(Metro Times Photo
Illustration/Sean Bieri/Photo/John Sobczak)
RELATED
STORIES:
Grading
Engler. The Metro
Times contacted a number of the state's prominent
environmental groups for evaluations of Engler's
environmental record.
Aid
for cities, parks, waterways. What the Clean Michigan Initiative ballot
proposal is about.
Environmental
lowlights. In the eyes
of Michigan's business community, Engler is an honor student
when it comes to policy.
What raises this
above routine political chicanery is its strategic
brilliance.
USEFUL
LINKS:
Michigan Citizens Against Toxic Substances
Michigan
Environmental Council
"He knows how to
read polls, and the public had consistently identified his
record on the environment and natural resources as a
weakness."
-- Keith Schneider on Engler
Environmentalists, with the aid of Democrats who had
regained control of the Michigan House, weren't about to be
steamrollered.
Greenwashing
John Engler
Working political judo on the environmentalists.
by Curt Guyette
e-mail
feedback
10/7/98
For Michigan environmentalists, Gov. John Engler is like the punch line to a bad joke.
How low can he go? So low that when the Metro Times asked a handful of prominent environmentalists to give him a green grade, the D+ offered by Jim Moore of the American Lung Association actually raised Engler's average.
"Clearly an F," declares Julie Griess of Michigan Citizens Against Toxic Substances. "Except usually someone gets an F because they don't comprehend something, not because they are simply evil."
That's the kind of antipathy eight years of John Engler has inspired among the shakers in Michigan's environmental movement.
But the real joke this election season is not on the governor. If the polls are right, he's chuckling all the way to a third term as the state's chief executive. Beyond that, the rotund Republican from Mt. Pleasant must be getting a great belly laugh from the masterful piece of political judo he's apparently pulled off. Call it gallows humor if you will, but there is something ironically awe-inspiring in the 60-second commercial being aired around the state that shades John Engler as a champion of all things green. What raises this above routine political chicanery is its strategic brilliance.
Business salutes
The Clean Michigan Campaign is targeting two groups to pay for its multimillion-dollar media blitz.
The first is big business, Engler's core constituency and a major beneficiary of the bond that guarantees a public source of funding to clean up toxic sites. So it's not surprising that the Michigan Manufacturers Association, Michigan Chamber of Commerce and other business interests hail Engler as a paragon of environmental moderation, balancing the need for a clean and healthy environment against the needs of business to make an honest buck.
No F's from this crowd; Engler is at least a B+ in their book, and Proposal C, as the measure is officially known, is just one more example of his stellar environmental record.
"I think the governor has a solid record of performance over the past eight years," says Kevin Korpi, director of environmental and regulatory affairs for Michigan Chamber.
"The Clean Michigan proposal is part of that. It is a very significant investment that the governor led. It was his vision and leadership that put the program together, that led to legislative action" to put the measure on the ballot.
The other part of this equation, though, is environmentalists. They are being hit en masse with a direct mail fund-raising request, the response to which "has been very good," according to Dan Senor, manager of the Clean Michigan campaign.
That distresses Lana Pollack, executive director of the Michigan Environmental Council, which worked to strengthen Proposal C from the version initially offered by Engler. She has no problem with the Big Three automakers kicking in $250,000 each to pay for the campaign, but the notion of rank-and-file environmentalists kicking in their greenbacks isn't a happy thought.
"The campaign is going to have more than enough money to get this passed," says Pollack. "There are a lot of groups and campaigns more worthy that environmentalists can contribute to."
But if Senor is correct and environmentalists are contributing, it means that Engler has devised a way to polish his political image with money supplied in part by those most opposed to his environmental policies.
Say what you will about the governor, you've got give him credit: Proposal C is a masterful piece of politics.
"There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever," says Don Inman, a former deputy director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources who sees no indication that preserving the environment is part of the Engler administration's core values. "This is an attempt by the governor to spruce up his image."
Following his early retirement from state government, Inman helped found Michigan Resource Stewards, a group of resource management professionals who have banded together to expose the environmental transgressions they see as the hallmark of Engler's tenure.
From splitting apart a DNR that once had a reputation as one of the nation's best resource management agencies to disbanding citizen oversight committees that assured public input on decision making, Engler has done nothing but weaken environmental protections across the state, says Inman.
Making activists
Which is why, after 26 years of experience, Inman -- along with his wife, Virginia Pierce -- took the early retirement engineered as a cost-saving measure by Engler and became an outside activist.
"People in our profession aren't usually whistle-blowers," he explained. "When you work for an agency, you don't publicly speak out against it. You fight inside for changes. But we cared so much about what was happening to the department, and the significant losses we felt were occurring, we took the early out and started trying to get the information about what was really going on out to voter and elected officials."
Inman and his wife aren't the only ones transformed into activists by Engler and his administration's policies.
Four years ago, Keith Schneider was an environmental correspondent for the New York Times working out of a Manistee County cabin. Then the governor's policies toward gas drilling in the antrim shale fields that spread in an arc across the Lower Peninsula came roaring into his life. When he began investigating the scope of devastation those policies were creating, he decided that just writing about it wasn't enough. Schneider quit the newspaper business to found the Michigan Land Use Institute, which in three years has grown to become a $500,000-a-year nonprofit group with a membership of more than 1,100 families and groups.
Like Inman, Schneider sees Engler's Clean Michigan initiative as an astute piece of electioneering.
"What Engler has done is very savvy," observes Schneider. "He knows how to read polls, and the public had consistently identified his record on the environment and natural resources as a weakness."
But there's more than simple greenwashing at work, contends Schneider. In a way, he says, Engler has been a victim of his own excess.
Engler's policies in 1995 "were about as far out on a right-wing cliff as you can get. They looked over that precipice and saw what they were about to fall into."
Even in conservative strongholds like Michigan's north woods -- where the gas drilling was igniting a broad-based citizen revolt -- Engler's policies were too radical, and he started moving back toward the mainstream.
A lethargic environmental movement was being energized, and began to slow what had previously been unimpeded progress (or regression, depending on your viewpoint). Schneider ticks off victories that put reason back into the state's drilling polices as one example. A recent public hearing in metro Detroit regarding potential development of downriver's Humbug Marsh is another indicator of just how much the state's green movement has been fueled by Engler's fire; an estimated 1,000 people turned out.
Eco-friendly?
The Clean Michigan initiative itself adds credence to Schneider's point.
As originally proposed by Engler, the ballot measure would primarily have spurred development by cleaning up polluted "brown fields" in urban areas. Previous legislation pushed by Engler had substantially gutted the state's "polluters pay" laws, letting industry off the hook.
"Clean Michigan was a twofer," explains Lana Pollack, the former state legislator who now heads the Michigan Environmental Council. "He needed something to soften his image, and he needed something to replace the $18 million a year that was lost when the polluter pays law was changed."
But environmentalists, with the aid of Democrats who had regained control of the Michigan House in 1996, weren't about to be steamrollered.
Although the Engler administration "put up a real fight," progressives were able win substantial changes that broadened the scope of Clean Michigan from $325 million to its current $675 million, adding programs that will revitalize state parks, reduce pollution at source points and help prevent childhood lead poisoning.
All of which the governor, his behind-the-scenes battle to eliminate the additions having been lost, is more than happy to take credit for.
"There's no doubt about it," says Pollack. "He's a consummate politician."
Curt Guyette is the Metro
Times investigative reporter. E-mail him at cguyette@aminc.com.