Appropriations Riders Flourish in the Dark

They did it again this year.

You weren’t supposed to notice. As the U.S. Congress headed into its rush-to-adjourn meltdown, appropriations bills were being loaded with riders that try to set policy. The riders are especially numerous on environmental issues.

The loudest protesters are environmental groups. That is hardly surprising, given their opposition to many of the GOP leadership positions. It’s not really a party thing – the Dems did a lot of it on their watch, too, although the enviros didn’t howl as loudly.

Let’s ignore for a minute the substance of all these riders, and look at this process for making policy, and how it affects the press’s ability to inform the public about the decisions their government is making.

Appropriations riders have become the ultimate form of government-behind-the-people’s-back. One of the few constitutional remedies for such secretiveness is an aggressive and vigilant press. But the appropriations process has evolved to a form that makes it very hard for the press to cover it. And the press has shown little interest.

Perhaps it has always been this way. It certainly was during most of the 80’s, when I was covering the appropriations committees. But if it was bad then, it has gotten worse.

Our system of government is full of mechanisms meant to ensure that important public decisions get a full airing, with all viewpoints considered, on the record, and in full public view. Look at the rules by which trials are conducted. Look at the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs government rulemaking – plus a dozen other federal open-government laws. Even the rules and customs of Congress are supposedly designed to promote open, full, public deliberation. Sometimes these mechanisms actually work that way.

But appropriations bills are different. The only way to assemble enough votes to pass one of these behemoths is to put in it something for everybody. Appropriations bills have historically been vehicles for what journalists call pork and what Congress members call constituent service.

One result is the concentration of power in the hands of appropriations subcommittee chairmen. What propels a bill is a whole array of personal under-standings between the chairman and individual members. Members have never done this tit-for-tat political deal-making explicitly or in public. It happens in the chairman’s office with the door closed.

The first time the press or public sees an appropriations bill, it is already a done deal. The appropriations subcommitee markup begins with presentation of the “chairman’s mark” – a draft bill (plus report) with the goodies or baddies already in it. Amendments to the chairman’s mark are few, and still fewer succeed without the chairman’s consent.

Reporters’ access to appropriations subcommittee and committee delibera-tions is quite restricted. There are seats for only a few lucky reporters in the markup meeting rooms themselves. The reporters who do get in are not allowed to have the draft bill and report until after the session is over, making it very hard to follow the proceedings. Often the final and most important decisions on a bill are made in House-Senate conferences to reconcile the two chambers’ differences – and the rules allow these conference sessions to be even more closed to reporters than are normal committee meetings.

Press access to information is reduced further by the chaos factor. The worst time to get informed staff on the phone is when they are trying to get the bill approved, because that’s when they are busiest. And Congress, like a college student doing term papers, often delays spending bills until the last moment. In the deadline panic, bills are often rushed from subcom-mittee to committee to floor in only a few days or hours. This makes it hard for press and others to take the time needed to scrutinize bills and reports that may be as big as a phone book.

And once enough appropriations subcommittees have blown their individual deadlines for getting bills through,there is usually a last-minute “continuing resolution,” which rolls up all the pending appropriations bills into one mega-bill. That becomes a “must-pass” bill, because the government will shut down if it is not enacted quickly. The chaos factor on these bills is still higher – more rush, thicker phone books. The chairmen who manage these bills often do not know all that is in them – so it is very hard for the press to know, either.

Congress has plenty of rules meant to ensure open deliberations. Before important policy decisions are made, hearings must be held, committees must consider, and floor debate (especially in the Senate) must be thorough. That’s the theory, anyway. Appropriations riders are a quick way around all these “burdensome and unnecessary” parliamentary rules.

A few specialized “trade press” outlets and high-priced policy-wonk newsletters do try to cover appropriations riders. But their coverage is piecemeal, and the general media’s even more so, focusing on one or two particular oxen that have been gored. Perhaps this is a symptom of how little interest today’s news media have in covering the detailed workings of government.

Sadly, the few efforts to systematically track all these appropriations riders come from environmental groups or the White House – neither of which is an objective source. There is no easy way to cover riders except dogging them into the wee hours and lots of shoe-leather and telephone reporting. The best cure for this defect in the democratic process is general media coverage – lots more coverage – of both the substance of the riders and the murky process by which they are passed.

