Governor's Advisory Committee on Chip Mills

Governor's Advisory Committee on Chip Mills
Department of Natural Resources
Conference Center
Jefferson City, Missouri
January 24, 2000

Meeting Minutes

Committee Members Present
Senator Wayne Goode, St. Louis
Jerry Conley, Director, Department of Conservation
Stephen Mahfood, Director, Department of Natural Resources
David Bedan, Citizen environmental conservation group, Columbia
Joe Driskill, Director, Department of Economic Development
Jay R. Law, Conservation Federation of Missouri, St. James
Mark Garnett, Forest Products Representative, Brandsville
Representative Bill Foster, Poplar Bluff
Senator Doyle Childers, Reeds Spring
Jon D. Smith, Forest Products Representative, Mountain View
John Saunders, Director, Department of Agriculture
David Day, Private property owner organization representative, Dixon (via open phone line)
Representative Jerry McBride, Edgar Springs

Interested Parties Present
Sarah Tyree, Special Assistant, Department of Agriculture
Earl Cannon, Business Expansion and Attraction, Department of Economic Development
Joe Bednar, Governor's Office, Jefferson City
Bill Bryan, Attorney General's Office, Jefferson City
Bill Moore, Canal Chip Corporation, Conway, SC
Carolyn Pufalt, Sierra Club, St. Louis
Charles Hirt, Canal Wood, Jackson
Cory Ridenhour, Missouri Forest Products Assn.
Dan Schuette, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Dr. Jerry Wade, Facilitator, University of Missouri, Columbia
Jack Slusher, UMC, Columbia
Jess Garnett, Garnett Wood, Bransville
John Dunn, US EPA, Kansas City, KS
John McCammon, TNC, St. Louis
Louise and Dan McKeel, Village Image, St. Louis
Robert Riesenmy, Wood Woman, Hartsburg
Roy C. Hengerson, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Jefferson City
Scott Brundage, Missouri Consulting Foresters Association, Columbia
Steve Galliher, Willamette Industries, Piedmont
Cheryl Reams, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Randy Crawford, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Ken Midkiff, Sierra Club, Columbia
Dr. Bernie Lewis, Dept. of Forestry, University of MO, Columbia
Tom Kruzen, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Mountain View
Tom Lange, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Bill Bell, Post Dispatch, Jefferson City
Charles Davidson, Conservation Federation of Missouri, Jefferson City
Shelby Jones, Consultant, Jefferson City
Llona Weiss, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Carolyn Barbour, Department of Economic Development, Jefferson City
Martha Buschjost, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Alice Geller, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Hank and Katie Dorst, Mark Twain Forest Watchers, Elk Creek
Denise Vaughan, West Plains Quill, Mountain View
Connie Paterson, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
Picheat Prommoon, Student, UMC, Columbia
Katie Auman, Dogwood Alliance, Yellville, AR
Dennis Ballard, Conservation Federation of Missouri, Jefferson City
Devin Scherubel, Heartwood, Columbia
Kenny Buder, UMC, Columbia
John Dwyer, UMC, Columbia
Ed Galbraith, Department of Natural Resources, Jefferson City
David Yates, UMC, Columbia
Clint Trammel, Pioneer Forest, Salem

Call to Order

Steve Mahfood, Director of the Department of Natural Resources, called the meeting to order at 9:50 a.m. The first item on the agenda was review of the September 1999, October 1999 and November 1999 minutes. Since these had been distributed to the committee beforehand, they had been reviewed. Approval of the minutes motion was announced by Jay Law, Jon Smith seconded the motion. Mahfood asked if there was any further discussion.

Discussion of Governor's Executive Order Extension

Steve Mahfood: The next issue is the discussion of what has been discussed in the public. You all are aware of the extension to the approach that this executive committee has taken as an Executive Order that the governor has signed. Joe Bednar of the Governor's Office is here, and there have been a number of questions a number of you have asked about the Executive Order and have been wanting clarifications. We have asked Joe to try to get us through the Executive Order. There are questions, Joe concerning length of time, public hearings, and just what the Governor's expectations are of us. If you would take a few minutes and just address this issue, I would appreciate it.

