GOP Accused of Conducting ‘Stealth’ Attacks on Environment

Three years ago, conservative Republicans worked aggressively for speedy congressional approval of a wide range of measures that would have sharply curtailed the Clinton administration’s environmental programs. They failed.

But, in a quiet replay, Congress is about to consider more than two dozen measures that environmentalists say would, among other things, open a roadless Alaskan wilderness to road-builders, endanger salmon, increase logging and limit the government from conducting education programs on global warming.

The measures are being attached to the massive appropriations bills that fund the entire range of government agencies. Environmentalists fear that this strategy will mean the various proposals to which they object will not receive the same sort of scrutiny they would be given if submitted as stand-alone legislation.

Most of the proposals are being inserted as brief “riders” on which neither individual votes nor lengthy debate is likely. Typically, they are but a few sentences in legislation filling hundreds of pages--some appropriating money for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, others allocating funds for foreign aid programs and the Pentagon.

As upset as environmentalists are with the content of such riders, activists and administration officials are nearly equally worked up over the methods the Republicans have used to bring the measures to the doorstep of final passage.

Vice President Al Gore has accused congressional Republicans of employing “stealth tactics” to attack the environment.

And Debbie Sease, legislative director of the Sierra Club, described the approach as “very last-minute, very back-room.”

But Elizabeth Morra, spokeswoman for the GOP members who control the House Appropriations Committee, said a number of measures have had long-standing bipartisan support and others--particularly those related to global warming--are intended to cut back on new initiatives for which there is insufficient funding.

Administration officials have suggested the riders increase the likelihood President Clinton would veto the measures to which they have been attached. But sponsors are betting that some appropriations bills are of sufficient urgency and reach that a veto would be too costly.

Besides, said Elizabeth Megginson, chief counsel of the House Resources Committee, “It’s ridiculous for them to be complaining about riders. It’s how this place operates.”

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Other provisions are being written into the reports that House and Senate committee staff members write to accompany legislation and explain its details. Those reports do not necessarily carry the force of law. But they often are cited by courts as a reflection of Congress’ intentions when legislation is challenged, and they are used by federal agency staffs as road maps for carrying out legislative provisions.

“These stealth tactics in the dark of night are unacceptable,” said Kathleen McGinty, the chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Measures being advanced by Republicans include:

* Increasing by 40% the logging in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, a rare U.S. temperate-zone rain forest.

* Extending grazing on certain public lands without extensive environmental review.

* Blocking restoration of salmon habitat in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River basin while protecting such activities as irrigation, flood control and harnessing of hydropower.

* Allowing construction of a permanent road through the Izembeck National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska that would give isolated Aleut villages easier access to a hospital.

* Prohibiting the prescribed burning of underbrush in national forests until all trees there have been logged.

The global-warming provision is one of the most controversial. Its sponsor, Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.), says it would prohibit the administration from spending any money to implement the international agreement, reached in Kyoto, Japan, last December, to restrict emission of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to the climate phenomenon.

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In addition, a report accompanying the provision would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from “conducting educational outreach or information seminars” on global warming.

“We’re not trying to stop existing programs. We don’t want to stop research,” Knollenberg said of his proposed legislation. “This language merely says we don’t want to fund the Kyoto Protocol.”

That pact, which faces strong opposition in the Senate, is not likely to be sent there for ratification any time soon.

But McGinty, describing the Knollenberg provision as “horribly objectionable,” labeled it a “do-nothing, know-nothing, say-nothing” approach to global warming.

If some of the efforts are being conducted behind the scenes, at least a few Republican lawmakers make no attempt to conceal a less-than-friendly attitude toward aspects of the government’s role in protecting the environment.

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chairman of the House Resources Committee, said at a recent hearing: “I don’t see any justification for the federal government owning land, other than the Statue of Liberty and maybe a few parks, maybe a few refuges. But to just own land to do nothing with it I think is a disservice to the Constitution.”

The Republicans’ setback in the environmental arena in 1995 was one of their few defeats in the first session of the 104th Congress, the first in which the GOP held a majority in both houses in four decades. After sweeping through their plans to trim the federal budget and scale back domestic social programs, they sought to restrict the role of the EPA and the programs of other federal agencies protecting natural resources.

After they were thwarted, they did not tackle much environmental legislation during the next two years. But now, critics say, the Republicans have been emboldened by successes this year, when they encountered little administration opposition after slipping into one bill a provision allowing the construction of a road through the Petroglyph National Monument, a collection of ancient native American rock drawings in New Mexico, and into another a measure allowing motorized transport of boats within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota.

“It’s a practice they find irresistible,” McGinty said.

Not only Republicans, however, are inserting environmental provisions into appropriations bills.

Rep. Carrie P. Meek (D-Fla.) proposed, with wide bipartisan support, a measure that one environmental group criticized as allowing federally funded development on sea-turtle habitat. It was debated for about five minutes before the House Appropriations Committee approved it on a voice vote.