AUGUSTA, Maine — Members of a state task force created to reform the Land Use Regulation Commission urged lawmakers Tuesday to quickly pass changes to LURC’s structure and rules. Many lawmakers balked, saying quick action was premature.
Department of Conservation Commissioner Bill Beardsley presented a set of recommendations to the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee, accompanied by draft legislation.
Those recommendations, approved unanimously by 13 task force members late last year, were the result of months of public hearings and sometimes contentious discussion. Beardsley said the LURC task force compromised in a number of areas to get to a unanimous agreement, and he hoped lawmakers might do the same.
“Setting forth this common ground is about as difficult as asking Tom Brady and Tim Tebow to reconcile their difference in the [NFL] playoff game this weekend,” Beardsley said. “We’ve done our best, the ball is now in your hands.”
While lawmakers praised the hard work of the LURC reform group, both Republicans and Democrats on the committee said they don’t intend to rush a decision.
Rep. Jeffrey Timberlake, R-Turner, said he didn’t ask specific questions about the proposal on Tuesday because it hasn’t been turned into a bill yet.
Sen. Elizabeth Schneider, D-Orono, said if and when a bill is created, it would become a committee bill, not a bill from the conservation commissioner.
“To do this and just say we’re going to accept his draft is not appropriate,” she said.
Rep. Jeff McCabe, D-Skowhegan, stressed that committee members still have concerns about the recommendations, but he was reluctant to delve into details until after a public hearing on a bill.
The committee voted late Tuesday after much debate and behind-the-scenes wrangling to ask Beardsley and others to draft a formal bill based on the work group’s final report.
Among the recommendations of that report were:
• Retaining a statewide land use planning, zoning and permitting board for the Unorganized Territory, with the majority of board members selected by counties that contain such areas.
• Rewording LURC’s “Purpose and Scope” to value both conservation and economic viability. Task force members thought the current language was too heavily weighted toward preservation and didn’t emphasize economic development.
• Shifting major site development applications in the Unorganized Territory to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and forest management activities to the Maine Forest Service.
For four decades, LURC has acted as the planning and zoning board for state’s 10 million acres of Unorganized Territory. LURC has long been the target of criticism by landowners and companies doing business in Maine’s Unorganized Territory who contend the commission’s policies and staff have stalled economic development.
When the work group initially was created, many feared it would lead to the abolition of LURC. That fear was fueled after it was revealed that some of the appointees had spoken publicly in favor of abolishing the commission, but a compromise eventually emerged.
Although LURC was spared, concerns remain including allowing county commissioners to appoint themselves as LURC commissioners and allowing counties to opt out of LURC under certain criteria.
McCabe said the opt-out provision is the biggest sticking point for him but he also worried that a new LURC would not have an effective funding mechanism. The opt-out provision, for some, amounts to a phaseout of LURC over time.
A number of environmental groups have opposed the task force recommendations. Environment Maine said the changes give too much control to local counties and do not ensure enough legislative oversight.
Why is everything that is being proposed in Augusta that comes from one of LePage’s departments or boards always accompanied with the need that it be passed quickly?
I think they do it just to get your goat.
Because it is easier to snow people if they feel rushed through the details. You know what they say about the details….
The typical elitist response is, and has always been, the same in regards to the self determination of the UTs.
“Environment Maine said the changes give too much control to local counties ”
It seems we aren’t nearly smart enough to have the same rights to local control that ALL the rest of Maine has.
Do the county commissioners control building permits in organized towns? No? They don’t? Then what makes you think they are qualified to do it in unorganized towns?
Why are those towns unorganized in the first place? Because there aren’t enough people there to run them as a town! Imagine that! That’s why the state has been running the show – because there are not any local people willing and able to do it. Shoveling this responsibility off on the County Commissioners will NOT do a better job of anything. They are nowhere near qualified to do it.
If that’s the case, then WHY doesn’t LURC administer DEP rules?
The state is running the show because the enviro whackjobs such as yourself want to control the north woods, which, I might add, YOU DON’T OWN.
