Sustainable referendums

It would be hard to disagree with the bland language of the forestry referendum question in the November’s election. “Do you favor requiring landowners to obtain a permit for all clear-cuts and defining cutting levels for lands subject to the tree growth tax law?” Hard to disagree, that is, if the effects of the question were as simple as the words on the ballot. But the language behind the question is a good example of the limits of the referendum process.

The problems start with the first words of the law the referendum would put in place. It begins as follows: “In accordance with the Governor’s Maine Council on Sustainable Forest Management of July 1996, total cutting activities for each species group may not exceed sustainable cutting levels for any rolling 10-year average. This means that the yearly allowable cut levels may not be greater than the average annual growth during the past 10 years.”

The above sentences are clear enough, but they don’t mean much because they’re not “in accordance with” the governor’s council on anything. The Council on Sustainable Forest Management didn’t say to look “at the past 10 years,” it said to look forward, using “computer modeling that incorporates growth, yield and management scenarios.” For non-foresters, the difference between looking forward and looking back may not seem like a big deal. For people trying to manage their land, as a recent University of Maine white paper on the subject points out, looking backwards is like “requiring people to drive their cars only while looking into the rear-view mirror.”

That’s because foresters, ideally, cut based not only on what has grown on a plot of land in the past but on what they want to grow in the future. So if they want to change the species mix in a stand, encourage more rapid growth by reducing competition or rid a stand of a diseased species, they need to look at how their management will affect future growth. Question 2 has foresters looking in the wrong direction.

Many small woodlot owners are particularly unhappy with this first section of the proposal because, they say, limiting cut levels to the “average annual growth during the past 10 years” prevents them from treating their lots as long-term investments and “banking” a healthy supply to be cut at one time to pay, for instance, for a child’s college costs. The leading proponent of the question, Jonathan Carter, counters that nowhere in the referendum does it say a small woodlot owner cannot bank and, in any event, the resulting wood shortfall from the passage of the referendum would result in higher stumpage prices and thereby help these landowners.

A third, smaller problem with the referendum question is in the makeup of a council it would create to create rules for this proposal. Among the council members, according to the proposal, would be a forest ecologist, a freshwater ecologist and a conservation biologist. There is a general understanding what these titles describe, but they aren’t defined anywhere and don’t require professional licenses and so could include anyone who claims to be one. This holds the potential of making the council not a group of scientists hashing out mountains of research, but more like a political group, subject to the same pressures and biases as everyone else.

Mr. Carter avoided the Legislature with this question, going straight to the public for the required signatures to get on the ballot. His decision to circumvent the Legislature until the question could be passed or sent to voters, but not modified, might be explained by that body’s habit of shredding previous proposals he has supported. But a public work session before lawmakers, even if they weren’t of a mind to support it, could have quickly repaired the shortcomings and uncertainties in the proposal and would have given an opportunity for other environmental organizations to offer ideas. Or, if Question 2 proponents insisted that the bill remained as is, would have made that clear, as well. At the very least, public hearings would have left a record of legislative intent to guide a council on whether, for instance, banking was allowed. As it stands now, voters can only guess which side in that argument is correct. Likewise, the 10-year growth period and the council-member definitions could have been easily defined and clarified.

That way, at least, there would have been a general agreement about what Maine is debating in this referendum, and the level of discussion could have gone beyond merely what the words in the question mean. Referendums, however, don’t allow for changes once approved, so voters are stuck with whatever they believe the question now says.