GUEST COLUMN: Disinterest, disinvestment, and disillusion

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the Michigan League of Conservation Voters argues below, Michigan citizens are eating our seed corn by sitting passively by while political leaders in Lansing continue to disassemble decades of nationally recognized natural resources protection. Disinvestment in Michigan’s breathtaking natural environment threatens to destroy the very tourism economy the state works to promote.

By Lisa Wozniak and Bill Kirk
Michigan League of Conservation Voters

Since the separation of the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Natural Resources in the 1990s, both departments have suffered steady budget cuts. These cuts have affected the ability of each department to carry out their constitutionally mandated duties, as well as created difficulties for each entity to keep up with increasing responsibilities put on the departments from the state and federal levels.

Most state departments have suffered cuts across the board, especially this year, however, the cuts to the DEQ and the DNR have been grossly disproportionate.

The budgets of the DEQ and DNR combined account for less than 1% of the state’s General Fund (by comparison, the Department of Corrections accounts for over 20% of General Fund allocation)

Since FY 2002, the DEQ alone has been subjected to a 56% reduction in General Fund dollars (that reduction does not include this year’s budget).

In FY 2009, approximately 12% of the DEQ’s budget came from the General Fund.

In years past, a more balanced funding approach created much less reliance on fees (i.e. in FY 2002, funding sources were approximately 28% General Fund, 34% State restricted funds, and 36% Federal funds).

The lack of General Fund support creates a greater reliance on fees, which in turn creates a process-based approach to regulation. An outcome-based model is much more efficient and sustainable.

Staff levels at the DEQ are at their second lowest since 1997.

While required services and responsibilities of the Department have increased, the Department itself has actually gotten smaller.

The DEQ’s budget in 1996 was $352 million, and in FY 2009, it was $344.8 million – when compared with rates of inflation during that period, the DEQ has suffered a huge loss in “buying power” with its budget.

In a nationwide study conducted by Heart of the Lakes in 2007, Michigan ranked 47th in the U.S. in per capita spending on environmental protection and conservation.

In the recent budget negotiations, the DEQ budget was cut by another 30%.

All of these cuts have resulted in very concrete problems regarding enforcement and protection.

Campsites and beaches have been closed.

Contaminant site clean up has effectively stopped.

Tainted drinking water wells remain unaddressed.

Dramatic decreases in inspection of facilities discharging pollutants into the air and water of Michigan have occurred.

The DEQ itself has stated that there simply is no staff or resources to address anything aside from emergency situations, and even those services have suffered and are currently inadequate.

The Department is taking a risk management approach to focus on permitting (the rationale is that there is no capacity for enforcement and clean-up, so the focus is shifted to front end permitting with no real ability for enforcement).

While the state spends millions on the Pure Michigan campaign, the legislature is gambling with the integrity of the very resources we are marketing by leaving them unprotected. The DEQ has been characterized as an impediment to business in Michigan, but in reality, the Department is the only mechanism for managing natural resources in Michigan. These resources we speak of are absolutely critical to our Tourism and Recreation economy (the third largest economic sector in the state). Continued underinvestment will mean certain economic peril for Michigan.

The recombination of the Departments provides an opportunity to reinvent environmental protection, preservation, conservation, and resource management in Michigan. However, if a holistic approach to managing natural resources is not embraced, we will not have a “Pure Michigan” to market. At the heart of this problem lies the need for sustainable, long-term funding solutions for the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE).

In a 2007 statewide poll of 600 registered voters conducted for Heart of the Lakes Center for Land Conservation Policy, 72 percent of voters were surprised to learn that natural resource and environmental protection programs (including the DNR and DEQ) receive less than 1 percent of state’s General Fund combined. Before learning the facts, the average respondent estimated natural resources protection to be getting between 10 and 11 percent of the state General Fund, ten-times more than current funding levels. The citizens of Michigan have always and will continue to support environmental protection. Hopefully, the legislature and the administration will listen to citizens as opposed to special interests with incentive to pollute cheaply. This is a problem that the state of Michigan will be forced to deal with, it is just a matter of whether this generation will take responsibility and lead, or continue to pass the buck to future generations.