By David J. Sanders
As is always the case, the task of picking winners and losers from the recently completed legislative session falls to those of us who observe and write about the goings-on at the state Capitol.
Those paying attention note the postmortems already have begun.
Legislative success for lawmakers, individuals, industry, associations, or interest groups most often is determined by the legislation to which the governor affixes his signature. Failure most often is determined by the things not signed into law, usually because they didn’t make it through one of the steps in the process.
Whether something becomes law isn’t the only measure of success, however. Though much harder to quantify, sometimes success or failure can be looked at in terms of how well an individual or a group advances a cause or a conversation. Another measurement, which often goes unheralded, is the demonstrated ability to stop bad legislation from becoming law. That is today’s focus.
Halting the Governor’s Commission on Global Warming’s agenda, which, in turn, prevented the group from implementing most its 54 policy recommendations into law, was a major accomplishment of the 2009 session.
Before the gavel dropped in January, lawmakers in both parties recognized that the group, which they had created two years ago to come up with policies that would help Arkansas curb its share of carbon emissions, was not what they thought it was.
In fact, the GCGW proved to be a conduit for an out-of-state outfit called Center for Climate Strategies. That group acts at the behest of its wealthy donors, most of whom are global warming alarmists who pay for people from the center to travel the country convincing states to set up policy groups to carry out the center’s aggressive advocacy agenda.
CCS helped set up the Arkansas’ state-based global warming policy study group and then got itself hired to direct it. Its internal memos showed that its policies and procedures limited the group of so-called “stakeholders” from debating the science of global warming or even the intent of the law establishing the GCGW.
In time, over the objections of some of its commission members, the GCGW adopted the canned policy reports of CCS. Those reports urge state government officials to adopt controversial and costly environmental policies, including such things as endorsing a carbon tax, becoming part of a regional cap-and-trade scheme, and mandating Arkansas utilities to purchase a larger share of their energy portfolio from renewable sources without regard for increased costs that could be passed on to ratepayers.
Had lawmakers not recognized the group’s dubious nature, it’s conceivable that some of those costly recommendations could have made it into law with ease. Some of the Legislature’s left-leaning members and Gov. Mike Beebe expressed regret that renewable energy mandates did not pass. That should serve notice that the group’s policy recommendations will come up in a future session.
There were two bills from GCGW that passed, but it’s worth noting that they were perhaps the least offensive. One bill set energy reduction goals for state buildings and another referred a question to the ballot, which will allow voters to decide if they want the state to take on new debt to fund energy efficiency retrofits for state buildings, resulting in reduced energy consumption.
Stopping the GCGW from implementing the CCS agenda was one of this Legislature’s shining accomplishments, which means that in the end, Arkansas taxpayers were the real winners.
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David J. Sanders writes twice weekly for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and is the host of Arkansas Education Television Network’s “Unconventional Wisdom.” His e-mail address is DavidJSanders@aol.com.
