Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Jake Brown, Vermont Natural Resources Council’s Government Affairs/Communications director.
The Vermont Legislature has begun to consider the state’s FY 2014 budget and sometime in May, the House, Senate and the governor will ink a deal on what’s known as the “Big Bill.”
The economic recession has been tough. We are not out of the woods yet and pressures on the budget will continue and lawmakers will have to make difficult decisions.
As they consider the upcoming year’s spending plan, the Legislature should keep in mind the exceptional value of our interdependent assets of natural resources, brand, and business climate. Shorting environmental and conservation programs administered by the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) would undermine all three of these values.
So as lawmakers and the administration work out next year’s budget, they should take the long view and resist the temptation to undermine Vermont’s commitment to natural resources investments.
Some programs in ANR’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), for example, are straining partly as a result of deep cuts between 2005 and 2010, when the department lost 17 percent of its workforce. The wetlands program, for instance, which once had seven wetlands biologists and an administrative support position, now has just four biologists and no administrative support. Staff is striving to keep up with permit applications and applicants for permits are waiting longer than they otherwise would be.
The rivers program within DEC is also laboring under a staffing shortage, something that was underscored in the most brutal of ways during the 2011 spring floods and Tropical Storm Irene. Legislation that was passed in part because of the flooding now places new demands on the rivers program to update its rules, participate in cross-training with VTrans, and provide greater oversight of work done in rivers during emergencies. The Legislature provided short-term funding for two new river engineers but that funding will expire at the end of the current fiscal year (in June 2013).
In recent years, the workload at the Department of Fish and Wildlife – another arm of ANR – has also increased as it became clearer that more and more Vermonters deeply value the state’s wildlife, and not just for hunting. Wildlife interactions with the human environment, whether it’s bears in backyards or moose/vehicle collisions, continue to demand the attention of game wardens and others from the department. According to a recent report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Vermont is second only to Alaska in per-capita participation in wildlife-based recreation, and leads the nation in wildlife watching, with 53 percent of all Vermonters saying they actively engage in wildlife watching. Fish and wildlife-based recreation in Vermont generates several hundred million dollars annually in economic activity, which benefits communities and businesses in every corner of the state.
The Department Forest, Parks and Recreation, another ANR department, is the caretaker of Vermont’s forested landscape, which covers 75 percent of the state. These forests are a huge engine of economic activity and are also the underpinning of environmental quality.
The Vermont forest products industry alone generates $700 million per year. At the same time, Vermont’s forests are the backdrop of the state’s famed tourism industry, all the while serving the critical functions of keeping water clean, air fresh, softening the impacts (including threats to taxpayer-funded infrastructure and to people themselves) of floods, not to mention providing habitat for our wildlife.
So as lawmakers and the administration work out next year’s budget, they should take the long view and resist the temptation to undermine Vermont’s commitment to natural resources investments.
These investments are good for rivers, forests, and air and our drinking water, wildlife and even our public safety. And, ultimately, Vermont’s bottom line.
