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Drop Dead Governor Hull sends a message to Pima County. By Susan Zakin How serious is Gov. Jane Hull's assault on the Sonoran Desert? HB 2524, the "stealth" bill now before the state legislature, wouldn't just sabotage the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, Pima County's state-of-the-art effort to come into compliance with the Endangered Species Act. This blatant power grab would also undermine any county or city ordinance that protects wildlife, water or land. County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, who hasn't always been on the best of terms with local environmentalists, is calling it the "Death to the Desert Bill." It's not easy being green. Huckelberry is finding this out the hard way. The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan is Huckelberry's baby. If it succeeds, it will give Tucson--and, by extension, Huckelberry--a national profile; Tucson will be recognized as a community that's found a progressive solution to balancing environmental concerns with growth. Tucson environmentalists were the ones who originally came up with the idea of a science-based plan for Pima county, which is as big as some eastern states and contains some of the richest desert habitat in the world. Not long after the county Board of Supervisors agreed to undertake this effort, it was folded into a habitat conservation plan, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's tool of choice for resolving endangered-species conflicts. These plans are basically tradeoffs that usually allow a certain amount of wildlife habitat destruction in return for protection in other areas. At the time, I worried that the feds would push for a sell-out. In many of these plans--there are about 300 around the country--science has taken a back seat to politics. But so far the county has stuck to its knitting, creating the basis for a full-tilt planning process that is, for the most part, grounded in science. It's understandable that Huckelberry is seriously unhappy with the state's Neanderthal attempt to undermine almost two years of hard work and a raft of cutting-edge biology. Even Don Diamond, Arizona's highest-profile real estate mogul, is distancing himself (however unconvincingly) from the gnarly power grab. Diamond was quoted in the Arizona Daily Star, calling HB 2524 "an overreaction." Rep. Jim Kolbe also spoke out against the bill on a recent trip to Tucson. According to a story by Rhonda Bodfield Sander in the Arizona Daily Star, the bill was written by Hull's office after a posse of real estate honchos met a few weeks ago with a Texas attorney who told them of a similar law passed by the Texas legislature. A few weeks later, thanks to the governor, Arizona was well on its way down the crooked trail blazed by the state of Texas. In essence, HB 2524 gives state officials veto power over the decisions of local officials on conservation. This power grab reflects the interests of the state land department, whose attitude toward Pima County and conservation in general can only be called truculent. The state land department is a vestigial relic of the frontier whose mission is supposed to be producing revenue for schools. In reality, the department, which controls nine million acres, provides a subsidy for good-old-boy ranchers in the form of below-cost livestock grazing. Now these testosterone-overdosed yahoos see real estate development as their chance to build an empire. It would make a lot more sense for the state land department to retool for recreation, including hunting, as a source of revenue that would carry them into the 22nd century. But that's not the good-old-boy frontier mentality. No, they'd rather get a one-time bonanza and destroy the land, in the finest tradition of the Old West. According to Huckelberry, state land department officials have repeatedly blown off chances to participate in the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. "They never wanted the participation," says Huckelberry. "I think they believe their mission in life is to develop every square acre of land." I asked Huckelberry how real a threat HB 2524 poses to Pima County's efforts to bring its regulatory climate into the modern world. The bill is winding its way through the legislature this week, but it's tough to call the timing. It could be law by the time you read this, or it could have become the center of an even louder shouting match. "It's probably a very real threat," said Huckelberry. "The county can't enact anything dealing with conservation of wildlife if this passes. Everything we do in our land-use code is not for creating a garden you can look at. It's for the purpose of protecting habitat for wildlife. So this bill could be extraordinarily far-reaching. That's why we're calling it the Death to the Desert bill." Huckelberry also pointed out that the bill flies in the face of the Republican shibboleth of local control. "It basically gives legitimacy to a very strange attitude toward land-use planning, that it's centralized in the state," said Huckelberry. "In the West, it's always been decentralized." The phoniness of the local-control soundbite has always been obvious. Westerners, in particular, love to talk about local control. What they really mean is "Leave us alone so we can munch at the federal trough all we want without you nasty old federal bureaucrats ever coming around to tell us to leave some for the other folks." Gov. Hull also touts local control. But when Pima County, where people actually care about the landscape, institutes reasoned, scientifically sound land-use measures that reflect local values, Hull tries to stomp it. Her move is about as subtle as a turf war between garbage companies in Brooklyn--and just as dangerous.
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