Wednesday’s my much appreciated midweek day off work. The mixed blessing is that sometimes that allows me no excuse from one or another opportunity to engage in participatory governance. Last week, I planned to attend the Environmental and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Janet Mills’ nomination of Jerry Reid as Maine’s next commissioner of environmental protection. Unfortunately, the environment intervened. Despite managing to shovel out early enough to get to Augusta and secure seating in the actual hearing room, icy roads remained dicey enough to caution “Not today.” Despite that heaven sent reprieve and uncharacteristically summoning sufficient e-savviness, I nevertheless managed to attend via live-streamed audio coverage from the satellite comfort of my home. Reluctant but admitted kudos to technology. Without it I’d have missed a most memorable lesson of justice deferred to politics.
That someone who famously argued against the environmental interest in Penobscot Nation v. Mills could be considered for heading the DEP is only as crazy as why Janet Mills, who otherwise has an exemplary environmental record, took on that adversarial position in the first place. How doing so was construed as being in the actual best interest of the people of Maine, indigenous or otherwise, rather than favoring the so-called “greater good” of special interests has never been made clear by now Commissioner Reid or Governor Mills. Neither take ownership of that decision. In Reid’s opening remarks he’d only say that his involvement “was a function of my job” and that “the role of commissioner is very different.” Candidate Mills used the same rationalization in differentiating her function as AG from her responsibilities if chief executive, even though as an independent legislative appointment her office actually had full autonomy in how it handled legal challenges.
On his part, Reid made no reasoned defense of his controversial law vs. ecology victory. He acknowledged how that victory could be “maddening” but that “my respect for their sovereign rights is complete and profound.” Opposing testimony purported that Reid had privately remarked that “Sustenance fishing isn’t a big deal in the real world.”
Throughout his pivotal role in reinterpreting Maine’s treaty with its native peoples, Reid remained a stalwart legalist resting essentially all of Maine’s case on parsing the definition of the word “island.” The dissenting opinion on the verdict remains a far more compelling and environmentally grounded legal overview.
Throughout his nomination hearing Reid remained professionally contrite, judiciously avoiding any and all comparison to similar lightning rod aspects of the notorious Kavanaugh debacle. Nevertheless, as one committee member noted, the contentious nature of the hearing “wouldn’t have happened with any other nominee.”
On the committee’s part, despite their forbearance throughout a very long day’s alternation between endless recitation of the candidate’s lawyering credentials and impassioned pleas against confirmation due to his perceived disregard of tribal sovereignty and sustenance fishing’s cultural validity, their fast-tracked oversight focused on expeditiously quelling any further “fracturing” of Maine’s relationship with its Native American citizenry.
None of them asked the crucial question of why the state of Maine chose to fight off the environmental challenge simultaneously brought by both the Penobscot People and the Obama administration. No one asked the nominee if he had any personal conflict with professionally defending the economic self-interest of municipalities and businesses to legally pollute waters inconveniently shared by an abutting autonomous nature-based nation-state. All agreed that “the relationship between Maine and native nations needs repair,” while surreally supporting the guy that most recently ruptured that relationship.
The Penobscot Nation and the Obama EPA argued for raising the standard of water purity to levels by which consumption of fish could be a healthy practice. Mills’ AG’s office took up the case to protect the interests of those wishing to continue established levels of water endangerment. The plaintiffs argued for a defense of the environment. The AG’s office chose to defend the polluters. The case was laugh-out-loud tried by an historically rigged judicial system that’s always sided with its own governmental sovereignty over that of tribal nations who’ve traditionally never held the concept of environmental ownership but rather claim a right of moral stewardship. Tried by a predominant Eurocentric system where every treaty ever made with native peoples has been violated, yet rationalized as nevertheless legal.
After unanimous committee recommendation, Jerry Reid’s nomination received swift Senate confirmation the very next day.
In his new role, Commissioner Reid promises to now upgrade the water quality of the Penobscot’s namesake river. How that can be achieved to sustenance fishing standards without overturning the ruling he championed on behalf of polluters is another unasked and unanswered question the legislature’s environmental oversight committee failed to address.
The very fact that there’s any need for a DEP is evidence that Maine hasn’t provided competent guardianship of the environment. Perhaps the DEP should defer to the counsel of those who’ve since time immemorial never needed bureaucratic conflicted guidance in being one with nature. As to the DEP’s purported mission of “protection,” it might well remind itself of what the “E” in DEP actually stands for, rather than so often acting as the Department of Economic Protection.
Gary Anderson lives in Bath.