Joe Davis

A good program, good attendance, good weather, and more than a smattering of actual news marked the 10th annual conference of the Society of Environ-mental Journalists in East Lansing, Michigan, October 19-22.

The program was so variegated that it was hard to find a single dominant story. But the Great Lakes and the auto industry loomed over the conference as recurring themes. New cars, new media, and the prospect of a new White House occupant gave the conference a fresh perspective.

Conference Breeds News

Many attendees found stories to file. The SEJ listserv was busy the following week enumerating stories that had come out of the conference. Even though William Clay Ford, Jr., chairman of the car company bearing his name, cancelled his appearance shortly before the conference, he made news with what he might have said: that the years of the internal combustion engine are num-bered. Ford, whose company is in crisis with a massive recall of Explorer SUVs equipped with Firestone/Bridgestone tires, told SEJ an unavoidable schedule conflict had arisen.

Conference-goers got copies of an October 5 speech Ford gave to a Greenpeace meeting in London, in which he touted the hybrid and alt-fueled vehicles his company will produce in the next few years as it tries to shift toward sustainable auto-making. “

Longer term, I believe fuel cells will finally end the 100-year reign of the inter-nal combustion engine,” Ford told Green-peace. “Fuel cells could be the predomin-ant automotive power source in 25 years.”

Ford’s prediction ran as top news in several media channels in the days after the conference, such as a story filed by John Flesher in the Detroit News.

News was also committed by Katie McGinty, who represented Al Gore in the debate between surrogates for the presidential candidates. During the debate she revealed the recommendations of an EPA ombudsman that the Von Roll WTI hazard-ous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio, be shut down for six months for tests. That was a big story for the Cleveland Plain Dealer – one which continued as EPA ignored the recommendation and protesters blocked EPA offices.

Still another story came out of a Saturday-morning press conference on a study that the World Resources Institute did with the United Nations and World Bank. The study of freshwater ecosystems found that 37 percent of the fresh-water fish species, 67 percent of mussels, and 40 percent of amphibians once found in the United States are extinct or endangered. The Associated Press carried that one the next day.

Meeting Multi-tracked

But news – while it helped some organizations pay reporters to attend – was hardly the point of the conference.

For some, the point was trips. Some toured the 1,900-acre Midland plant of Dow Chemical, one of the largest chemical companies in the world, hearing about dioxins from company scientists, local activists, and noted science writer Janet Raloff. Some learned about the ecology of Lake Huron from the deck of an 85-foot sailing schooner. Some toured Ford’s River Rouge plant (one of the world’s largest) and saw Diego Rivera’s legendary Detroit Industry murals. Others took a comparatively quiet bird walk, binoculars in hand, at a nearby sanctuary. A white-water rafting jaunt on the Red Cedar River was cancelled – due to high coliform counts.

For many, the real meat of the conference was in the concurrent panel sessions held Friday and Saturday. There were more than 30 of these sessions, covering everything from genetically modified food and Web publishing to urban sprawl and exotic species. Typically, each panel was moderated by a working journalist or SEJ member and included three authoritative panel members with diverse viewpoints. The biggest complaint heard from conference-goers was that, with as many as eight sessions running at the same time, it was impossible to attend every session they were interested in.

For still others, the high point was the inspirational Sunday morning program at the Bengel Wildlife Center. Outgoing SEJ president Mike Mansur led a session on Ernest Hemingway (who once wrote for Mansur’s employer, the Kansas City Star) as environmental writer. Tracing roots back to Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River and The Old Man and the Sea helped many attendees find a deeper sense of their heritage as environ-mental writers. Such inspirational sessions were also found elsewhere in the program – whether a deeply personal and philosophical Friday-night talk by Canadian radio personality David Suzuki or a Saturday-night slide-talk on Aldo Leopold’s life and writing.

For those who learn best from hand-outs, the mother lode was the exhibition hall – the largest room with the most exhibitors ever at an SEJ conference. Practically anyone willing to pay the fee could exhibit (and the room generated healthy revenues for SEJ). Perhaps surprisingly though, the exhibition hall was not dominated by industry groups and PR efforts. Many of the exhibitors were simply “information providers” trying to connect with an audience of journalists: Sea Grant, the MSU press, news-release services like AScribe-news.com or eurekalert.org. There were also many environmental groups.

