So the task force on government reform has recommended consolidating all state environmental, fish and wildlife into a couple of superagencies. The good news on this is that it could lead to more streamlined processing of the vast array of permits that you and I, the customers of the State agencies, need to wade through. That would be great. The bad news is that in these kind of reorgs in the past some agencies that now have independence get sloshed under bigger agencies that either don’t care about them, or view them as a resource to be exploited. An example of that was that after the Exxon Valdez, the state set up an oil spill advisory board (who’s name escapes me now). They raised funds for oil spill cleanup. After a certain reorg in the mid 90s, they were swept under the DOE. Once there, the revenue stream that was coming in for Puget Sound cleanup was funneled to…meth house cleanup! While certainly run off from polluted meth houses might find it’s way into the Puget Sound, the spirit of the law was broken. It has taken much additional wrangling by environmental groups to get the proper funding for this cleanup reinstated, and it is part of the reason that the rescue tug in Neah Bay took so long to get funded. Christine Gregoire oversaw that reorg… Given that, I’d be worried about where the Puget Sound Partnership might land in a massive reorg.
Chris Dungan’s read on this is http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/sep/14/how-many-state-natural-resource-agencies-are/
The official government announcement is here: http://www.governor.wa.gov/priorities/reform/naturalresources.asp
And here: http://www.ofm.wa.gov/news/release/2009/090914.asp
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