Well, they didn’t take that very well.
The chairman (Democrat Gov. of Montana Brian Schweitzer) and vice
chairman (Republican Gov. of Idaho Butch Otter) of the Western Governors
Association responded
sharply (PDF) to a National Taxpayers Union inquiry
about
WGA’s management and funding of the Western Climate
Initiative, which the rest of the WGA board members — the
governors of the other 17 Western states — either unknowingly or
are too embarrassed to acknowledge they support.
WCI is a serious hush-hush deal among these state executives.
While they proudly and in detail (as shown in annual reports and
on WGA’s website) explain activities such as the Western Regional Air
Partnership, the Western Interstate Energy
Board, and the Western
States Water Council, WCI comparatively is a big secret.
There is barely a mention of WCI by name.
How can WGA have an
entire page about climate change on its site and not even
mention WCI? Why is the pride exhibited by the WestGovs for WRAP,
WIEB, and WSWC — all in the spirit of its mission statement
(“to collectively express their positions on matters of shared
interest, and together advocate a Western agenda”) — missing
with WCI? Are the governors not all on board, or do they just not
want the public to know about it?
That’s one of the many important questions NTU asked, because
it’s not clear all the governors voted to support WCI — at least
openly. Meanwhile some members — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin,
for one — have allowed WGA to advance a policy (cap-and-tax
emissions reduction) they seem to loathe while
criticizing it in other forums. Regardless of whether WGA
member states funded WCI with taxpayer dollars, as NTU has asked
in requesting full disclosure of the project’s accounting, for
the governors to allow WGA staff to run WCI contradicts their
mission to act in unanimity on issues of common agreement and
importance.
But instead of a response that addressed the concerns of a
respected taxpayer advocate, WGA slapped together a whitewash
retort. The letter, almost certainly composed by WCI project
manager Patrick Cummins (a WGA staffer whose name pops up as the
author in the Microsoft Word version of the letter), ignores the
majority of NTU’s challenges and instead adamantly declares that
outside funding covered WCI expenditures, not state dues.
Whether or not taxpayer funds ended up covering WCI-related costs
is one issue. Only a full, transparent audit will disclose not
only incoming and outgoing dollars, but also whether or not WGA
staffers like Cummins and executive director Pam Inmann saw their
work time totally consumed with WCI; what their contract (WCI is
alleged to have “contracted” with WGA for its employees’
services) stipulations were; and whether or not any WGA employees
personally benefited from the arrangement.
It’s not surprising that Cummins would be so testy about NTU’s
inquiry. He’s a global warming alarmist pushing hard for a
cap-and-tax agreement among the Western states, as
reported by online publication Facilitiesnet:
“What the states are really doing is taking leadership and
trying to find out what works in different regions….
“I think people realize that some of the cap-and-trade
approaches that are out there work not only for the electricity
market but for other sectors,” says Cummins. “With the kind of
cuts we need to make, everybody needs to be in the program.
We’re not going to get the reductions we need by focusing on a
single sector.”
So it follows that Cummins would show up as a contributor to the
last two global warming fear-mongering presidential candidates in
2004 and 2008, with $200 to Democrat John Kerry, and $208 to
President Obama (Cummins’s wife also gave three donations
totaling $130 to Obama). Cummins also supported ($300) a Democrat
candidate for the La Plata County (Colo.) Commission, Joelle Riddle, who
until her election was education director for the
local Planned Parenthood chapter. Her calling now, in
addition to those serving constituents, is to speak on the global
warming alarmist circuit.
Anyone who has studied climate change hysteria knows that
greenhouse gas reduction and population control go together.
But Cummins’ presence and influence is only symptomatic of a
larger problem: that the once moderate, measured WGA has been
overtaken by a leftist staff carrying out the work of
environmental extremist nonprofits and foundations. WCI, for
example, is the product of the five Western governors (California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson,
Arizona former Gov. Janet Napolitano, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski,
and Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire) who initiated it. It was
since joined by Montana’s Schweitzer and Utah’s Republican Gov.
Jon Huntsman Jr., a climate alarmist like the GOP’s
Schwarzenegger.
WCI, as with nearly half the states, has been developed with the
help of the
Center for Climate Strategies, a group that advances the
anti-fossil fuel agenda by “helping” states create greenhouse gas
reduction policy. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a multi-million
dollar alarmism advocate, finances much of CCS’s work. Other
activist groups like the Energy Foundation, World Resources
Institute, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change were also
involved.
Beyond WCI, it’s clear environmental extremists possess a large
measure of control over WGA. A glimpse at its annual reports and
Web site reveal significant backing from eco-left leaners such as
the Doris Duke Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, the Energy
Foundation, the (Ted) Turner Foundation, the Southwest
Partnership for Carbon Sequestration, and the William & Flora
Hewlett Foundation. A few oil companies like British Petroleum,
ConocoPhillips and Chevron have chipped in also.
But WGA’s report page almost exclusively lists studies that could
have been found on any anti-capitalist, environoiac
organization’s website, with titles such as “Developing
Alternative Transportation Fuels,” “Wildlife Corridors,”
“Deploying Near-zero Technologies for Coal: A Path Forward,”
“Clean Energy, a Strong Economy and a Healthy Environment — A
Progress Report 2005-2007,” and “Conserving the Greater Sage
Grouse.” It’s clear the environmentalists have disproportionate
control of WGA.
Given the past history of Montana’s Schweitzer, WGA’s chairman,
and Idaho’s Otter, the vice chairman, it’s not surprising that
Cummins easily got them to sign the aggressive response letter to
NTU. Schweitzer’s emphasis on environmental issues is well
established, and not long ago Otter
revealed his flawed thinking on global warming:
“No matter what theory you accept or what evidence you
recognize, the public reality is that our climate is getting
warmer,” Otter said [in October 2007]. “We ignore reality at
our own peril.… We must think of adapting to a changing climate
in ways the public and marketplace can accept.”
The climate has been cooling for a decade now, but that’s beside
the point. WCI is in fact a project supported by only a handful
of Western governors, and many find it objectionable in that it
— as well as most other WGA projects — pushes an agenda that
locks up their vast natural gas and oil resources for exploration
and extraction, and therefore inhibits economic development and
prosperity for their citizens.
It’s understandable that many WGA members might view the
organization as a necessary irritant that they must pay homage to
once a year or so. But now it’s become an extension of the
environmental extremism movement, and they need to fully audit
its books, identify where the agenda has gone off track, and rein
it in.
