In an unusual floor maneuver in the waning hours of the year’s legislative session, Sen. Robert “Bobby” Starr, D-Essex-Orleans, called for the removal of several portions of a bill he had written following months of testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee, which he chairs.
Starr’s move was aimed primarily at axing provisions in the bill to protect vast tracts of state forestland from parcelization — the practice of splitting forests into smaller and smaller tracts, leaving them increasingly vulnerable to development and degrading wildlife habitat.
The procedural instrument Starr used was a blunt one, known as non-germaneness, and Starr’s decision to deploy it surprised colleagues and alarmed environmentalists.
Declaring 16 of the 22 total sections of H.904 to be non-germane to the bill’s purpose, Starr effectively reduced the bill to the original draft version, consisting of five sections dealing mostly with poultry production and produce inspections.
Using non-germaneness to eliminate the forestland protection provisions also meant that Starr had to remove other portions of the bill, relating to protecting loggers and foresters, that he and his committee had labored over for months.
When Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, asked Starr on the Senate floor what he hoped to accomplish by singlehandedly hacking off everything he’d written into the bill, Senate President Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman stopped her, saying Senate procedure doesn’t permit legislators to question the motives of their colleagues.
Starr’s explanation to his Senate colleagues was that while the agriculture committee had spent months on parts of the bill, the committee had not had time to deliberate the provisions addressing forest fragmentation.
The provisions had been added to the bill by another committee, the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, chaired by Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison.
“The main issue was that it hadn’t been discussed enough,” Starr said in an interview last week. “Certainly we don’t like our forests being cut up into small plots, because it makes it hard on sportsmen, and it doesn’t make it good for forestry practices… but we haven’t had anybody in to chat about that” in the Senate Committee on Agriculture.
Bray opposed Starr’s move but failed to get the three-quarters Senate majority needed.
A number of amendments had been added to H.904 as it wended its way through the Legislature this year. The provisions that Starr had added — and then had to abandon when he made the decision to gut the bill — included providing subsidies to encourage wood heat, easing certain regulations for sawmill owners, and a program to enhance the viability of the forestry industry.
It’s not unusual for a bill to be amended in ways that don’t completely align with the bill’s original purpose. And it is entirely within a lawmaker’s rights to ask the Senate President or President Pro Tem to make a determination of whether the amendments are indeed germane to the bill’s original purpose.
If they’re not, then a three-quarters vote in favor of suspending legislative rules is required to leave those amendments in the bill.
In asking Zuckerman to rule on the question of whether Sections 6 through 22 were germane to the original, Starr succeeding in deleting everything Bray’s committee had added to protect against parcelization, paying the price by accepting that his own amendments also would be deleted.
“That’s why it caught us by surprise, because it was like, ‘Wait a minute, this is your language,’ “ said Sen. Chris Pearson, P/D-Chittenden. :”But he was so intent on derailing the bill that that’s what he did.”
Starr said what were, to him, the most important provisions of H. 904 were contained in S.276, which had been approved by the Legislature earlier. That bill contains subsidies for loggers and foresters, and incentives for the use of wood boilers, and assistance for farmers and other rural enterprises.
Although the two bills contain similar provisions they don’t match up.
“In all my history of working at the Statehouse, I’ve never seen a legislator cannibalize a bill in that manner,” said Jamey Fidel, general counsel and forest and wildlife program director at environmental-advocacy group Vermont Natural Resources Council.
Charlie Hancock, a forester in Montgomery Center, lamented the Senate’s failure to act to protect Vermont’s forestland.
“We know forest fragmentation is occurring — it’s documented,” Hancock said, “and we’re kind of past the point of saying, ‘Is it happening?’ Yes, it’s happening, and it’s having an impact.”
The health of the state’s roughly $3.5 billion forestry industry depends on the availability of large undeveloped tracts of forestland available, Hancock said.
The same is true of wildlife — moose, lynx, bears and bobcats, to name a few. They “require vast areas of forest to survive and reproduce, or else they’re not going to be here anymore,” Hancock said.
Hancock said he hopes that the issue has gained enough prominence in Montpelier in recent years that lawmakers will address it in the next Legislative biennium. Fidel said that’s a likelihood.
Starr said he’s open to it.
“If the players are agreeable, those subjects could come up in another session,” Starr said, as long as there’s time for his committee to take testimony from foresters, landowners and state officials, “but you’ve got to talk to all those people to get a [bill] that’s agreeable to all.”