Joe Bednar: The Governor appointed this committee over a year ago, to check into the issue of chip mills, and the Department of Conservation also has issued a report. The purpose of the Executive Order was to give the committee sufficient time to review the Department of Conservation report, and give the public the opportunity to also review it, and to examine the issues in that report, and also to study the impact on what this committee issues. This committee was to expire February 1, and we decided to go ahead and extend the order indefinitely, and wanted to go forward cautiously, thoroughly, with public hearings if necessary. Are there any questions I can resolve?

Steve Mahfood: We are scheduled to make a presentation today on the report. Did the Governor envision additional public hearings?

Joe Bednar: The Governor envisioning releasing a report is premature, because the committee hasn't been able to examine the report. What we would like is to have a public hearing, so the best way to resolve these issues is to get the issues out. It is important to explain to the public what these issues are.

Senator Childers: Is there any information in the Conservation Report that wasn't presented to the committee?

Joe Bednar: Obviously I am not part of the committee, I can't answer that question. All I know is this report hasn't been presented to the committee, and there may be information in the report that will impact the committee, but the information should be available to all the committee, and the public to be able to examine those issues and differences.

Senator Childers: Is it better to say then, that you are opening it up completely again?

Joe Bednar: Again, going back to the original Executive Order published over a year ago, there are extensions that were issued Friday. The committee will be considering anything the department, or the public or industry will be discussing, so that when we issue a final report everyone will understand why there are some recommendations.

Senator Childers: I know there were some studies in progress back when we were doing our studies, and we may want to bring in some of those also. At that time they weren't timely.

Joe Bednar: Absolutely.

Steve Mahfood: Are there any other questions regarding the report?

Senator Childers: I think we need to recognize though that this is a report that was in draft form. Essentially I don't think it has any force or effect at the department level.

Jerry Conley: Well, it really doesn't. It was designed to be a briefing paper essentially, but we never got to that stage. But, you know it is a public document, so if you want to have a hearing on a public document, you can certainly do that. I can't characterize it as a department report approved by the commission.

Joe Bednar: What are important is the issues that were raised, the information includes three or four pages of references. There is a field study down in Tennessee, there are references to Arkansas etc., so there may be important issues in the document that will be of value, we just don't know.

Jay Law: I agree with you that there may be some very valuable information there, some of which was covered by the Department. It would have been nice to have this earlier. We apologize for being late, and we certainly appreciate the extension.

Steve Mahfood: Are there any other questions or comments? If not, thank you, and we need to start the discussion on a few things that I think are important. We have the Department of Conservation draft report; we have a summary of public comments and our own committee comments, just lots of things to decide today. One of them is the timeline, since the Executive Order has no timeline in it, I don't think any of us can think that this can just go on and on, and as Chair I am not going to let it happen that way. The other thing we need to discuss is the type of report we want. I know we all agreed to have what we called a "consensus report," put all the issues out on the table, but we have since heard that this is not the way to proceed. I concurred from most of you who have privately told me at this point in time you don't think that is the way to go, and what I have heard from most of you is that you were more satisfied with the first couple of sessions. We need more minority issue discussion. I'm open, as I am sure you all are, to discussion, we have to have the discussion. Do you all have any thoughts about this?

David Bedan: I thought there were two problems with the report. 1) The staff was unsure what to put in, 2) just what are we saying in the report.

Jay Law: I agree with Dave. Hopefully the points that were made by the department can be agreed on.

Steve Mahfood: I would like to brief Mark Garnett on the proceedings upon his arrival. There had been discussion on the Executive Order, and we have now proceeded to discussion of the report. Dave Bedan best characterized the report, as a number of you felt that it was ambiguous and we needed a more definitive un-ambiguous report. The other part of the discussion was the suggestion that we consider a minority report. Going back to the discussion we had, we all pretty much agreed to what our current report looks like.

