While everyone was busy watching the “meltdown” of Vermont Yankee, a potentially bigger natural disaster was shaping up on the House floor, aided and abetted by Shap Smith and the knee-jerk enablers of Jim Douglas’ scorched earth agenda.
Among the smorgasboard of ritual guttings that are suggested in Douglas’ “Challenge For Change” report, is a proposal that could effectively eliminate the permit process altogether. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!! Barely mentioned in the Free Press article were proposed changes to the regulatory process, as per the following excerpts from the “Challenges for Change Progress Report” (emphasis added):
Permitting and Licensing Efficiencies will be achieved through the expanded use of expedited Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) permitting methods such as general permits, permits by rule, conditional exemptions and acceptance of professional certifications.
.Give ANR authority to issue permits in various ways for categories of activities that are subject to the same regulatory requirements
.Authorize ANR to accept professional certifications that permit applications are complete and accurate and eliminate application review.
It is commonly recognized that one of the factors that prevented Vermont from sinking as low as most other states in this economic downturn is the existence in Vermont of a rigorous permit review process that regulates growth and development to ensure that it does not exceed sustainable levels. One of the best components of this rigorous permit review process is that it recognizes the value of public participation in the process and allows for input from all the stake-holders, including private citizens, whose rights and best interests might otherwise be ignored by decision-makers.
Allowing the ANR to implement a permits by rule system, as envisioned in this report, to replace the customary review process could ultimately mean that a developer might be obliged to do no more than complete an on-line permit application, simply identifying the rules that would apply and be awarded a permit more or less automatically, without review or opportunity for challenge. The developer might be allowed to “self-certify” that he was in compliance with the rules, or simply submit an affidavit from a professional certifying that he was in compliance.
Anyone who has participated in the Act 250 process (as I have) can tell you that developers have no difficulty finding paid “professionals” to select only the facts that would lead one to believe they are in compliance. It is only through the opportunity for challenge by other stake-holders, that the full facts may be discovered and disclosed so that an informed decision may be reached by the permitting body. It is not and should not be a perfunctory process when the permit decisions being rendered will permanently alter our living environments and the condition of our valuable natural resources.
Under the “Challenges for Change” agenda, compliance would pretty much become a voluntary decision on the part of the applicant and inevitable permit holder. To my knowledge no spreadsheet analysis has so far even been offered to support Douglas’ claim of savings. Whatever might be saved through these so-called “efficiencies” in the permit system would quickly be dwarfed by losses the state would experience through water quality and environmental impacts, declining property values and unanticipated brown-field situations.
The ANR’s practice of issuing “general permits” has already tested applicants’ reliability when it comes to self-certification. A 2008 Messenger article by Michele Monroe reports on a study conducted by the Conservation Law Foundation. In its analysis, among other evidence of ANR’s failure to do the most fundamental job of water protection, the CFA found that:
the state issued 319 Notices of Alleged Violation (NOAVs) from 1997-2006 for discharging pollutants into waters of the state or failing to obtain a permit for discharges. Of those only 32 resulted in formal enforcement action… Ninety-nine of those NOAVs were for National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) violations. Of those only nine were followed up with formal enforcement action.
The governor’s CFC proposal would increase unregulated discharges up to 6,500 gallons.
If that isn’t bad enough, the CFC would eliminate Regional Planning Commissions; double the lag time between required reviews of solid waste certifications and hazardous waste facilities from five years to ten; and significantly reduce monitoring requirements on those waste sites following closures.
It looks like the Governor’s answer to ANR’s failure to effectively do their job is to give them more responsibility and lower the bar so far that almost no level of pollution is prohibited.
If, as the Free Press article would seem to suggest, members of the House are inclined to go along with the Governor’s recommendations, they ought to be ashamed of themselves for being so short-sighted; and I invite the Speaker to tell us why we should entrust full responsibility for permitting in Vermont to an Agency which, when repeatedly accused of ineffectiveness, has characterized itself as underfunded and understaffed.
Contact your legislative representatives. Tell them you’re paying attention; tell them what you think of the “Challenges for Change” agenda in general; and remind them once again that their first obligation is to protect their constituents’ right to full participation in an effective environmental protection and permit review system.
http://www.leg.state.vt.us/lms…
http://www.leg.state.vt.us/lms…
And the sergeant at arms number for phoning messages
into the statehouse: (802) 828-2228
If this unfathomably bad idea passes, that’s how Shap Smith and his lieutenants in the committee Chairmanships will clearly be remembered.
Even in my most cynical moment, I never would have imagined anything like this.
Governor Douglas really seems to want to keep business out of our state, so eliminating the planning commissions is par for the course. From my experience, the regional planning commissions are are very effective in aiding communities on topics such as grant-making, supporting and bringing in small businesses, and so on. They really are the heart of the economic engine in many parts of the state.
With this ploy, the Governor seems poised to not only throw out both baby and bathwater, but bathtub. And with the attempt to effectively eliminate zoning, he’s not only trashing the VT Green brand, he’s literally trashing VT. Our state is relatively unscathed in this economic crash (scary thought) because we didn’t participate in the building bubble, and we were relatively unscathed from the crash of the 1980s housing bubble for the same reason. Let’s not pull out the bubble pipe now…
I keep wondering what Shap and Shummy got in trade for bending over/blinding their eyes on this Trojan Horse.
Shap announced at the beginning of the session that no taxes would be raised, including taxes on the highest Vermont bracket, which has largely been exempt from increases (with some fallout/overlap from the change in capital gains last year). Okay, let’s just shoot ourselves in the foot, Shap, that’s a good idea. That little announcement was a gift to Gov. Douglas.
The “pig-in-a-poke” buy-in to CfC was gift number two to the Governor.
Are you going to miss the man from Middlebury so much that you’d shower him with kill-the-government gifts?
So tell us, Shap — or Floyd, feel free to chime in — and Shummy, what exactly it is you got in trade for these two marvelous gifts to our lame (duck) Governor.
A promise that Neale Blunderville wouldn’t run for governor for at least two years, perhaps?
A promise not to bring up Entergy’s relicensing again?
Do we know what the Douglas-Dubie Administration’s promises are worth?
Yeah, about that much.
So, having squandered the legislature’s budgetary leeway, what did you buy with it, guys? I really want to know.
NanuqFC
In a Time of Universal Deceit, TELLING the TRUTH Is a Revolutionary Act. ~ George Orwell