Page 27 - Flathead Beacon // 6.3.15

FLATHEADBEACON.COM OPINION JUNE 3, 2015 | 27
CLOSING RANGE Dave Skinner The Perpetual
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Litigation Machine
AFEW WEEKS AGO, both tax forms were prepared by the
UniversityofMontanaresearch- same Whitefish accountant, too, al-
Friendly, Prompt, Knowledgable Service
ers Todd Morgan and John Bal- though not completed the same day.
dridge released a study that tried to There’s some more crossover. Both
Let us stock the job or available for drive-thru loading
quantify at least a tiny bit of the legal and societal costs of the Forest Service’s per- petual litigation machine.
The authors focused especially on Spotted Bear River Project, a 50,000- acre “project” that only managed about 3,000 acres and seven million board feet worth of harvest, thinning and pre- scribed burns down in Southforkistan.
Two serial-litigant “groups,” Friends of the Wild Swan and Swan View Coali- tion, actively opposed the project from the start of scoping in 2009. They sued in February 2012, and were turned down at every bench from the magistrate to district court to Ninth Circuit, with the Ninth refusing to enjoin proceedings in September 2014, and the district judge finally dismissing the entire case in March 2015.
So, Morgan and Baldridge report the lawyers alone cost the Feds about $100,000, plus 1,833 hours of non-law- yer agency staff support time.
More interesting is what economic losses would result if the project was blocked: $10 million in sale fees, wages, and taxes would not be paid or collected, and 136 associated jobs of varying dura- tion would not happen, or happen else- where.
All in all, that sounds like a heck of a good deal for the supporters of Friends and Swan View. Between them, their gross income for 2012-13 was around $178,000. More specifically, in 2013, Friends of the Wild Swan collected near- ly $56,000 in grants, including $4,000 from the Clif Bar Family Foundation and $3,000 from the Maki Foundation in Aspen, run by anti-fracking movie- maker Mark Harvey. Friends also real- ized $460 from “membership dues,” and spent $36,000 reviewing “Forest Ser- vice policies [...] with regard to the Wild Swan” using $99 worth of “office sup- plies.”
Also in 2013, Swan View Coalition took in $57,000 in contributions, spend- ing $51,000 to “review Forest Service policies [...] with regard to the local eco- system.”
Sounds kind of similar, right? Sure,
get grants from the Cinnabar Founda- tion (now managed by noted local en- vironmentalist Steve Thompson), as well as from the mysterious (and small, and radical) Fund for Wild Nature. The Fund bragged last year about how “a federal court in Montana ruled in favor of a coalition of four Fund for Wild Na- ture grantees – the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Swan View Coalition, Friends of the Wild Swan, and Native Ecosys- tems Council.” That ruling, of course, concerned Colt Summit, supposedly one of those wonderful Kumbayah “collab- orative” packages now being pitched as our glowing future.
So, do you think it’s a coincidence when, just days after the UM litigation costpaperhitthenews,theAlliancefor the Wild Rockies announced it’s going to sue against the East Reservoir project on the Kootenai National Forest? Nah.
You might be curious how much Friends and Swan View spend on legal fees. As is typical for nonprofit “public documents,” their federal tax reports are obscurantist kabuki. But in the “profes- sional fees and other payments to inde- pendent contractors” category, Friends paid out $1,984 in 2012; $6,677 in 2013. Swan View spent $3,072 for the same category in the same period, a total of $11,733 for both groups – a pittance com- pared to the potential disruption they could have caused for so many others.
Perhaps there will be more “other payments” reported as these groups file their 2014 and 2015 tax returns – but even if those fees total $50,000 over the three years it took them to lose their case, taxpayers already wasted twice that – which of course is a waste neither the Friends or Coalition will have to make up under current law, even though they “lost.”
What if the Friends and Coalition had won? Millions more would be lost to Montana’s already weak economy, of course, but even better, they’d get their legal fees back – our ticket for our next unhappy ride on their perpetual litiga- tion machine.
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“WHAT IF THE FRIENDS AND COALITION HAD WON? MILLIONS MORE WOULD BE LOST TO MONTANA’S ALREADY WEAK ECONOMY.”
Mike (Uncommon Ground) Jopek and Dave (Closing Range) Skinner often fall on op- posite sides of the fence when it comes to political and outdoor issues. Their columns alternate each week in the Flathead Beacon.
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