Jon Smith: I'm not sure of any of it, but I'm certainly not satisfied with any of it. I think we can come up with a better product. I am not crazy about more meetings, but it is necessary to extend for more public comment, etc. It will probably take longer to write that final report.

Steve Mahfood: Timeline is important - we are all very busy - but I would like to wait till Senator Goode is here, so we can all have input. I would like to view this discussion in four pieces - 1) public comment, 2) review draft of the Conservation report, 3) review information in the works, not just a review and then, 4) to finish the report. As to how we view the format, I am not quite sure how to proceed.

David Bedan: I think there are more unsolved issues, as well as some policy approaches that were left to the staff to work out. The facts need to be corrected or updated.

Jon Smith: Shouldn't we get that part fixed first?

Mark Garnett: Shouldn't the Conservation Department be having a public hearing instead of us? I'm really confused here…I thought the Conservation Department was going to have a public hearing on their draft form.

Steve Mahfood: What I heard was they wanted a public hearing on the draft report.

Senator Childers: The thing that occurred to me is that I think it is somewhat unfair to the Department of Conservation to have a draft form thrown in. I know if I were in their place and someone took my draft before I had finished it, and said, "oh here it is, this is your complete report", I would be upset about it, because that is not fair. They ought to be able to take their draft and present it to us. I would feel a lot more comfortable.

Jerry Conley: That is not the way we do it. The committee got started in 1998. Report sent to Deputy Director and myself. At this stage we got the other committee members involved. We said to just hold off and don't do anything else on the report. About that time the Governor appointed the advisory group to study chip mills. We thought it would be too confusing to have two reports at the same time. We were way short of this being a final report. So the question was if we should have hearings on it.

Jon Smith: The Executive Order says that the chip mills committee should review it.

Senator Childers: What bothers me, is who is portrayed in the report from the Department of Conservation. It would be like if we took our first draft and said this is the work of a commission passed on to another commission. That is not fair to the people who actually did the work, because to portray it as their report is just not a fair way to do it.

Mark Garnett: But the public hearing, would that format be like the one before?

Jay Law: It seems to me their requirement for holding up their work on their draft was because they felt this committee's report had precedent, and whatever direction came out of that the Conservation Commission would have to report. It is just that the public comments are very important. I think it would be very awkward to hold a public hearing on a draft document.

Steve Mahfood: Jay, you are right. For our report, the key components are - public comment and consideration of the draft. I don't see this as a report from the Department of Conservation. However we do this, it will be part of the process. We will need to hold a public hearing.

Senator Childers: It seems to me that the Governor has taken it out of our hands. The Governor has said we will deal with it. It is being portrayed as their finished report, and that bothers me, when we take that as a finished report and it is not. But taking it as research and information, that I think is a very valid point.

Jerry Conley: It seems like the logical sequence here that if the Governor's committee is a broader look. We will need additional information, maybe previous comments from the public, do our work and then the public can decide. Maybe there will be enough guidance here.

Steve Mahfood: The moratorium on chip mills recommendation had to do with not enough analysis. Some of the information in the Department of Conservation draft report will lead me to rethink our recommendations. Referring to the draft report - the Governor's Executive Order says very clear - Conservation Draft Report - has got the dates on there.

Senator Goode: You know since I got into this and learned more about it…my view is that if the worldwide demand for paper picks up it would devastate parts of Missouri, it would devastate agriculture, and it would devastate tourism in Missouri and a large quantity of other things. That's my view, and it has been my view, and we ought to do something about it.

Jerry Conley: I think our staff, if working on this report, wouldn't change the basic facts. We have got the facts that have been put together from each Division. The question is what kind of recommendations can we make. The logical information would be very good for the commission to have also.

Steve Mahfood: Let's all take a look at the Executive Order. Look at paragraph number one at the bottom of the first page.

Jon Smith: Looks to me like we need to do exactly what the Executive Order says. We need to schedule a review of the draft. Do we have a public hearing then in the morning, or in the evening? Then we need to get about rewriting the reports.

