Amendment News:
Given our state’s negative fiscal condition, this is a difficult time for legislators with new project ideas to find the money needed to make their projects viable. One can understand why they might look longingly at Legacy funds like the Outdoor Heritage Fund as a place to bankroll their ideas.
Two such bills have been recently introduced, independent of the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council, that would tap the OHF for money. House File 3228 is a laudable bill that would create a grant program to finance the conversion of certain coal-fired facilities to produce electricity from renewable energy sources.
Despite commercial claims from Big Coal in commercials during the Olympics coverage, coal is clearly not a clean commodity from an environmental perspective. It produces a significant release of mercury into the atmosphere that enters lakes and ultimately fish bodies, let alone its major contribution of CO2 to global warming. This bill is moving in the right direction.
HF 1146 is another bill that has a laudable goal: increasing public access for outdoor recreation. The bill enables the Board of Water and Soil Resources to contract for public walk-in easements. Minnesota’s projected population increase means progressively greater numbers of outdoor recreationists will be squeezed into a fixed amount of public space, unless something is done.
Here’s the catch. Both these fine bills cost money and both bills look to the OHF for those dollars.
I confess I keep a copy of the Constitution’s language related to the OHF handy in my writing shack. It serves as constant reminder that the OHF dollars “may be spent only to restore, protect, and enhance wetlands, prairies, forests, and habitat for fish, game, and wildlife.”
I claim no expertise in constitutional law but, despite the merits of the two bills, it seems questionable if either qualifies as restoring, protecting, and enhancing habitat.
As I spoke to various groups as part of the Vote Yes campaign in the summer of 2008, a number of folks expressed concern about whether the new money would actually be spent for the stated purpose.
Hopefully, the legislature will allay those fears.
Darby Nelson is a member of the Lessard Sams Outdoor Council and President of the board of Conservation Minnesota.
