RE: Goals

[Larry M. Toelle <mectron@sisqtel.net>]

Pat,

Generally, we would support anything that improves public participation in policy making.  That said ... we're concerned that participation is "limited" to agency types, planners, academics and the general bureaucracy found within society who on a day-to-day basis deal with the "jargon" of policy making.  The stakeholders, or at least the stakeholders our organization represents, are entirely frustrated by the process.  

Many are busy with making ends meet ... they labor at mining, logging, farming, ranching, or business while have precious little time to become intimately familiar with policy issues.  Their concerns are only heard after a policy decision has been made ... and their ox is about to be gored.

Our membership is primarily conservative ... conservative in the sense that they have grown up to believe that certain protections of their property have been secured.  When TMDL, water rights (Klamath Basin for example), timber harvests, mining moratoria, and other restrictions are imposed, our membership is both shocked, amazed and frankly, outraged.

Throughout the western states, environmental concerns regularly insult local stakeholders.  Without going into the politics ... we would like to see a "goal" of inclusion ... including those who are perhaps less than articulate ... less than understanding of the "bureaucratic" terms used while developing policy ... and certainly those who do not have access to either the internet or sophisticated symposia sponsored by your agency.

Many of our members simply lack the education, background, experience or sophistication to effectively participate.  If we're successful in eliciting their participation, they're immediately marginalized by the policy sophisticates ... and quickly become disengaged.  Human nature as it is ... competing egos tend to speak and not listen.  Although our members are typically "major" stakeholders, some owning or controlling vast areas of the west, they're regularly marginalized or frankly, antagonized by agency personnel and competing environmental interests.

We are not proposing a solution to this problem ... but merely posing a "goal" to enfranchise those who are otherwise marginalized.  The goal, whether achievable or not, would still be a noble goal for this effort.

Thanks for your consideration ... Larry