Anchorage Daily News - September 29, 2000

ALASKANS DENOUNCE DEMOCRAT'S TRIMS IN CONSERVATION SPENDING PROPOSAL

By David Whitney, Daily News Washington Bureau

Washington -- Agreement was reached Thursday night on an Interior Department spending bill that would earmark $12 billion in revenues from offshore oil drilling for land acquisition and conservation programs.

"This is the largest increase in conservation spending in the history of the country," said Washington Rep. Norm Dicks, the senior Democrat on the House Interior Appropriations Committee, who brokered the deal.

But it's unclear whether the money and the programs will be sufficient to appease a broad coalition of conservation, wildlife, civic and recreation groups organized behind a much more sweeping program.

That coalition of more than 5,000 groups backed legislation sponsored by Alaska Rep. Don Young and Sen. Frank Murkowski, called the Conservation and Reinvestment Act.

The CARA legislation cleared the House by a wide margin this summer and, though it has never come up in the Senate, is supported by more than 60 members. But the bill has run out of time for passing as free-standing legislation, sparking intense negotiations over whether its core programs could be salvaged through the appropriations process.

The size of the original CARA package was $3 billion annually for 15 years for a total of $45 billion to support land acquisition, state and urban parks and recreation programs, wildlife and assistance to coastal states.

Young, chairman of the House Resources Committee, and Murkowski, who heads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, sat down with their Democratic counterparts -- New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman and California Rep. George Miller -- and struck a compromise this week to slash their programs by more than half in an effort to build support.

But congressional appropriators have steadfastly resisted the entitlement features of the Young-Murkowski legislation, instead turning to looser spending directives that would accomplish similar goals while still giving appropriators the ability to massage actual spending levels annually.

The Dicks compromise would earmark $12 billion over the next six years for conservation. The bulk of that, $3.7 billion, would be split between the federal government and the states for the acquisition of environmentally sensitive lands and park additions.

Another $3.1 billion would go for coastal and fisheries programs, $2.4 billion for state and conservation programs, $1 billion for urban and historic preservation, $900 million to beef up maintenance of national parks, $300 million for payment to counties in lieu of property taxes on federal lands, and $1.8 billion for the appropriations committee to begin doling out in 2002 on a competitive basis for undefined purposes.

Dicks said the fisheries money includes $100 million that would be spent in Northern California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska to deal with the recovery of endangered salmon.

The negotiations turned fierce last Friday when Dicks first offered to boost funding for President Clinton's Lands Legacy program, a series of initiatives including the Land and Water Conservation Fund that uses offshore drilling receipts to buy sensitive lands.

"What we've done here is take the president's Lands Legacy program and blended it with many of the items that the people who were supporting CARA wanted," Dicks said in an interview Thursday night. "This is going to mean a tremendous amount of additional money for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, for urban parks, for historic preservation, for wildlife programs. This is a great step forward."

But it is not the spending pot Young and Murkowski envisioned, and it was unclear Thursday night whether they or the supporters of their bill would agree with Dicks' views.

Murkowski and Young have denounced Dicks' approach because it basically gutted major portions of their legislation, and there has been some threat that they might try to organize opposition to the spending measure on the House and Senate floors if they don't get further concessions.

"I feel the appropriators' proposal is unacceptable," Murkowski told reporters earlier Thursday.

Groups supporting the CARA package also were undecided about whether the Dicks compromise is a good deal.

"Until we have a chance to review this, we are withholding comment," said Naomi Edelson of the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

Complicating Thursday's negotiations was a last-minute demand by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, that any final deal would have to include as much as $500 million in financial assistance to coastal states, a key feature of the Young-Murkowski measure that then had not been part of the appropriations committee package.

Stevens issued the demand at a midday negotiating session, and some people described it as the equivalent of "dropping a bomb" on the process, made all the more breathtaking because the Interior spending bill is loaded with the Alaskan's earmarks.

"If you do a word search for Alaska in this bill, your computer will freeze up," said one staffer in the talks. "And then Stevens comes in at the last minute and starts talking about another $500 million."

But Stevens told reporters later that he was searching for the right mix of money and programs to reach an "honorable compromise." The Dicks compromise goes most of the way to meeting that by providing $104 million next year and $400 million annually thereafter for six years for coastal states and fisheries programs.

Reporter David Whitney can be reached at dwhitney@adn.com.

Be informed! Don't allow yourself to be snowed by CARA.