RE: Tribal Limitations

[Scott Haight <shaight@mt.blm.gov>]

You missed my point.  The response to "outright ignorance" as you put it, is education.  The comments of O'hara illustrated a common problem in public participation vis a vis, lack of understanding by the general public of the special relationship-responsibilities between federal and tribal gov'ts.  I wasn't defending his position, simply pointing out (or trying to) that energy is better spent using it to illustrate a common problem and coming up with a way to explain these issue to the public at the start of consultation. As one commenter on this thread put it, even their governor needs help understanding the G2G relationship.  

Since the purpose of this dialog was to identify such public involvement issues, I would put this forward as something EPA could work on--development of some straight forward ed material for use in public setting to explain the process to the public.  Too often we stumble through this explanation in public meetings, hearing or other settings raising more questions and suspicions than anything else.  

While it's tempting to leave the 99% to educate themselves on their own time, a little upfront explanation-facilitation by those running the public participation process might save us all grief and result in a better outcome.