RE: Criteria for policy effectiveness/success

[Rich Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@att.net>]

David James writes:
"Given a member of the public and a given policy issue (not necessarily environmental), the likelihood of participation can be mapped on this axis (imagine a sketch of a bell curve):"

That is a good model, and should be kept in mind when people think about what kinds of results they want out of a public involvement process.

He also writes:
"Public involvement will be more effective once the vastly different members of the American public become more truly tolerant of the diversity of opinion present. A good place to start civil dialogue is at the point at which you presume good will even among folks who you disagree with."

This I disagree with.  It's like saying that people should be truly tolerant of the mugger's desire to rob people as well as other peoples' desires not to be robbed.  Some members of the public do not have good will towards others, and it is difficult to make real progress until this is generally recognized.

There is sometimes a tendency, among those who work with public participation, to start to substitute the goal of having a good public participation process for that of having a good outcome.  The good outcome that I have in mind is that the environment and peoples' health are protected.  If that means systematically rejecting public participation from polluters, so be it.  They are certainly trying to systematically reject public participation from us.

One might respond to this by saying that EPA then needs to be neutral ground, encouraging everyone to participate and rejecting any attempts to exclude anyone.  But that is not EPA's purpose.  EPA's purpose is to protect the environment.