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Jon Tester just rolled out legislation to afford permanent wilderness protection to Montana lands for the first time in...well...a long time. I think that's pretty darn cool. My reading on the Internets tells me that there are a number of people who disagree.
To some extent, I don't know a ton to say about this bill other than that I trust the process.
Q: What was the process here?
A: A dedicated stakeholder process lasting years.
The individuals critical of this process so far tend to complain about big, important groups being included and smaller ones being excluded. In other words, the process has been one inclusive of politically relevant organizations with some ability to help pass or block legislation. And, unlike some of my friends, I'm not inclined to think that Montana Wilderness Association, Trout Unlimited, and National Wildlife Federation really have it in for wilderness. I think the opposite, actually, knowing a number of their staff and board members, who have always struck me as committed to the cause.
It is nearly banal to say that the recent history of public land politics in the West in general and in Montana in particular has been one of divisiveness and intransigence. In recent decades, this crucible has given rise to a new approach to these issues: stakeholder negotiations, attempts at deep rather than representative or direct democracy. Stakeholder processes are almost inevitably fraught with difficulties: who decides whom to invite, who facilitates, and who ensures that the sum of the narrow interests adds up to something approximating the public good?
At the end of the day, saying that a U.S. Senator should facilitate the process, decide whom to invite, and work to craft something good for the whole state is a pretty good argument since that Senator is ultimately politically accountable in the best way any of us know.
A process that involves wilderness advocates, motorized users, and logging mills is a good one to me.
And to George Ochenski, whose column this week maintains that Jon Tester didn't get support in his election from people who work in the woods or enjoy ATV or other motorized uses, I've got two responses: - Politics has to be about more than "dancing with the one who brung you."
- I'll point to my friends at the Montana AFL-CIO. Working people of this state, including mill workers and loggers, definitely did support Jon Tester. And a whole lot of those folks comprise everything from backcountry quiet recreators to the people who ride the damn noisy snowmobiles that I personally, like many others, can't stand.
Lots of folks, inevitably, see a stakeholder process that doesn't include them as an illegitimate one, but the important thing to keep in mind here is that while we've got representative democracy, which we still do in the form of the Congress, the stakeholder process defines a beginning, not an end.
A smart stakeholder process will, of course, create a framework strong enough to survive all-out assaults on the bill. This is a process known since the beginning of organizing time as coalition building, a process that is inevitably give-and-take.
There's still lots of opportunity for input on this bill, input that will no doubt improve the quality of the legislation. But let me give a small round of applause for the process that led to this bill getting rolled out.
Update -- George Ochenski correctly points out in comments that I meant union millworkers in the above post. My bad.
The fundamental point, though, is that I think George is wrong to characterize Tester's backers as uniformly supportive of wilderness expansion and is wrong also to conclude that the job of elected officials is to bend to the will only of their supporters.
Those arguments don't really disappear.
Besides, from what I can tell, if politicians only listened to their supporters, no politicians would listen to George, since he seems not to support any of them. I think he's someone worth listening to, even if I rarely fall in the same camp as him.
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