Car Talk

For those who like cars, of course, the whole conference was hog heaven. Possibly the richest experience for car-people was the “technology exposition” held in the parking structure adjacent to the Kellogg Center where the conference was held. Here, attendees could view hybrid vehicles with cut-away engines baring mechanical details – or drive working versions of the vehicles. One of the more popular alt-vehicles was the Zap scooter (an electrically powered version of the trendy Razor scooter), which was powerful enough to do wheelstands.

There was substance on the automotive front, as well as gadgetry. The open-ing plenary session on “Cars and the Environment,” while it lacked William Clay Ford, Jr., went to the heart of the matter. Beside representatives of car-makers, panelists included Jane Holtz Kay, author of Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back.

Carmakers told the assembly of journalists about the forward steps toward alternate vehicles they have taken or will take in the next five years. Robert Purcell of General Motors, talked about GM’s electric vehicle program and its plans to have a hybrid full-sized pickup on the market by 2004. John Wallace of Ford showed slides of Ford’s new Th!nk^tm brand of vehicles, combining zero emissions, low energy use, and recycled materials for what he called a new definition of mobility. Larry Oswald of Daimler-Chrysler talked about the Dodge Durango hybrid with 20 percent better fuel economy that his company hopes to bring to market, but noted that they needed new tax incentives to do so.

But what Detroit’s big three presented as cutting-edge technology looked timid compared to the Hypercar^tm touted by energy-guru-turned-revolutionary-CEO Amory Lovins. Lovins’ concept car abandoned the component-by-component incrementalism of the big three in favor of what he calls a “whole-car, clean-sheet design” that would emit nothing but hot water. Using advanced polymer composites and hydrogen-fed fuel cells, Lovins claimed his Hypercars^tm would not only be more energy efficient and environment friendly, but faster, more powerful, safer, more comfortable, more durable, and cheaper to manufacture and own than anything Detroit had even conceived of. Moreover, Lovins said, it was all based on technology that is available today.

So sure was Lovins of his Hypercar concept that he has set up a for-profit company to manufacture it, and says the car will be in volume production by 2005. He put the entire concept in the public domain (waiving patents) in 1993, making it possible for the big three or anyone else to use it free. Lovins speaks of “leapfrogging” over the “cultural barriers” of today’s auto industry.

In all, 515 people registered for the conference, according to SEJ’s final tally – with 227 of those being actual SEJ members and the rest being people who wanted to talk to them: exhibitors, speakers, public relations people, and the like. That attendance was not as high as last year’s session at UCLA, but still robust enough to be well above the “break-even” point.

Greenwire, a historic pioneer in online environmental news coverage, was sold October 5 for the second time in its 10-year lifespan – and some of its biggest fans worried about whether it had been positioned for the next millenium or sold to the glue factory.

It may be too early to tell whether the new publisher, E&E Publishing, will be good or bad for Greenwire’s future.

“Ultimately, the subscibers will determine that,” said David Haase, who edited Greenwire during the two years before the National Journal Group sold it to E&E.

Haase said the sale “came as a complete surprise” to him. Haase is now a private consultant, although some members of the Greenwire staff did make the move to E&E.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

Greenwire has been one of a special breed of “policy insider” newsletters going to a limited audience of players and policy-makers at a high subscription price. The full subscription price under National Journal’s reign was just under $1,800 a year, although non-profit organizations got lower rates.

Neither National Journal nor E&E would disclose Greenwire’s circulation numbers. Steve Hull, senior vice president of the National Journal Group, described circulation at the time of sale as “steady” – but added that it was “not growing,” and that his company was “looking for growth.”

“We weren’t giving Greenwire the attention, management focus, and marketing it needed,” Hull said. “In order for Greenwire to grow, it needed a new home. ... We concluded that it would be better off with an all-environment-all-the-time publisher.”

