Consensual Screwing

Democrats often tell us that we have to support their right-leaning candidates in order to get some of what we want. Settling for less is their way of existence. So when Steve Kelly of Bozeman ran against Dennis Rehberg in 2002, Democrats dropped him like a hot stone. Acquiescence is not Kelly’s strong suit.

Kelly is a bright and creative man, and would have made an excellent Congressman. His passion is the environment, and he is one of the founders of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, an aggressive and non-compromising environmental group. He had a letter in yesterday’s Bozeman Chronicle (not available on line) about environmental toadies.

Back when Marc Racicot was governor and Republicans controlled the legislature, they came up with a scheme for dealing with environmentalists called “Consensus Councils”. The idea was to get everyone to sit down at a table and talk out their problems, with government officials acting as mere facilitators. However, in cynical Racicot fashion, the councils were soon turned on their ears, and facilitators were trumpeting concessions by environmentalists that had never been made. It was a triangulation process designed to work against them. These were Clinton times.

Consensus Councils have gone away, but the concept lives. Recently here in Bozeman quiet trail users lost their shirts in a facilitated set of meetings put on by Gallatin National Forest. Trails formerly devoted to quiet use were turned over to motorized users for the majority of the time. True to form, GNF trumpeted the loss of quiet time as a wonderful achievement of accommodation by trail users.

Which brings us to Steve Kelly. He’s not a consensus guy. He’s a fighter. He wrote to the Chronicle in response to two op-eds put up by Bob Ekey of the Wilderness Society, who is making a big deal about “civility” and “collaboration”. Kelly doesn’t care for Ekey’s tendency to seek agreement by yielding ground.

Civility requires politeness and courtesy, as well as an understanding that some independent-minded people have no interest in abandoning strongly held positions based on principles. Excoriating “radicals” because they won’t compromise is hardly a recipe for collaborative success. This kind of father-knows-best attitude breeds all sorts of mistrust and discontent and fuels the myth that all environmentalists are elitist.

Indeed. The faulty logic behind the consensus process is that the answer always lies somewhere in the middle. In the Gallatin trails dispute, for example, it was perfectly appropriate to insist on no motorized vehicles on our quiet trails. But that position was seen as radical. As soon as the quiet trail users sat down at the table to negotiate, they lost.

I believe we have institutions and political processes in place that need reform. What we don’t need is a substitute (stakeholder) process that relieves our elected public officials and agencies of their mandatory duty to make tough political and policy decisions.

And that is the driving force behind these consensus processes – public officials are intimidated by the noisy, belligerent factions, usually the motorized crowd. Fearing to take them on, and also fearing back-door backlash from higher-up elected officials (usually the late Conrad Burns, but also Dennis Rehberg), forest service and other public employees have opted for the collaboration process. It’s a way of dodging bullets.

What’s wrong with decisions based on sound economic and scientific evidence, and the rule of law? Public participation is the mechanism anyone, and everyone, can use to keep the pressure on during government decision-making processes.

Protecting wilderness, old growth habitat, lynx and grizzly bear habitat and key bull trout watersheds is controversial business. We don’t give up, and we don’t give in without a fight. In this age of political correctness, there are still a few environmentalists out there who believe in results.

Being well-liked by one’s opponents is so conveniently compromising.

Kelly pretty much sums up the problem we have with Democrats, in addition to milquetoasty environmental groups. He underlines why that party abandoned him in 2002. He’s everything modern Democrats aren’t, bold and thorough and possessing courage of convictions. Both the party and the environmental community could use a few more like him.