Speaker Chopp praises Washington Environmental Council's work in the Legislature
Washington Environmental Council (WEC) Outreach Director Tom Geiger recently interviewed Speaker of the House of Representatives Frank Chopp. Speaker Chopp was first elected to the House in 1994 and became the Speaker in 1998. He is a Democrat who represents the 43rd district in Seattle.
Tom Geiger (TG): You have been in the legislature for about a decade. What has it been like working with the environmental community in the legislature?
Speaker Chopp (FC): Well, every year it has been getting better with regard to working together and getting things done. We have also improved on avoiding bad things from happening – this year for the 1st time in a long time there are no big veto requests to the governor on environmental issues.
When I was first elected, the House Democratic caucus went from 65 to 36. I showed up and was all excited about being elected to office, but from 1994-1997 there was just one bad thing after another on the environment. They were passing bills to try to repeal the Growth Management Act and roll back many other environmental protections. Governor Lowry and later Governor Locke vetoed many of the worst of the bills.
From the environmental community point of view, things have become much more organized. There is an environmental agenda, and we have a working relationship with Clifford Traisman, State Lobbyist for WEC and Washington Conservation Voters and others and we have been able to focus and get some things done. What is most important in any of these battles is to have a clear agenda, a clear organizing strategy and a clear legislative strategy. That is how you win.
TG: How do you work around the challenges in your own caucus on environmental issues, given that not all democrats have exemplary voting records on the environment?
FC: I think that the main thing is to see that people have different points of view and to try to reconcile that in ways that are good for the environment. So instead of saying ‘that if something is good for the environment then it is bad for jobs’, we try to find ways to show that environmental protection and jobs go hand in hand. Like on the Shoreline agreement. There were years of battles over how or even if we should improve the protections for our shorelines. Finally people sat down and hammered out a deal that was very positive. It was a compromise that the environmental community and the business community could agree to. So part of my job is to bring people to agreement on so tough issues. The key is to make sure that people are encouraged and required to work things out.
TG: I have heard you speak about old growth protection. Being a representative from the very urban landscape of Seattle, people might wonder how you developed a close connection to old growth and state forests.
FC: Well, I grew up on the Kitsap Peninsula. And there was a piece of Department of Natural Resource land over in East Bremerton. It ’s about 400 acres of big trees. When I was a kid we used to call it “The Lost Continent.” And it was recently being threatened by sprawl. So I worked with a local environmentalist, who was my 4th grade teacher, and the Illahee Land Trust to get it in the Capitol budget to save these lands. Exactly how that is done we will figure out. Now everyone is feeling great about it. People love going in there to recreate.
In addition to revenue from logging state lands, part of the public benefit now is to save some of those forests so that the people can be benefited by increased habitat value and places for recreation. So we have to figure out a way to support the revenue needs of the schools [which get income for school construction and higher education from logging state lands] and protect the forests. What is most important in any of these battles is to have a clear agenda, a clear organizing strategy and a clear legislative strategy. That is how you win.
TG: The state budget is very connected to environmental policy. What are some ways you see environmental gains taking place through the budget?
FC: On the Capitol Budget we have to use parts of it to buy up critical habitat and provide funding for purchasing buffers along critical streams. On the Operating Budget side we put in funding for PBTs [Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxins]. The last few legislative sessions, my favorite lunch has been tuna fish. As this was debated in the legislature I became aware of tuna containing mercury and realized I had accumulated a fair amount in my body. This is a public health issue. Chemicals like this and others that are toxic and accumulate in our bodies and the environment have to be tracked and eliminated. That is why the funding to track, monitor and phase out of some of these chemicals is so important.
TG: What is the particular policy that you helped pass that you feel most proud of?
FC: The rescue tug at Neah Bay has to be one of them. It makes sense to keep ships from running aground and spilling oil. And the tug keeps that from happening. We took a lot of flack from the shipping industry -which was absurd because we were paying for it. We wanted to make this improvement but didn’t want to hurt the shipping industry in a state that is in very tight competition with other western ports. But now that it has been there for a couple years everyone supports it.
TG: Initiatives have been important in moving environmental protections in WA. What is your opinion about the prospect of a successful environmental initiative in the next few years?
FC: The initiative is a constitutional right of the people of the state. Many of the gains that have been made are due to the initiative process. Shorelines Management Act and Growth Management Act are both laws that came out of initiatives, not in the same way, but both are based on initiatives nonetheless. So looking forward, I think one idea would be looking at cleaning up Puget Sound. A clean Sound is connected to so much of the environment but also so much of the economy. So I could see the next effort focusing on water quality and protection of Puget Sound.
TG: Any final comments?
FC: I just want to say that I feel very good about where we are going and how the environmental community has become much better organized. I am very appreciative of how much advocacy the environmental community has been doing and the savvy manner in which they are now pursuing environmental protection. For example, I think it was a great move for Washington Conservation Voters and Washington Environmental Council to come together to hire a lobbyist. It makes it much easier to have a clear agenda and get things done. So I feel that we are making good progress in Olympia and hope that we do even better in the future.