Greenwire was initially published by the American Political Network (APN). (See EW May, 1991.) APN practically invented electronic publishing in the era before the Internet, using a dial-up electronic bulletin board system (bbs) to publish specialized campaign coverage to political professionals overnight. APN, including Greenwire, was sold to National Journal in 1996.

Greenwire was originally published via a bbs, from which subscribers downloaded it daily. It later evolved through e-mail and Web editions. While the publishing industry of 1991 was full of insider newsletters, Greenwire was one of the very first to publish electronically.

Greenwire evolved quickly after its founding into a niche “covering the coverage.” Every morning its staff would scan more than a hundred metro newspapers and summarize environmental news they found, using short quotations within the “fair use” copyright doctrine. Daily newspapers began to go online during the 1990s – not only making it easier to scan them but also making it possible to link to the original source. Because Greenwire fed off of newspapers outside of Washington, it was closer to state and local environmental news than were the inside-Washington newsletters.

Added features, especially its searchable archive, made Greenwire more than merely a high-tech clipping service (although it was sometimes criticized as such). Its editors were never able to get all the resources and staff they needed to do extensive original reporting.

Greenwire’s “covering the coverage” formula was so effective that it soon spawned a legion of imitators. Recent examples include the “bioregional news services” started by Richard Manning: first Tidepool (Pacific Northwest) and then Headwaters (Rocky Mountains).

Other services sprung up with different business models and journalistic approaches. Environmental News Network (ENN), which began as a low-priced electronic daily and now is distributed free, and Environment New Service (ENS), which was always free. At the other end of the spectrum are a number of high-priced insider newsletters, some of which predated Greenwire, such as BNA’s Environment Reporter and Inside EPA, both weeklies rooted in print.

By the late 1990s, Greenwire was operating in a new environment – one it helped create – and playing against competitors imitating its own success. As Greenwire struggled to adapt to the fast-evolving Web environment, it was sometimes outpaced by the newer starts – such as Mannning’s bioregional newsletters – which began on the Web and took to it naturally.

Before buying Greenwire, E&E Publishing, LLC, had already been publishing a daily online newsletter, Environment & Energy Daily. E&E was formed in 1998 by Kevin Braun and Michael Witt, who at the time were putting out Environment & Energy Weekly under the auspices of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI). Braun, who edited E&E Weekly for EESI, is now editor-in-chief of E&E Publishing, and Witt is E&E’s publisher.

The focus of E&E until it acquired Greenwire had been inside the Washington Beltway – especially Congress. EESI had been one of two entities that remained when Congress privatized its Environment and Energy Study Conference in December 1994 (See EW, February 1995). The other was Congressional Green Sheets, Inc., formed by the staff of the EESC Weekly Bulletin (alias the 20-year-old “Green Sheet”) under the leadership of Linda Cartwright. The EESC/E&E weekly and the original “Green Sheet” were look-alike rivals covering upcoming Congressional action until the late 1990s. In recent years, E&E has tried to expand its focus to include agencies regulating the environment as well as Congress.

“We think this creates the complete environmental and energy information package,” said Witt. “Side-by-side, the E&E Daily and the expanded Greenwire service will give readers comprehensive coverage of all the important policy action – from Capitol Hill to the courts to the states – and how it’s all being covered by the major media.”

By November 1, Congressional Green Sheets announced startup of a new Newsroom service similar in concept to Greenwire, declaring its intent to compete for E&E’s new turf.

Nominees and applicants are now being solicited by dozens of journalism awards programs and fellowships, many of which are for environmental or environmental/science journalists.

Several of the following awards categories cover environmental or science stories; some are general journalism categories into which environmental stories can fit. Environmental journalists looking for fellowships can find some that specifically focus on environmental issues; others may be of general interest to all reporters.

More information about awards, fellowship and scholarship programs is available at http://www.newswire.com; in American Journalism Review (October 2000); or at http://ajr.newslink.org/ajraw.html.

