Diverse State Coalition Kills Timber Bills

Gov. Pete Wilson’s efforts to reshape California’s forest protection laws were defeated Thursday as a politically diverse coalition that included Speaker Willie Brown blocked passage in the Assembly of two key timber bills.

With Democrats, Republicans, environmental groups and the timber industry widely split, the measures designed to stop over-cutting in the state’s 7.1 million acres of private timberlands failed for the second time to garner the votes needed to win Assembly approval.

The defeat of the legislation means that protection of the state’s private forests will continue to depend on a series of emergency logging regulations adopted by the Board of Forestry late last year. The board approved the regulations after concluding that the forests had been severely depleted by two decades of over-cutting and lax regulation.

Environmentalists who had backed the package said they feared that the defeat would weaken the Board of Forestry’s resolve to exert strict controls over logging in the state’s depleted private timberlands.

Sponsors of the legislation acknowledged that the continued opposition of Brown (D-San Francisco) and a diverse coalition of conservatives and liberals in the Assembly made it doubtful that any overhaul of forestry laws can be accomplished this year.

“Obviously this was a setback,” said Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto), one of the sponsors of the four-bill forestry protection package. “Two of our bills are now dead and they cannot be resurrected.”

The bills would have banned clear-cutting in ancient and old-growth forests, limited the size of clear-cuts in other types of forests, restricted harvesting in watersheds, restructured the Board of Forestry, and established limits on the amount of logging that would be permitted in ancient and old-growth forests.

The Assembly defeat of the proposal set off a round of finger-pointing as each side scrambled to place blame for the Legislature’s failure to restructure the forestry laws. Some Democrats blamed Wilson for the defeat, saying he had not won over enough Republican votes.

Expressing disappointment, Wilson blamed the defeat on Brown and the Sierra Club, which had fought the measures.

“The members of the coalition (backing the bill) are deeply angered by the actions of the Sierra Club, which they think has been a very irresponsible spoiler,” Wilson said.

Sierra Club lobbyists attacked the governor, arguing that in his zeal to win support from timber companies, Wilson had been too willing to compromise on environmental provisions, particularly those related to ancient forests.

Dan Taylor, lobbyist for the National Audubon Society, which supported the legislation, said he worried that it would influence the decision of a Superior Court judge in Sacramento who is expected to rule soon on the validity of emergency state forestry rules, which place constraints on logging practices.

Even with a favorable ruling from the judge, Taylor said, the emergency rules will expire March 25 and he feared that the failure of the legislation had removed any political pressure on the Board of Forestry to make them permanent. A decision on the permanent rules was delayed by the board this week pending the legislative action.

Without the new administrative rules, Taylor said, forests would be at the mercy of the courts and a 1973 Forest Practices Act that sets no limit on clear-cutting and provides little protections for ancient trees. Efforts to protect the forests through lawsuits filed by environmental organizations have had only mixed success, he said.

“I would say that what has happened here is that we have seen the Legislature completely fail in its ability to deliver a visionary solution to the forest crisis,” Taylor said.

Sierra Club lobbyist Darryl Young disagreed, saying court action under laws such as the Endangered Species Act had served to provide more protection for ancient forests than would have been afforded under the new legislation. Although his organization acknowledged that timber laws need to be reformed, he said the legislation embraced by Wilson established a schedule for harvesting that would have allowed loggers to harvest 68% of some ancient forests in 20 years.

“I feel genuinely that any caring human being looking at these massive giants of the forests are not going to want them to be cut down,” he said. “We believe in compromise but not for the sake of compromise.”

The timber package grew out of discussions between several environmental organizations, including the Audubon Society and some of the state’s largest timber companies. Although it was very similar to a Democratic-backed forest protection bill approved by the Legislature and vetoed by the governor last year, it was embraced by Wilson in November.

But even with Wilson’s backing and the lobbying efforts of the timber companies, the package attracted heavy opposition in the Assembly from an unusual coalition. Pro-business conservatives attacked it, charging that the restrictions on logging would force timber companies to close mills and eliminate jobs. Pro-environment liberals complained that it permitted too much logging in ancient forests and provided loopholes for timber companies to sidestep some of the logging restrictions.

“What we had to do to get this passed was capture more of the middle,” Sher said.

Assemblyman Dan Hauser (D-Arcata), another sponsor of the package, said the two political extremes provided a hard core of opposition but it was Brown’s decision that turned the swing votes. Although Brown had not lobbied to kill the bills, several legislators automatically followed his lead in voting no, he said.

Embroiled in other political battles with Wilson over budget cuts and the redrawing of legislative seats, Brown did not want to give the governor a victory without extracting something in return, Hauser said.

“The Speaker has apparently taken the position that this is the governor’s bill and not the Democratic authors’ bill,” he said.

But Brown’s press secretary, Jim Lewis, insisted that the Speaker only opposed the measure because he had environmental concerns. He said Brown had offered to work with the coalition backing the bills on a new compromise.

“It is my impression that he believes that this issue will return again fairly soon and when it does I have no doubt he will be ready to help negotiate an agreement,” Lewis said.

Under parliamentary rules, the bills cannot be brought to the floor again after the second defeat, though backers held out hope that they could revive the legislation through a maneuver attaching the proposals to another bill.

In the votes Thursday, one bill received 33 favorable votes, the other 37, both short of the 41 votes needed to win a majority in the Assembly.

NEXT STEP

Although two forest protection measures failed in the Assembly Thursday, several efforts to provide greater regulation of timber harvesting in California’s private forests are still on the table. Among them: The Board of Forestry is considering adopting administrative rules that add restrictions on logging in the private forests it regulates.

North Coast environmental organizations are circulating petitions for possible placement of an initiative on the November ballot that would provide additional protection for California’s timberlands.

The authors of the legislation defeated Thursday hope to revive their measures by attaching them to other bills.