By John D. Montgomery and the Hutchinson News Editorial Board
Ideologues tend to get their blinders on, and politicians like to pander to their base. That explains why State Sen. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, sought and won a provision in the state budget to bar use of state money for implementing federal greenhouse gas regulations.
It was a mostly pointless effort but one Huelskamp probably thought principled and one that would serve the interests of anti-environmentalism rhetoric that would please his conservative base.
It seemed like poetic justice, then, when that very budget provision appeared likely to backfire on Huelskamp, imperiling the Sunflower Electric coal power plant project so important to western Kansas and to conservative, pro-coal legislators. An Environmental Protection Agency administrator expressed concern about the language of the Huelskamp amendment, communicating to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment that if Kansas lacked authority to apply federal requirements, then the EPA could exercise its oversight authority.
In other words, an effort to block EPA regulation actually could have had the effect of inviting more. If the KDHE wasn’t going to regulate air pollution, then the EPA would be forced to do so. And with the way paved with KDHE to approve air permits for the Sunflower Electric expansion of its Holcomb power plant, having the EPA in the mix would have been a concern.
Fortunately, Gov. Mark Parkinson signed the budget bill Thursday but removed that provision along with 10 others he found objectionable or problematic.
Sunflower Electric President Earl Watkins had written to the governor, urging him to remove the budget provision. Westar Energy also wanted it removed.
Huelskamp, however, stuck to his guns, saying Kansans wanted to “combat (President Barack) Obama’s cap-and-tax proposal and resist an out-of-control EPA.”
Conservative politicians will say whatever they think their base wants to hear these days. In the process, they will take empty symbolism over real results. Same goes for trying to pass worthless state legislation to protest federal healthcare reform or saying if you get elected to Congress you will get “Obamacare” repealed.
In the case of the EPA language in the budget bill, it would have been ironic symbolism had that resulted in more, rather than less, EPA regulation and new delays to the Sunflower Electric project.
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