Clarifying the Compact

Ron Arnold, scourge of environmentalists, wrote a book a few years ago called “Trashing the Economy,” in which he accused those nature lovers of all sorts of terrible things, including inventing problems to advance political goals. Talk about a coincidence, Mr. Arnold appeared to do the same thing last week in Lincoln.

In an interview before an Unorganized Territories United rally, Mr. Arnold dragged out an issue that had been misrepresented last year, then clarified in the closing weeks of the 1996 campaign. Pass the Compact for Maine’s Forests, he promised, and state officials would be allowed to go on privately owned land without notification or permission of the landowner.

Look on page 12 of the compact under “Right of Entry,” and there is the provision he describes. Trouble is, the very same provision also is in the Maine law books, where it has been for years. Forest rangers can walk on to private property to carry out their duties. That’s current law and the Compact would not change this.

The Compact repeats the provision in the law because proposed changes — including, for instance, a measure to stop timber theft — to other parts of that section requires reproducing the whole section in the Compact bill. (This bookkeeping requirement has turned the seven- or eight-page Compact into a 27-page legislative document that looks more daunting than it actually is.) In any event, the piece of the Compact that concerns property rights already exists and will continue to exist no matter what happens to the Compact.

The initial mistake of attributing the right-of-entry provision to the Compact was understandable. Fittingly for the complex subject of forestry, this bill requires some close reading. What is harder to understand is why this mistake continues to arise after it has been explained publicly and repeatedly. One conclusion is that folks opposed to the Compact are less concerned with their reasons than with their opposition.

Whatever the idea behind this misunderstanding, the state deserves better. The next time a speaker announces the Compact creates a right of entry, someone needs to stand up and say voters have been through this drill before and it is misleading.