The building permits are handled by the LOCAL planning board.
What part of LOCAL do you not get???
There are no LOCAL planning boards in the UT, because there are no PEOPLE to serve on one. That’s why the state has to run the show.
And apparently you’re unaware that LURC DOES administer DEP rules in the UT. Look it up in the statutes on the state website. Natural Resources Protection Act, Delegation of Authority.
I may not own the whole of the UT, but I own a part of it, and I have for quite a few years. I’m pretty sure you don’t own the rest of it.
I guess I must be an “enviro whackjob” because I like my lake to have clean water, and I like my fish and partridges to be edible and plentiful. I like my venison and moose meat to be readily available, and I like my firewood to be grown locally. I like that my friends who harvest trees have the opportunity to continue doing so because the big companies are required to manage their lands in a sustainable way. Yeah, so I guess that makes me some kind of lunatic, right?
If there are no people, what are you doing there?
I’m still not convinced that the counties have the best interests of the citizens of the UT as their primary goal. Maybe the UT’s should organize as their own entity. Then they can make their own decisions.
You may have something there, but it still begs the question of WHO will be on the board?
I like the county option because if one of the commissioners is designated as a board member, their whole background will have been perused through the election process, thereby eliminating the chance that some enviromaniac whackjob gets the job through the backdoor, as has been the case with LURC.
Representative elected by the residents of the UT in a special election representing each county. They would be approved by legislature before being seated on the Commission. That would be true representation. They would also be the liason between the Commission and the counties.
Another possibility.
Anything but the elitist, preservationist representation that has been the norm since LURC’s inception.
You really have no clue what they do, you just want someone to blame for all the problems in the world. I’ll bet you tried to get a permit for something inappropriate, or else got caught building something illegal without a permit, and now you want to blame the police for giving you a speeding ticket.
LURC is a complete and utter disaster. They are one of the most harmful things to the Maine economy and their horribly inefficient methods & rules that prolonged the Plum Creek issue have gone a long way in dissuading other investors/employers from coming into Maine. LePage & Beardsley just want common sense reforms for LURC to put it on par with similar commissions in other states. They want it done quickly because the normal pace of things in Augusta is about 2 to 3 years for anything to get done completely. So to say “get it done quickly” probably means about 1 year in reality. Whenever LePage makes demands that the state get on par with other states in terms of rules, regulations, taxes, utility costs, or energy policy, I don’t think that is anywhere near too much to ask, and it probably only makes perfect sense…. unless you’re a moonbat socialist hippie with your head in the clouds.
The primary reason that Plum Creek took so long is that LURC does not have enough staff to be able to handle such a large project, plus all their regular duties, in any less time. This is because the legislature has never funded the agency to the point where they could actually do the job they are charged with doing. Ten people to cover over ten million acres?? That’s beyond ridiculous. The idea of having state oversight of development in remote areas is sound. But the legislature never really wanted them to be effective, because heaven forbid that their rich friends would actually have to follow the same rules for their camps that everyone else has to follow for their houses and camps down in the civilized parts of the state. So they made sure they never had enough people to do the job, and now that it’s a big deal about the Plum Creek thing, they have a convenient scapegoat when the blame really lies squarely on the shoulders of the legislature.
Legislature has always directed the agenda of LURC. Now is their time to fix it and do what is best for the Northwoods and the residents property rights. Not the States. Not the Counties. The UT and it’s people!
When you say “the legislature never did” and “they”, I assume you are referring to the liberal democrat contorlled legislature of the state house over the past 30 years. Yeah I guess they screwed up LURC along with everything else.
In an usual move, ACF voted along party lines to have two members of the LURC Reform Commission meet with the ACF analyst to draft a bill. The first meeting of these three was held this afternoon, and when Rep. McCabe tried to attend, he was told he would be asked to leave:
http://www.dirigoblue.com/2012/01/ag-committee-member-denied-access-to-meeting-to-draft-lurc-bill/