Say Anything Blog

The Northern Plains Heritage Foundation, the organization started by state Senator Tracy Potter to receive the millions of our tax dollars to develop a “management plan” for 4.7 million acres of privately owned North Dakota land that was seized in a federal land grab property owners weren’t even informed about, held its first public meeting about the controversial National Heritage Area back in October.  The result of the meeting?

As you might expect, the group was mobbed by angry property owners and taxpayers who were not exactly happy about these unelected, unaccountable liberals getting “management” power over land they do not own without any right to consent or even notification being given to the actual property owners.  They held a public hearing and it turned into a town hall.

So how do the folks at the NPHF respond?  Do they take these complaints serious?  Do they seek more input from the public who are not only funding this land grab but in many cases are subject to it?  Of course not.  They change the rules of their meetings to make it more difficult for the public to speak out at these meetings.

Amidst the wave of criticism both ND State Senator Tracy Potter and US Senator Byron Dorgan received at a public input hearing regarding the Northern Plains National Heritage Area (NPNHA) last month, proponents of the area have decided to change tactics, utilizing methods suggested by radical environmentalists.

According to minutes from a November 9th meeting of the Northern Plains Heritage Foundation (NPHF), instead of allowing concerned citizens in the audience speak in front of the entire audience, people will be given an initial presentation, then will be broken down into groups of 8 to 10 people. Someone, probably each group’s facilitator, will take notes and report those notes back to the entire group.

And before anyone says that the NPHF isn’t trying to hamstring the publics’ ability to comment on their actions, I have an email sent to Senator Tracy Potter by North Dakota environmentalist Mike McEnroe suggesting that this form of meeting be used for the express purpose of damping down dissent:

I thought about writing this after last night’s public meeting, but decided to wait until this morning.  Standing up before last night’s mostly hostile audience and supporting the Northern Plains Heritage Area would have been only adding gasoline to the fire.  The attendees mostly have a mistrust of the federal government, the Park Service and the Corps, Ducks Unlimited and the Sierra Club, taxes, and a belief that rural landowners alone should make all the decisions that affect North Dakota.  Supporters of the project would have been shouted down and criticized for not being landowners.

That said and off my chest, two weeks earlier you and I and others attended a 6-hour meeting with 30 diverse participants from up and down the Missouri River in North Dakota, who all proclaimed their strong support, as strong as any opposition last night, to protect, preserve, and restore the historic, cultural, and natural resource values of the Missouri River.  It must be noted that “natural resource” values included fish and wildlife, plants, water and energy as described by the organizations represented at that meeting.  So take heart, there is a lot of support in the 5 county area for the NPNHA.

On a specific issue, the re-inventory of sites within the Area should include Audubon National Wildlife Refuge at Coleharbor in McLean County.  The Refuge is building a new interpretive center for environmental education, interpretation and outreach.  The opportunity will be there for grant possibilites to further enhance the natural resource education along the Missouri River in an area that already is a destination for tourism and outdoor recreation in North Dakota.

One suggestion for the Foundation’s meetings would be to use a table top forum, where after an initial presentation or introduction to the process, particpants meet one-on-one with Foundation Board members or staff (I know there aren’t any right now) and give their comments. The comments are kept, transcribed, recorded for the record, but the process avoids the speech-making, sermonizing, cat calls and applause of last nights meeting.

On a related note, you have to admire this woman’s myopic disdain for property rights.  Not to mention the lack of respect these liberals have for the public in general.

They’re using $10 million of our tax dollars to develop a “management plan” for property they don’t own, and for that they can’t even take a few verbal “rotten tomatoes” from the public.