Senator Childers: Is the moratorium still in place?

Steve Mahfood: There never has been a moratorium - unless the reports are rewritten...it was pointed out to me, right in front of the first paragraph.

He then read from the Executive Order.

David Bedan: Are we considering a public hearing on the draft report only?

Jon Smith: That is the way I would read the paragraph.

Joe Driskill: I would like to thank Earl for sitting in at all these meetings for me. I have read all the reports. I have some views I would like to present regarding licensure and registration.

Senator Goode: I would like to have the opportunity to hear from the people in Conservation. Maybe get their thoughts. There may be further information available.

Jon Smith: I don't think any of us are satisfied with that report, and it is going to take some time to hash that out. I definitely think there are going to be some minority reports that are going to have to be rewritten.

John Saunders: Mr. Chairman, I certainly concur with everything you said that we could possibly use the four components as per the Executive Order. You mentioned the public comment, we now have the MDC draft and then we had this committee's draft, and any other information that may have come to light during this process. I think we need do that and continue as the new Executive Order outlines. I would concur moving with that regard.

Jerry Conley: On having the staff that put together this report, maybe somehow make a presentation - that is not quite as easy as it sounds like, because when the report started, it started as a Forestry Division report. It is not as if just a few people worked on this report - quite a few people worked on it.

Senator Goode: I am not quite sure of the format that you used. The report was so broad-based out of your department. It makes it a much stronger document than if it would have been written by just one or two people.

Jay Law: I hope that the good people that have commented on the report don't feel like there will be another one, then another one that they will have to respond to.

Jon Smith: We have spent a year or so researching this and getting the background material and I don't think we can just replace it. I think it would be impractical.

Jay Law: Are we going to have another report?

Steve Mahfood: If we follow the Executive Order we will have in some form or fashion - a review and hearing on the draft Department of Conservation report. After that is done, we will look at those points in reference together, which is 1), the public comments - 2), our report, and then other issues. Those pieces will then be put back into play with the committee. We have all these public comments, very good public comments. Then at that point we will have another hearing on OUR document.

Jon Smith: I would like to make a comment on what Jerry Conley said. I think it would be helpful to have some of the people that can answer the questions.

John Saunders: Mr. Chairman, would it make sense for you and Mr. Conley to get together, and come up with an appropriate agenda or process for our review? Then work with the MDC staff, so as to come up with some resources.

Steve Mahfood: Yes, I think that is how we will have to do it. We do not want to leave Jerry hanging. He will want to know what are the expectations of this committee, and what they want from this presentation.

Jerry Conley: Clarification wise - are we going to have this presentation done before this group, or is it an evening type of thing, or both. Is it going to be combined into one of our meetings? As far as I'm concerned, the report speaks for itself. We are glad to have the people here, but I do not want to tell all these people to go back and do more research.

Jay Law: Isn't the public hearing process to have 30 days written, and then the oral? At some later time we could still receive comments from other people.

Jerry Conley: Well, I think so. After you have read the report, maybe in the public comments, we could have someone from our department to come in and answer the questions.

Senator Goode: Without being disruptive to the department I would like to have access to a hearing or meeting with this committee and some of the people who worked on it, where we can glean information from them, and be able to ask questions. That is the way I would like to have the committee work with this report. As for some committee work on the report, I think it would be good to be able to have conversation with the people from Conservation that worked on it.

Senator Childers: I would like to ask the other department's if they have any other information. If Economic Development or Agriculture might have information that would have a bearing on this.

Senator Goode: Are you asking if they have any hidden reports?

Joe Driskill: Mr. Chairman, I'll take that one on. First of all there are no hidden drafts. Someone asked, "should this be a briefing and then a public hearing"? I would like to have a briefing on this report. I admit that I have not read it. I don't care who would like to brief me on it, but I would like to see it in graphic form. I agree with the senator, if we are going to have a public hearing I like to be able to ask questions. So frankly, I think it would be a great learning experience for me. I don't care who presents it, I would be very comfortable to have you, (Jerry Conley), present it.

