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CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
Meet Howard Dean
The Man from
Vermont is Not Green (He's Not Even a Liberal)
by MICHAEL COLBY
For Vermonters who have seen Howard Dean up close
and personal for the last eleven years as our governor, there's
something darkly comical about watching the national media refer
to him as the "liberal" in the race for the Democratic
nomination for president. With few exceptions in the 11-plus
years he held the state's top job, Dean was a conservative Democrat
at best. And many in Vermont, particularly environmentalists,
see Dean as just another Republican in Democrat's clothing.
As the son of a wealthy Long Island family
(his father was a prominent Wall Street insider), Dean's used
to having his golden path well greased. After dutifully attending
Yale and then medical school, Dean looked for a state to launch
both a private medical practice and a political career. He chose
Vermont as much for its beauty as its lenient mood toward carpet
bagging politicians, thus joining Brooklynite Bernie Sanders
as a born again Vermonter.
Dean became Vermont's accidental governor
in 1991 after Governor Richard Snelling died of a heart attack
while swimming in his pool. Dean, the lieutenant governor at
the time, took the state's political reins and immediately followed
through with his promise not to offend the Snelling Republicans
who occupied the executive branch. And Dean carried on with his
right-leaning centrism for the next eleven, long years.
With his sights now set on the White
House, the Dean team has been doing its best over the last year
to polish up a mediocre gubernatorial record. They're also trying
to position Dean as "the liberal" in the Democratic
field so as to grab the much-coveted early primary voters.
And nowhere are the tall tales of Dean's
liberalism more off the mark than when the Dean team begins to
gush about his environmental record.
"EP under Governor Dean meant Expedite
Permits, not Environmental Protection," proclaims Annette
Smith, the director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment.
Smith is no stranger to Dean's environmental
record, having tangled with the Dean administration on everything
from the OMYA Corporation's mining to pesticide usage on Vermont's
mega-farms. When Smith learned that Dean was holding a press
conference at the Burlington Community Boathouse last week to
celebrate his eco-legacy, she fired off emails to Vermont environmentalist
calling for a protest of the event and wondering if they were
"going to let Governor Dean ride out on his white horse
of environmental leadership?"
It was Smith who stumbled onto Dean's
official gubernatorial web site a couple of years ago and found
a bucolic photo of her home town of Danby being featured with
this caption: "Time stands still hereyou might even forget
when it's time to go home." Ironically, the location depicted
in the photo was the same spot Dean was pushing to host a massive
gas pipeline, a plan that would have required timber clear-cuts
and other dramatic topographical changes. The Dean team removed
the photo within a couple of weeks, but not before Smith made
hay with his apparent hypocrisy.
"Dean's attempts to run for president
as an environmentalist is nothing but a fraud," Smith told
Wild Matters. "He's destroyed the Agency of Natural Resources,
he's refused to meet with environmentalists while constantly
meeting with the development community, and he's made the permitting
process one, big dysfunctional joke."
Those are not the words you'd expect
to hear from an environmentalist if all you relied on for your
news was the mainstream press. The Burlington Free Press, for
example, has spent considerable space putting one coat of varnish
after another on Dean's tenure, including a rather smarmy salute
to his eco-record. The word from those quarters is that Dean
is the environment's friend and he's done nothing but anger the
business community by slowing development and stymieing growth.
Dean's record, however, shows just the
opposite. Remember, when Dean took office there were no Wal-Marts
in Vermont; there was no Home Depots; Burlington's downtown was
dominated by local stores not the national chains that now rule
the roost; there were 36% more small farmers in existence; there
were no 100,000-hen mega-farms; and sprawl wasn't a word on the
tip of everyone's tongue.
Interestingly, Dean told the Free Press
last week that he wished the rest of "the country were more
like Vermont." But it certainly seems Dean has been doing
his best to make Vermont more like the rest of the country.
Stephanie Kaplan, a leading environmental
lawyer and the former executive officer of Vermont's Environmental
Board, has seen the regulatory process under Dean become so slanted
against environmentalists and concerned citizens that she hardly
thinks its worth putting up a fight anymore.
"Under Dean the Act 250 process
(Vermont's primary development review law) and the Agency of
Natural Resources (ANR) have lost their way," contends Kaplan.
"Dean created the myth that environmental laws hurt the
economy and set the tone to allow Act 250 and the ANR to simply
be permit mills for developers."
Kaplan points to the "Environmental
Board purge" in the mid-90s that allowed Dean to set the
pro-development tone. In 1993, the Board issued an Act 250 permit
to C&S Grocers in Brattleboro with conditions that restricted
the diesel emissions from its heavy truck traffic. After C&S
execs cried foul and threatened to move to New Hampshire, Dean
broke gubernatorial precedent by publicly criticizing the Environmental
Board for issuing what he called a "non-permit."
A year after receiving their public rebuke
from Dean, four of the Environmental Board members including
the chair were up for reappointment. With the not-so-subtle
clues from Dean that he didn't approve of the Board's political
direction, the Republican majority in the state senate shot down
each and every one of their appointments, thus dramatically changing
both the structure and climate of the Board.
"After the post-C&S purge,"
says Kaplan, "the burden of proof for Act 250 permits switched
from being on the applicants -- where it's supposed to be --
to being on the environmentalists. That's why 98% of the permit
requests are approved and only 20% ever have hearings."
There is, however, one issue that Dean
deserves credit for: his peripatetic efforts in land conservation.
During his tenure, Dean has overseen the public preservation
of over one million acres of Vermont land, most notably the former
Champion Corporation lands in the Northeast Kingdom.
"But these special parcels seem
to be the only land Dean cares about," says Kaplan. "The
rest has been fair game for over development."
As Dean goes national he may be able
to fool an Iowan or two with his eco-record, but Vermonters have
seen enough to know that being green isn't easy for Dean. And
he's far from being a liberal.
Michael Colby
is the editor of the national monthly, Wild
Matters He can be reached at mcolby@wildmatters.org.
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