LA Weekly

I had an interesting conversation today with Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the House Committee on Resources, who politely answered all my questions about Pombo's Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act (which we both called "TESRA"). I wanted to know what his office had to say about the charge, made by former Congressman Pete McCloskey for one, that Pombo's plan to reimburse property owners for endangered species-related future losses would bankrupt the federal government. I could use little of the interview in the story I wrote, so I'm posting slightly more of it here:

The way it works is that the property owner would be told by the Department of the Interior whether or not an action or activity on his or her property would affect the species. Three things can happen: The secretary can come back and say, 'no would not harm endangered species, so have at it.' The second is that the secretary can come back and say 'well, potentially it could harm a species, so we’re going to work with you, the property owner, and give you some hands-on assistance and conservation grants to do what you need to do on your property.'

As the very backend last-ditch resort, they come back and say 'you cannot do what you’re thinking of doing, period, because it wil harm this species.' In other words you cannot use your land, period. At that point, because it would constitute a taking, there would be a trigger whereby the landower went into negotiations wih the Department of Interior and outside independent appraisers to determine what the value of that property should be.

As they talk about this, they say this is a giveaway and it’s going to bankrupt the federal government. But you have to understand that everything comes down to zoning. [I can't come out and say] I was going to put up a skyscrper here, but I can't because of an endangered species, so pay me for what I would have made putting up this skyscraper. I'm not zoned for a skyscraper. So I have no loss or no claim under this legislation.

[The money for compensation will come from the Department of the Interior], about $10 million [through 2007 or 2008]. People say, well, that’s not a lot of money! So does that mean that every year the federal government takes $10 million worth of private property without paying for it? Because clearly, that's not good.

I also asked him how this private-property focus squared with the reality that much of the land Pombo's worried about -- such as the whole of Central California -- is irrigated with expensive state and federal projects paid for by our tax dollars. Without those projects, that private land would be worthless. He didn't really have an answer, except to say that Pombo's solution would eliminate the "shoot, shovel and shut up" tactic some property owners have resorted to when an endangered species turns up on their land.

Kieran Suckling, the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, however, did have something to say about it:

When industry gets massive subsidies from the federal government, they love sucking on the federal tit, but when there are any regulations to guide the use of those subsidies they scream bloody murder. But if you’re going to spend our government subsidies we want you to do it in a way that doesn’t destroy the environment.

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