Okay, I get why everyone is so keen to get the ball rolling on the stimulus package -- but to exempt all stimulus expenditures from regulation?
One bill gets straight to the issue, promising to exempt hundreds of millions in economic stimulus projects from the state's landmark environmental policies. Environmentalists are ramping up lobbying efforts as a wave of measures eroding regulatory rules gain serious traction in the face of a recession and shrinking state coffers.
"It is about jobs," said Sen. Jim Keane, a Democrat from the mining town of Butte. "But I think the issue is much bigger than that. All these projects also generate new taxes and revenue for the state government."
Proponents are hoping to ease the way for everything from new coal plants to electricity transmission lines. They say complex rules killed a utility's recently failed plan to build a coal-fired electricity plant near Great Falls; the utility now plans a smaller, natural-gas-fired plant.
Get it? It's a friggin' boondoggle. All these projects that were halted or turned away because they didn't meet contemporary requirments for keeping Montana's natural and wild spaces free from pollution will now be built, pell-mell, under the blanket of the stimulus package. (That's not to mention that the Great Falls coal plant failed because of shy investors, not environmental regulation as Keane claims.)
It's obsence.
Frankly, it's unconstitutional. Read the state constitution. Read Article II, Section 3:
All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment and the rights of pursuing life's basic necessities, enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and seeking their safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways. In enjoying these rights, all persons recognize corresponding responsibilities.
And lastly, it's short-sighted. So short-sighted it borders on idiocy. Build a slew of coal-fired power plants with the stimulus money? Just before an ambitious cap-and-trade program is instituted in the US? (Perhaps the cynic in me is thinking that folks want these plants built, post-haste, so they can be grandfathered in under the system and not have to buy the right to pollute after the federal regulations kick in.)
This stimulus package is an opportunity to do things right. Don't blow it. |
