Why We Lose (Part IV)
(Posted by Howard Ernst.)
With Friends Like These…
Chesapeake Bay (Delay) Commission
The Chesapeake Bay Commission describes itself as a tri-state legislative commission created in 1980 “to advise the members of the General Assemblies of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania on matters of Bay-wide concern.” Yet the majority of its elected members have poor environmental voting records…
| Lifetime League of Conservation Voters Score | |
| MD. Delegation | |
| Brian E. Frosh | 99% |
| James W. Hubbard | 96% |
| Virginia P. Clagett | 94% |
| Thomas Mclain (Mac) Middleton | 64% (D) |
| John F. Wood,Jr. | 36% (F) |
| Virginia Delegation | |
| Mary Margaret Whipple | 84% |
| Lynwood W. Lewis, Jr. | 84% |
| L. Scott Lingamfelter | 57% (F) |
| John A. Cosgrove | 43% (F) |
| Emmett W. Hanger, Jr. | 34 % (F) |
| Endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters | |
| PA Delegation | |
| Mike Brubaker | No |
| Russell H. Fairchild | No |
| P. Michael Sturla | No |
| James Wansacz | No |
| Michael L. Waugh | No |
For starters, Lingamfelter earned a 100% score from LCV in 2007 and earned their “Hero of Conservation” distinction. Anyone involved in bay restoration work knows that he is friendly to our work and interested in talking about funding. He has gone to bat repeatedly for the Piedmont Environmental Council, Ducks Unlimited, and the uber-right Sierra Club.
And that’s just ONE GUY on your “friends like these” list. And disclaimer – I’ve never met Lingamfelter, worked for him, or supported him.
Come on now. If your aim is to prove to readers that the “Group of 57” are really on the ball, and you guys are ready to offer meaningful, workable solutions to legislators, how about you actually do some high-school level homework on the legislators you are condemning.
I guess it’s no real harm since no one but me actually reads this blog. To think – I would have walked away from your blog post with intentionally misleading information.
Very scientific!
Funny – LCV doesn’t award grade letters – and I guess it’s a good thing, since the average VA elected official would score an F, or at most a D. So arguably (in your minds), the Chesapeake Bay Commission should not have any members from VA except the very few who score in the 80 or 90s. If you are looking to not have any Bay Action Plan items implemented in Virginia, then that would be a great way to pursue that.
I think if you asked LCV, they would call a 54% score a “C”. Meaning that the legislator votes for conservation greater than 50% of the time.
In addition, LCV does not differentiate between Bay-specific and non-Bay related conservation issues, and yet you are clinging to these scores with such tenacity – as if they have total and implicit value for Bay policy.
LCV has their own angle with these legislators. Their information is helpful, but not Biblical (or choose a similar historic text).
I am pretty confident that “complaining” needs to be the “26th plank.”