Rough Day for Public Rights and a Cleaner Energy Future

By Anne Hedges, Montana Environmental Information Center
February 25, 2009

Today was a rough day in the legislature for those who believe the public should have the right to challenge bad government decisions.

Sadly, HB 483 passed on second reading in the House (tomorrow will be the final House vote). This is one of the bills that makes it much harder to appeal air permits, water permits and other things. We were only able to garner 28 votes against the bill - but the Great Falls delegation stood strong. Voting against the bill from Great Falls were Reps. Boland, Blewett, Wilson, Dickenson, Kottel. They all deserve our thanks – please call and thank them and ask them to stay strong on 3rd reading. We lost some important Democrats on the vote today: Reps Mike Phillips, Mike Jopek, Diane Sands, Theresa Henry, Chuck Hunter, among others. If you can please call them and tell them there is no reason for them to vote to give corporations even more power than they already have over the public.

We did win one important victory today - we beat back HB 566 on a tie vote in the House (50-50). That bill eliminated any consequence for an agency not doing MEPA or not doing MEPA well.

Citizens rights to protect themselves from large energy interests suffered some real blows today. Here’s a list:
• SB 440 (Sen. Gebhardt) passed on second reading by one vote. That is the bill to exempt all air permits from MEPA. All of the Democrats voted against the bill (except Jim Keane from Butte) and two Republicans joined them (Sens. Zinke and Shockley). The third and final vote in the Senate is tomorrow morning.
• SB 417 (Sen. Keane) passed out of the Senate today. That bills prohibits litigation under MEPA. That bill will be heard in the House in March
• SB 387 (Sen. Bales) passed out of the Senate today as well. It essentially eliminates the ability of the public to challenge any air permit.
• SB 257 (Sen. Keane) passed out of the Senate too. The Enron-like accounting fraud that is allowed in this bill wholly undermines Montana’s Renewable Energy Standard, which was supposed to encourage new renewable energy like wind, and instead gives PPL these valuable credits for upgrades at dams it did years ago!

This has been one of the roughest legislative weeks in memory for the environment. It’s truly sad when the legislature forgets they are supposed to protect the little guy from the big corporate vultures that hang around the Capitol disguised as lobbyists.