States' best practices: challenges

[Mary Hamel <hamelm@dnr.state.wi.us>]

Everyone has public involvement challenges.  Below are two I run into often as a state agency.  What are your thoughts or suggestions?  Any best practices out there to address these?

* Numerous environmental permitting processes do NOT allow the state to consider many of the issues the public cares about.  The legally-allowed decision-making criteria are very specific and limited.  No amount of explaining decreases the frustration this causes both the public and the agency. This is exacerbated by enivironmental imact analysis processes that include social/economic impacts even if these are not one of the legally-allowed decision-making criteria.

* Closely related to the above is that agencys' roles are often more narrowly defined than people's concerns.  Different agencies and organizations hold different parts of the decision: land use and zoning at one place, air quality limits somewhere else, transportation concerns somewhere else, economic development promoted by another agency.  Often times these agencies do not work well together.  This matrix of decision makers is not conducive to public process.  The pubic doesn't segment their concerns in this way.