Cowards reverse Line 3 vote

By John King

I am really mad and I am going to tell you why.  The story is both political and personal, but mostly personal.  It involves some bad actors in the Minnesota Senate and the way their recent behavior undermined my faith in the essential integrity of the political process.

Last week on Thursday the 12^th I joined a group of friends in St. Paul to share a breakfast with state legislators.  The event, hosted by the Land Stewardship Project at Christ Lutheran Church just across the street from the Capital, is the 13^th annual Family Farm Breakfast featuring locally sourced foods.  We invite every legislator and this year twenty-four attended along with commissioners from the Department of Agriculture and PCA.  Gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto attended as well as members of Governor Dayton’s staff. In total, we served breakfast for nearly 500 people.  It was a resounding success and a great start to the day. 

The plan was to spend the rest of the day visiting legislators in their offices to talk about issues that concern us. We are a family farm advocacy organization, so most of our issues concern local control, support for beginning farmers, affordable health insurance, and conservation practices on the farm.  But this year we decided to address a controversial environmental issue, the Enbridge Line 3 replacement bill being pushed through the senate.

Enbridge, a Canadian pipeline company, wants to build a 300-mile line through northern Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin, to replace an older one that has problems. They have asked the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to issue the various permits needed to begin construction.  There are a lot of people who oppose this pipeline and the PUC and an administrative law judge have been listening to testimony for seven months on the pros and cons for the line.  Our group, the Land Stewardship Project (LSP), opposes the line for a number of very good reasons, not the least of which is the permit gives a foreign oil company eminent domain powers through the heart of some of Minnesota’s most precious wildlands and tramples Native American treaty rights in doing so.   

The pipeline is a bad idea, and the Republican controlled Legislature has made it even worse.  Senator David Osmek, Republican from Mound, MN, and chairman of the Energy Committee, drafted a bill that would give Enbridge permission to build this line without permits from the PUC.  Think about that for a minute.  

This will be the largest pipeline on the continent carrying nearly a million gallons a day of tar sands oil from Alberta, it will cross the Crow Wing River, the Mississippi River and numerous smaller rivers and will allow a foreign company to earn billions from confiscated Minnesota land.  Osmek’s bill would dump the PUC, the environmental review, and the hundreds of hours of impassioned and informed testimony and would allow Enbridge, “at its sole discretion" to construct, own and operate the pipeline”.  

Osmek, and fellow Republicans, are in such a hurry to give away our legacy land, water, aboriginal rights and regulatory oversight that they will trample anyone who gets in the way.  And this is where the story heads south.

After breakfast, LSP members fanned out to various legislative offices.  One of our first stops was to Senator Michael Goggin’s office.  He is a Republican from Red Wing and a member of the Senate Energy Committee which was scheduled to hold hearings and a vote on the Line 3 bill later in the day, so we thought lobbying him about Omsek’s bad bill would be a good idea.  He remained non-committal.

We stopped by Sen. Gazelka’s office and pressed him about several issues including the Line 3 bill.  Gazelka made it clear that he supports the bill saying it is a good job creator.  

LSP Citizen lobbyists meet with Sen. Gazelka
Gazelka says the jobs created by Line 3 are a good trade for the risks involved

We had talked to the senators and made our case.  They listened to us and offered their views.  I felt OK about things.  This is how democracy works.  An open, transparent dialogue between interested parties leading to a decision that may not make everyone happy, but at least recognizes and honors the principles of representative democracy. Earlier I had stood in the Capital Rotunda, the people’s meeting place, and looked up at the dome.  This is one of the grandest rooms in the entire state and it belongs to me.  I can put my name on a booking schedule and then come in here and talk about anything I want.  With a megaphone I can shout passages from the bible or I can hold a rally in support of abortion rights for women.  It is democracy’s stage right here in the State Capital.  I love it. The first time I was here gazing up at the dome I was nearly in tears overwhelmed by the potency and promise of democratic government.

Omsek’s Energy Committee was meeting at 2 PM, so a group of us hurried across the street to the new Senate Office Building.  We were surprised to see four armed security guards at the door of the conference room.  The room itself was packed with opponents of the Line 3 bill.  I had brought a small sign no bigger than a piece of paper indicating my opposition to the bill and held it up as the hearing began.  Two security guards, one from the back and one from the front, rushed me and snatched away my sign.  Omsek as chairman sets the rules and he had apparently outlawed any demonstrations.  This was highly unusual since non-disruptive demonstrations at hearings are commonplace.  Another spectator was ejected from the room for doing the same thing.  Transparent dialogue between interested parties apparently was going to be throttled back at Omsek’s hearing. 

A White Earth Tribal representative spoke emotionally of how this was another confiscation of tribal land for corporate profit.  A land owner whose family had farmed on the banks of he upper Mississippi for three generations testified that her land too was up for grabs by the pipeline company.  The committee listened to nearly an hour of impassioned opposition from speaker after speaker.  We held our breath as the vote was taken.  Senator Goggin, whom we had talked to earlier in the day, crossed over and voted with the four Democrats opposing the bill and it was defeated 5 to 4.  We were jubilant.  We high-fived and hugged each other on the sidewalk outside. “This is democracy in action!  This works!” we said.  It was the end of the day.  I headed home and was still excited when I told my wife about our victory and how we had make a difference.

But does the system work?  Am I being naive?  Is teary eyed patriotism about to get a kick in the groin?  Maybe it depends on who is running the show. On Tuesday the 17^th,  Osmek, Republican from Mound, MN, with little public notice and with a nearly an empty conference room, reconvened his Energy committee.  The Line 3 bill was put back on the table and this time, with no one to watch, Goggin, Republican from Red Wing, changed his vote.  This time Osmek and Goggin did not have to listen to the tribes or the landowners.  They did not have to look into our faces united in opposition to this corporate give away.  This apparently was a strategy to empty a hostile committee room with a fake vote so they could reconvene later, virtually in secret, and change the vote.  

This is why I am mad.  And disappointed.  Democracy in secret is no democracy at all.