For the week of March 13 - 19, 2002

Rigged game

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Politics has always been a Rock, Paper, Scissors game. Paper covers rock. Scissors cut paper. Rock breaks scissors.

In the West today, the game is rigged. Politics covers ethics. Politics cuts common sense. Politics breaks science.

The game is one of sheer brute force.

Martha Hahn, the director of the federal Bureau of Land Management in Idaho for the last seven years, was the latest casualty in the game.

After 21 years of public service, Hahn resigned rather than accept an involuntary transfer to a National Park Service appointment at the Statue of Liberty in New York City.

Why was Hahn forced out?

A group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility claims U.S. Sen. Larry Craig forced her out through his capitol connections. Craig denies it, but he has made no secret of his unhappiness with the BLM.

Hahn wasn’t anyone’s darling. She rankled ranchers when she decided to limit grazing on certain BLM lands. She rankled environmentalists when she caved into ranchers.

In some circles, that would be called even-handed. But in this game, if you’re not fer ‘em, you must be agin ‘em.

Hahn is the second high-profile government official to get an Idaho pink slip in as many months.

Idaho Fish and Game Director Rod Sando was the first. Sando resigned a step ahead of the political firing squad headed up by Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and manned by two disgruntled members of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission.

Sando had refused to meet the demand of the Idaho Cattle Association that he fix a ticket for a Mountain Home man who shot three cougars that some said had been killing livestock. He had also refused to lend his support to opponents of dam breaching, a strategy to save the Northwest’s endangered salmon runs.

Hahn’s and Sando’s treatment was the worst kind of ham-handed politics.

Their departures cast suspicion far and wide.

For example, President George W. Bush wants to remove national forest land from management by the U.S. Forest Service. He would create "charter forests" to be turned over to local trusts that would be responsible for managing them.

Charter forests are the Administration’s answer to Western states that have complained long and bitterly about federal land managers who didn’t produce enough timber, grass and minerals for private interests.

With Bush in office, they now have friends in high places.

The message is clear: Land and wildlife managers will manage at their own risk. Attempts to balance private with public interests will be punished.

No rock, no paper, no scissors. Just the worst kind of politics, politics, politics.

 

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