Brynaert & the Legacy Amendment

[RebelXTi]

Story Below from the Star Tribune - I've also gotten a personal response to her back on the initiative to change the wording on the original bill and its easy to see she is 100% behind pillaging the original intent of this legislation. One of the quotes she sent back to me was "let's not foget this bill would not have passed without the arts support" - um no. That was thrown in a bill that had nothing to do with arts because of pillagers like Brynaert trying to appease a select few constituents.

Dennis Anderson: Out of sight means out of mind
Startribune, 3.5.10

Those seeking to pillage Legacy Amendment funds don't see first-hand the real need -- help on the ground.

LAC QUI PARLE COUNTY — This part of the state is a stone's throw from the South Dakota border, and a far piece from the Capitol in St. Paul. Such a distance, in fact, that most legislators rarely make the trip.

By contrast, anglers undertake pilgrimages here each spring and summer. Also, campers. And, in fall, bird hunters rattle around the county's back roads, their retrieving and pointing dogs in tow.

It's these regular visitors, as well as the county's residents, who have borne closest witness to the many landscape changes that have transpired here during the past century.

Accomplished in the name of "progress,'' these alterations have facilitated America's tilt toward industrial farming, while, ironically, regressively affecting most people and virtually all wild critters.

Wetlands. Undisturbed uplands. Native prairies?

All gone, or virtually so, replaced by a latticework of ditches, countless sections of corn and soybeans, and rivers clouded with silt and laden with farm runoff.

And who's the happier for it? More content? Richer?

Judged by the region's struggles to stem its population losses and offer its young people reasons not to move away, very few.

Ditching and drainage began here about 1900, and conservation-minded Minnesotans were quick to fight back. Then, as now, they had few allies among legislators. But over the past 100 years they have never tired, believing that someday the wild illogic of private profiteering at the expense of public resources would become self-evident.

In 2008, hunters, anglers and other conservationists realized a dream when the Legacy Amendment was placed on the statewide ballot. Through a fractional increase in the sales tax, the proposal was intended to reclaim some of the state's natural heritage by cleaning up its lakes and rivers and restoring some of its wetlands, forests and other resources.

From the outset, there was general agreement among amendment writers and supporters about what needed to be done with the new money: accomplish habitat projects on the ground, with a minimum of overhead.

Enter now, again, various legislators.

Largely unsuccessful last session in their attempt to redirect the amendment's fish, game and wildlife habitat money to voter-rich districts in the metro, some lawmakers allege now that "protect, enhance and restore'' fish, game and wildlife habitat -- amendment language approved by voters -- doesn't mean what everyone thought it meant, namely to accomplish habitat projects on the ground with a minimum of overhead.

Instead -- well, here's what Rep. Kathy Brynaert, DFL-Mankato, wrote Monday in a note to a constituent:
As we move forward, we need to employ a broad strategy that benefits all of Minnesota not narrow our scope to address the needs of one group. This will include: restoration, acquisition of land, management of habitat and ecosystems, improving law enforcement, employing specialists to map ecosystems and study long term affects (sic) on our fish, game, and wild species.

Brynaert forgets to mention that virtually every major Minnesota conservation and wildlife group opposes the "broad'' strategy to which she refers.

The Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council, a citizens-dominated group that recommends Legacy Amendment fish, game and wildlife habitat projects to the Legislature, also disagrees, arguing, in essence, that on the ground habitat projects, including acquisition of key resource lands, is what Minnesota voters approved in 2008.

So, are some legislators trying to redirect Legacy Amendment dollars to benefit themselves politically?

Of course, particularly House DFLers.

And they do it straight-faced -- rare visitors that they are to places like here.

After all, if you don't see the ditches that drain farmlands hereabouts, can't envision its lost wetlands, don't know about the duck migrations that once blackened its skies, and lose not an ounce of sleep over the continued pollution of Minnesota River tributaries, it's easy to play politics with Legacy Amendment cash.

At sundown Wednesday, not far from the Dave Vesall Wildlife Management Area in Lac qui Parle County, just west of Madison, Minn., I watched a handful of pheasants that earlier had pecked alongside a long stretch of two-lane blacktop crowd into a scrawny piece of woody cover to roost there the night.

So far they had survived this formidable winter. Denied suitable habitat -- the same habitat in many instances that once welcomed vast flocks of returning ducks in April -- thousands of other pheasants haven't been so lucky, and have frozen to death.

Far out of sight from the Capitol in St. Paul. And out of mind.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com

[ArmyVet]

have you forgotten so soon???

the dems and libs are SMARTER than you, they know what is best for you, and could really give a sh!t about what you think :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

who didnt see this coming?

[katoguy]

The artsy-fartsy crap was thrown into this bill because very, very few people care about arts. "Arts" cannot stand on its own.

But I remember Taxhappy Laven voting to give our hard-earned money to the arts last year at a council meeting.

[GLer]

Kathy Brynaert and her husband Tony Brynaert - no - Tony Filipovitch are secret communists. So this teeny expose the strib made on her philosophy - no thanks to the Free Press - shows she has more plans and goals she wants to achieve for her warped view of American culture.

[thetroll01]

Two reasons I voted AGAINST this fraudulent amendment:

)1 These are budgetary items, and as such, have absolutely NO business being in an Amendment form. This is what we send people to St Paul to do.
They are supposed to be in charge of appropriating funds for these projects with the tax collections that come into the State coffers.
Instead, these gut-less pricks have punted, and thrown the ball back to the citizens to decide.
Maybe this should be done with EVERY proposed piece of legislation, just put it on a ballot every two years, and go from there.
Then, we'd simply have "mob rule"

)2 I believe this socialist democrat Brynaert is correct in that the only way this amendment made it to the voter ballot in the first place, was because the cowards that didn't have the guts to make the right decisions in the first place, made the offering that the "Arts and Croissants" crowd would be given a piece of the action.

...and now we get incensed when the thieves come back in the dead-of-night, and want more money for their own personal gain