Schwarzenegger Not Coming Clean on His Environmental Record and Ties to Bush Policies: “The Roadless Rule”

Assembly Democrat Lloyd Levine was charitable in his comments regarding the Governor’s election year conversion here. He said:

“I welcome the Governor’s action today, but am at the same time disappointed that it took as long as it did for him to come to the table and urge the President to protect our 4.4 million acres of roadless areas. When I introduced AB 715 in February of last year, I did so to safeguard the provisions of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which came about under the direction of President Clinton in 1999. My legislation would have prohibited the use of state funds to cooperate with any federal plan that was inconsistent with the protections provided under the Roadless Rule.”

AB 715 was defeated on the Assembly Floor with the strong opposition of Republicans and a handful of Democrats. The Governor did not lift a finger to help this measure pass.

But this doesn’t begin to tell the story here. Consider these facts:

Fact: In 2004, Schwarzenegger said he supported Bush’s rollback of the roadless rule and that he would not file a petition to oppose the rollback:

The Schwarzenegger administration signaled its support Tuesday for a plan to drop Clinton-era protections that barred road-building and other development on nearly a third of the country's national forest land, including more than 4 million acres in California.

The rollback, proposed by the Bush administration last summer, would repeal the most ambitious conservation move of Clinton's presidency -- a rule that blocked commercial timber cutting and road construction on 58.5 million acres of national forest holdings.

In its place, the Bush proposal would create a system that relies heavily on individual states to decide whether the forest lands should be opened to development or remain roadless.

. . . In his letter Monday to Veneman, Chrisman said California would not file a petition. Under the Bush proposal, that means California's roadless acreage would be managed according to the individual forest plans that governed the areas prior to the Clinton decree.

Fact: Schwarzenegger also tried to make it easier for logging companies to log California’s forests and appointed logging industry executives to key environmental posts in his administration:

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to make it easier for timber companies to get approval for logging plans in exchange for a $10 million increase in logging fees.

The plan drew fire yesterday from environmental groups and the timber industry, though environmental groups supported several of Schwarzenegger's other budget proposals.

Fact: Schwarzenegger declined to join California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer and officials of five other states in suing the Bush administration over ending the ban on development in roadless areas.

California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer and officials of five other states have sued the Bush administration over ending the ban on development in roadless areas. Schwarzenegger declined to join them, preferring to work with federal officials.

Lockyer spokeswoman Teresa Schilling said the attorney general's office would continue with its lawsuit.

"There is no guarantee the Bush administration will approve the state's plan or any other state's plan," Schilling said.

Governor Schwarzenegger once again shows that with all his twists, turns and flip-flops on environmental policy, he’s more of a gymnast than a bodybuilder. In another example of election year pandering, Like Houdini, he is trying to get out of George Bush’s death grip. But the facts don’t lie.