Democracy at work for wild places

It's a good, and almost unfathomable, fact that pressure on legislators to show their constituents that they are doing something useful can still sometimes prevail in this anxious election year. And just that is happening in Congress right now.

The Great American Outdoors Act, passed overwhelmingly in the Senate by a 73-to-25 vote on June 17, has been called one of the most important environmental bills in history because it could nearly eliminate a $12 billion National Park Service maintenance backlog and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) for the first time since it was enacted in the 1960s.

Washington Post

The House will take it up this week; Democrats are down with it, so it should pass. The law not only appropriates funds for the park infrastructure, but also puts $900 million a year into a land acquisition fund created by receipts from gas and oil drilling on public properties. This cash can be used to purchase more public lands, including parcels stranded within national parks and wildlife areas, as well as to improve state and local parks.

The White House has indicated Trump will sign the law.

So to what do we owe this miracle of functioning government in Washington overriding partisan gridlock? Election year politics, of course.

Despite the broad popularity of these policies in California and nationally, getting the legislation to this point took a chance alignment of the “political stars” [according to Holly Doremus, an environmental regulation professor at UC Berkeley.]

Prominent in that constellation were Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Steve Daines of Montana, Republicans from outdoors-friendly states who are considered vulnerable in their reelection bids. Party leaders, including Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have gone out of their way to give credit to the two senators for shepherding the measure through Congress, even as some critics call their effort an aberration from otherwise less-than-green politics.

Los Angeles Times

I'll be hoping we can replace these two GOPers in November, but in the meantime good may be coming from their electoral vulnerability.