AWARDS PROGRAMS

• American Geophysical Union: David Perlman Award for excellence in science writing; deadline: January 14, 2001; information: http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/sci_awards.html#journal.
• American Society of Newspaper Editors: Awards for excellence in journalism, in Deadline News Reporting, Non-Deadline Writing, Editorial Writing, Commentary/Column Writing, and Diversity Writing; deadline: February 1, 2001; information: http://www.asne.org.
• Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award: Award managed by Business Week, for print science/environment journalists under the age of 31; deadline: December 4, 2000; information: http://www.mindspring.com/~us009848/id1.htm.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors: Awards for investigative stories in broadcasting, newspapers, books, magazines, and online publications; deadline: January 12, 2001; information: http://www.ire.org.
• National Headliner Awards: Awards in 50 categories; deadline: January 12, 2001; information: http://www.NationalHeadlinerAwards.com
• Pew Center for Civic Journalism: James K. Batten Award for work that supports people’s involvement in their community; deadline: February 9, 2001; information: http://www.pewcenter.org.
• Scripps Howard Foundation: National Journalism Awards in 13 categories, including environmental reporting; deadline: January 31, 2001; information: http://www.scripps.com/foundation/.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Awards in 44 categories; deadline: July 6, 2001; information: http://www.spj.org.
• University of Southern California: Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting; deadline: January 12, 2001; information: http://www.usc.edu/dept/annenberg/.

• Center for Environmental Journalism: Ted Scripps Fellowships for five journalists at University of Colorado; deadline: March 1, 2001; information: http://www.campuspress.colorado.edu/journalism/cej.
• Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism: Knight-Bagehot Fellowship for journalists with four years’ experience to pursue a Master’s degree; deadline: March 1, 2001; information: Terry Thomson, (212) 854-6840, e-mail tat5@columbia.edu.
• Knight Center for Specialized Journalism: Awards to journalists for seminars and courses; deadline and information: Knight Center, 290 University College, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742; (301) 985-7279; http://www.inform.umd.edu/knight.
• Marine Biological Laboratory: Science Writing Fellowships for courses in environmental science, biology and biomedicine; deadline: March 1, 2001; information: http://www.mbl.edu/swfp.
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Knight Science Journalism Fellowships during the academic year; deadline: March 1, 2001; information: http://web.mit.edu/knight-science/.
• National Press Foundation: Programs, fellowships and seminars in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, and international locations; information: http://www.nationalpress.org.
• Stanford University and Knight Foundation: John Knight Fellowships for journalists with seven years’ experience; dead-line: March 1, 2001; information: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/communication/general/knightfellow.html.

The U.S. Department of Justice has dropped all criminal charges against environmental reporter Brian Hansen, who had been arrested in July 1999 while covering a protest in Vail, Colorado. The protest at the ski resort was on land leased from the U.S. Forest Service.

But the case isn’t over for journalists. In the wake of the Hansen case, the Forest Service has issued a new access policy governing federal lands, including a provision about questioning and arresting members of the news media.

While covering the protest against the controversial expansion of Vail Resorts at the Blue Sky Basin, Hansen, then a reporter for The Colorado Daily, refused to leave a “federal closure area” that had been closed for “public safety.” He was then arrested for refusing a police order to leave the area.

The dismissal motion filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Grand Junction, Colorado, said that Hansen was acting in “a journalistic capacity rather than as an active protester involved in a demonstration which resulted in an illegal blockage of a Forest Development Road.” It was “not in the best interests of justice to proceed” with the case, the motion said.

Hansen’s arrest had received attention as an example of the problems encountered when journalists cover conflicts between the government and citizens. The Society for Professional Journalists, arguing that freedom of the press was at stake, had asked federal officials to drop the case, and provided a $1,000 Legal Defense Fund grant to Hansen.

“The U.S. Justice Department’s fervent efforts to prosecute this case indicate its desire to make an example of Mr. Hansen for journalists nationwide,” said SPJ Legal Defense Fund Chairwoman Christine Tatum. “The department has a tremendous interest in gaining greater control over media access to events in which federal officials are involved. The result, of course, is that journalists will find it tougher to hold the government accountable for its actions.”

Hansen remains “outraged that the federal government would try to criminalize me for simply doing my job as a reporter.” Now the assistant bureau chief for the Environment New Service (ENS) in Washington, DC, he told ENS that he thinks the government “caved in because of the tremendous amount of bad publicity that they were getting from having arrested a reporter who was on assignment covering a story that was embarrassing to them.”

Note: Formerly published by the National Safety Council. Reprinted with permission.