Gop Criticizes Groups Funding Activist Campaigns Wealthy Foundations Unfairly Influence Policy, Critics Say

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GOP hearing

During the House Resources Committee hearing earlier this month, testimony focused on charges that foundations give the conservation movement unfair clout with federal agencies.

Ron Arnold, executive vice president of a Bellevue, Wash., nonprofit group, said foundations, environmentalists and federal agencies form an “iron triangle” that unfairly influences policy to devastate local economies and private property.

“This is an intolerable program of rural cleansing,” Arnold, of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, said at the hearing. “Foundations are not accountable to anyone. They are totally unregulated.”

The House GOP has been taking on Democrats, President Clinton and environmental groups for years in its fight to keep federal land available for recreationists, ranchers and loggers.

But now the lawmakers are taking aim at a new target they see as an increasingly powerful menace: foundations.

Organizations such as The Pew Charitable Trusts and Turner Foundation are pouring millions of dollars into environmental groups, who launch campaigns and use White House access to influence natural resource policy decisions, GOP lawmakers and foundation critics say.

The environmental groups - while well-funded and powerful - don’t represent a broad base of people and are accountable only to foundations that fund them, said Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho.

“This is a malignant mess and the metastasis is growing very quickly,” said Chenoweth-Hage, who chairs a House Resources Committee panel that conducted a hearing on foundations earlier this month.

Idaho Rivers United gets nearly half of its $500,000 annual budget from charitable foundations.

The Boise conservation group relies on that outside money for campaigns supporting Snake River dam breaching and other controversial water quality issues. “We would have a tough time, frankly, doing the kind of work we do or the scope of the work that we do without them,” executive director Bill Sedivy said.

While Republicans bemoan foundations’ influence, however, the GOP also benefits from special interests fighting to keep public lands open.

And advocacy groups fighting federal restrictions benefit from outside money.

One such group, the Pocatello-based Blue Ribbon Coalition, spearheads efforts to keep public lands open to snowmobilers and off-road vehicles.

The group gets roughly $50,000 a year from big companies, according to the coalition’s director. That’s about one-tenth of its $500,000 member-driven budget, executive director Clark Collins said.

Collins would not disclose the names of the companies that contribute more than $1,000.

Many businesses also pay $100 for memberships, he said.

“We have over 300 member businesses, ranging from a small momand-pop saw shop to some of the (off-road vehicle) manufacturers.”

Outside funds for conservation and advocacy groups tend to come from different sources, so comparisons are tricky, according to research by the Western Lands Center, which tracks funding to advocacy groups.

Examples range from local organizations such as Gold Hill Resource Coalition bankrolled by Potlatch Corp. to big national groups that get money from conservative think tanks - and foundations, said Tarso Ramos, the center’s program director.

“There is less direct corporate support for environmental organizations,” Ramos said. “A large share tends to come from philanthropics.”

Despite its protests against foundations, the GOP also benefits from outside funds.

Chenoweth-Hage received nearly $500,000 from Political Action Committees in 1997-1998, many representing big business, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Of that amount, $68,330 came from agriculture companies including J.R. Simplot Co. and Phillip Morris, $43,850 from oil, mining and utility companies including Exxon, and $13,3442 from the timber industry.

Political attacks on foundations are not new, but Democrats and environmentalists say the GOP has little to gain.

Foundations’ practice of giving grants to environmental groups is not only legal, they say, but fairly typical of what foundations do for a score of causes - liberal and conservative - from education and health care to property rights and religious freedom.

A Portland environmentalist whose group has received foundation money dismissed Chenoweth-Hage’s effort as a “groundless witch hunt” designed to squelch public participation in government.

“The Resources Committee’s desperate inquisition is little more than an attack on democracy,” said Ken Rait, director of the Heritage Forests Campaign.

The Idaho Sporting Congress looks to charitable foundations for $70,000 a year, or about half of its $140,000 annual budget.

A lawsuit filed by the group and the Idaho Conservation League prompted a federal judge to slap federal and state officials for lax water quality protection.

The group’s budget pays four employees, pays attorney fees in numerous lawsuits over forest and water quality issues, and funds public education efforts, executive director Ron Mitchell said.

“That’s a very small budget,” Mitchell said.

Pew, a Philadelphia-based foundation with $4.9 billion in assets, has especially been a GOP target.

The organization gave nearly $3.5 million to finance the Heritage Forests Campaign, which has pushed for a rule-making process that could protect up to 50 million acres of roadless federal forests.

GOP lawmakers, recreationists and other land users view the process, announced last October by President Clinton, as a federal land grab that attempts to sidestep Congress.

In hearings and reports since Clinton announced the plan, GOP lawmakers have carefully structured a case to argue the rulemaking is not only flawed, but illegal.

“The roadless initiative was hatched in a back room with special interests,” Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said at a hearing Tuesday.

The complaints could lay the groundwork for legislation to revamp the plan and lawsuits to derail it.

But Joshua Reichert, director of the environment program at Pew, said he was befuddled by Chenoweth-Hage’s hearing.

Reichert said the foundation’s job is to help the public better understand the nature of the roadless debate. He said the success of the initiative so far has more to do with the public support for protecting forests than the influence of any particular group.

“Congress has given us and other foundations in the country the right to do what we do on issues that we care about - and we care about wilderness,” Reichert said.

Staff writer Zaz Hollander contributed to this report.