Showdown
On Tuesday, the Legislature takes up the debate on water Legislation. The Speaker has set aside up to eight hours for debate of the issue. There may be a number of amendments. There may not be. There are a large number of new Senators with almost no experience in water issues. Most have not even seen the Bill nor the Amendment until Easter weekend. Most will read the Bill and amendments on the floor during debate.
One of the first things 49 Senators will do is vote to decide whether they should adopt the Committee Amendment. The focus will be on Senator Mark Christensen. He didn’t vote for the Amendment as it came out of Committee, and everyone will want to know why. They will want to know what he wants in order to make the Bill acceptable.
The answers he gives to these questions will determine the direction and fate of the Bill. There are some who are hoping that he will simply decide to accept the Amendment that was written without his input or involvement. There are many in the District who hope he will work toward changes to it.
Being able to watch from here in Lincoln, it appears to me that the Committee Amendment was written by Dean Edson (representative of all NRDs in the State), Jasper Fanning (representative of the executive board of the Upper Republican NRD), Dan Smith (manager of the Middle Republican NRD), Jody Gittins (legal counsel for the Natural Resources Committee), Dave Cookson (Special Counsel to the Attorney General’s Office), Senator Langemeier, and Governor Heineman and his agent, Ann Bleed, director of the Department of Natural Resources. There were several other people who had occasional input, but these are the primary writers of the Amendment. This Amendment was written in secret and not shown to Senator Christensen until March 29 th, when it was posted for the public to see on the Legislature’s web site.
Since that date, Senator Christensen has attempted to incorporate a few changes, such as a sunset of two years on bonding authority if a long term surface water buyout is not in place by then. He has asked for the language be removed that gives the DNR authority to set the depletions allowed by each NRD . He has asked for there to be a limit to the amount of money via property taxes and per acre fees to be collected to the equivalent of $10 per irrigated acre. There were several other requests as well. The writers of the Amendment rejected his requests.
This puts Senator Christensen in a very difficult political position. His political life and the economic future of the Basin is very dependent on what he says on Tuesday. Will he be able to cause or persuade the Legislature to agree with any of the things he wants to see in the Bill or will the writers of the Amendment be able to push through their version of how things will work?
Senator Christensen is under a tremendous amount of pressure. I have described it as 50 people with guns to his head, all telling him that if he doesn’t vote the way they want, they will pull the trigger. No matter how he votes, someone is not going to be happy.
It is his job to represent the people of the Basin as he sees fit. I have my opinions on how we got to this point and what I would have done to change the path that got us here. I am a believer in an open process. I think there is better acceptance of difficult things and decisions when the public is allowed to participate each step of the way. Currently, the NRDs and the DNR do not agree that is how things should work. They prefer to come up with their solutions and then go get public comment as the law requires. Not that the public input means much at that point. But, at least the formalities were followed, and there is the potential that someone might have an idea that could be incorporated.
If you want the process to change, then you have to vote for people who believe in an open process, at the NRD level as well as other positions.