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Tinianow
Testimony Undercuts Key Assumption of Ohio Senate Group
Opposing Compact
In testimony before the
Ohio Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee
on April 30, Audubon Ohio Executive Director Jerry
Tinianow argued that supporters of Senate Bill 291, an
effort to rewrite the Great Lakes Basin Water Resources
Compact, were basing their sole remaining argument
against the Compact on a fundamentally faulty premise.
Senator Tim Grendell and
his allies who have sponsored the bill have argued that
the Compact will undermine private property rights in
Ohio unless amended. Tinianow demonstrated that the
amendment proposed in the bill, as well as a separate
amendment of the Ohio Constitution that Grendell would
like to place before the voters, would do virtually
nothing to enhance property rights, but would create a
serious impediment to ratification of the Compact.
"Neither a constitutional nor a Compact amendment
offers any significant relief from the unlikely prospect
of judicial activism that troubles the proponents of
Senate Bill 291. Rather, pursuing either puts the
Compact process at significant risk," said Tinianow.
Tinianow pointed out that
a Compact amendment would require the Ohio House and the
legislatures from seven other states, not only to concur
in the amendment, but to refrain from circulating their
own amendments, a prospect he described as extremely
unlikely. He also said that a constitutional amendment
was "fraught with uncertainties," including
what the amendment would say, whether it would be
approved by the voters, and even whether Sen. Grendell
could get it on the ballot.
During questioning after
Tinianow completed his prepared testimony, Sen. Grendell
may have tipped his hand as to his real motivation for
trying to undermine the Compact. Grendell began
questioning Tinianow about an unrelated lawsuit in Lake
County, to which Audubon is not a party, involving the
rights of lakefront property owners to bar the public
from the Lake Erie beach below the ordinary high water
mark. Before he could complete the question, Grendell
was cut off by Committee Chairman Tom Niehaus, who
directed Grendell to move on to another question.
Some have speculated that
Grendell's efforts to undermine the Compact are a form
of payback for the successful efforts of Audubon Ohio
and other groups to block legislation that would have
privatized most of the Lake Erie shore.No further
hearings on Grendell's bill have been scheduled.
Conservationists are now waiting to see whether the
Committee will act on the bill before the General
Assembly recesses for the summer in early June.
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Grange
Insurance Audubon Center
Rolls
Out New Web Site
The
Grange Insurance Audubon Center in Columbus has its own
new web site. You can view the web site here.
The site contains information about the Center, which
just broke ground on April 22. The site will be updated
periodically to report on Center programs and also to
provide news about construction of the Center building
and grounds ahead of their anticipated opening in May
2009.
Individuals wishing to become founding
members of the Center or to make other donations will be
able to do so from the new web site, using a credit
card.
