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