Leave it to the Bush administration to make even one of the environmental movement's favorite whipping boys look good in the waning days of this dismal presidency. Plum Creek officials now say the timber company won't use logging road easements to access forest lands for development, even while Agricultural Undersecretary Mark Rey keeps pushing for the deal.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
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Plum Creek may look better than Mark Rey, but Plum Creek only backed away from the deal in the face of negative publicity. There is no altruism here.
The real battleground in the fight against Plum Creek’s development plans is at the local level. It’s unfortunate that the planning and zoning laws in Montana are as weak as they are. Montanans, of course, have historically greatly cherished their property rights, and as a result vast swaths of private land in the state remain unzoned. Plum Creek, as one would expect, has every intention of exercising its property rights to the fullest extent. Rules intended to protect yeoman ranchers and farmers will now be abused by a giant corporation (or “real estate trust,“ to be more accurate).
One of the worst Montana statutes gives Plum Creek, as a large owner of timber lands, the ability in some instances to exercise a veto power over zoning regulations enacted by a democratically elected county board. Thus, a for-profit business can resist environmental regulation intended to protect some of the most beautiful and ecologically sensitive lands in the lower 48 states.
Paradoxically, despite Montana’s traditional solicitude for private property rights, Montana’s constitution, adopted in 1972, includes language elevating environmental values to a higher level than can be found in any other state constitution. In Montana, each resident has an alienable individual right to a clean and healthful environment, and the Legislature has a constitutional duty to make this right real and enforceable.
The Montana statute giving Plum Creek this veto power seems to be of dubious legal validity in light of such inspiring constitutional language. The veto statute flouts environmental values by allowing large landowners to resist governmental attempts at environmental protection in favor of the pursuit of private profit. The statute is also patently undemocratic in that it creates a preferred class of citizens who can resist the exercise of governmental power and authority in a way that no ordinary citizen can—and at the expense of the environment. Further, the statute delegates what amounts to unbridled legislative power to private parties (including, as a practical matter, corporations) who are free to pursue their naked self interest at the expense of the public welfare. Similar statutes in other states have been struck down in court.
The Montana Legislature should avoid the court fights that will inevitably occur over this veto provision by eliminating the provision in its current legislative session.
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