Jerry Conley: On the schedule for today, we didn't know exactly what to do, so what I asked Brian Brookshire to do was to be prepared today to make a report on the background and then for the conclusions make a recommendation to the committee.

Steve Mahfood: Process wise - the normal procedure is that you have the public hearing, documents need to be out before the hearing takes place. Courtesy wise - this advisory committee, and we have at least a couple members who might be listening on a conference call - also a couple of members who were not able to attend - it makes sense to me to have the kind of briefing that Director Driskill was talking about, and have the 30 days, then the hearing, because you want to have time to ask questions. Here is what we have got, here in this process. It is going to take a few hours to do that. You won't be able to do that in two or three hours. So my suggestion, for whatever it is worth - is to have the presentation and Jerry and I can figure that out, have the presentation, have the 30 days, and then have the hearing, and get comments from the public.

Jon Smith: That would probably work. Can you put a time limit on public comments? I don't mean on written comments.

Senator Goode: Is this going to be a hearing like we did before? We are going to be at least six months to a year ahead of the point we were at a year ago.

Senator Childers: There may be other information out there that needs to be updated.

David Bedan: The senator's comments reminded me - our report still doesn't have good information on other states. Are there similar committees working in other states. There is probably more information now than there was a year ago.

Jerry Conley: The longer you wait, naturally, the more information you have.

Jay Law: I have been surfing the web - if those rules go in, it will have significant impact in states that do not have established "best management practices."

Steve Mahfood: Addressing the senator's issues - getting this Executive Order direction done, and moving on to our report. Same emphasis as Senator Goode. You probably will not like what I say right here, but let's say we incorporated a copy of the draft document, held a meeting and a hearing the same day - have a presentation, whatever format we decide on - have a interactive hearing on the second part of the day - and get information for the draft document.

Senator Goode: Have a working meeting on the report first, just a meeting of the committee, then go on with a hearing process.

Steve Mahfood: That would be for you to decide, unless you want a record process.

Jerry Conley: We need to have the public hear the interchange and the presentation and they can make any comment they want to.

Steve Mahfood: We would have a 30 day process - let's say that happens in March. Then you have the four pieces of information. Then you will need two meetings to deal with that. One to review it and one to approve whatever changes. Then we have a hearing on our report. Then we will want to see what the draft report looks like. This could go into July.

Mark Garnett: Four meetings and a hearing? I'm confused about this.

Steve Mahfood: Have one meeting - one day - for a hearing on the draft document. Then you have the results of that, which would be whatever - then schedule two meetings to deal with everything we have been talking about - the draft, the public comments we have gotten. That gives us two weeks to deal with all those issues. Then a hearing after that. Then one more meeting to approve the draft. That would be four additional meetings…

Senator Childers: I think that is very reasonable. We have passed the timeline for urgency. The session is going to be over in May.

Jerry Wade: If I could give my comment on what I am hearing from Bernie's and my standpoint. Please understand that we do not disagree with a thing that was said in the beginning. We found ourselves turning rewrites around so fast to just track where the committee was at that time, that we never had a chance to do any refinement of our own writing or to engage in that with the committee, so nothing has been said other than what we have talked about. In fact, we decided that what is happening is going to give us a chance to get a much better final report. What this process does will allow us to use information that we already have from the committee, at the same time that the work on the MDC draft report goes on, and then we will actually begin doing work with the committee in a way that will engage them very differently than we have been able to at this point. Bernie and I think that we now have an opportunity to get to a final report of the quality that sets a standard. We think this is a process that will work.

Jay Law: I think many of us were disappointed with the way Section 3 came out. What I want to see, is that you don't say, "it will be taken care of in the rewrite." We must be truly facilitated when it gets down to that process. If there is a misunderstanding about it, I want to clear it up, because I think the process is important.

Jerry Wade: Please understand I was as frustrated as some of you were, because the attorneys set themselves to the timeline, but there was no opportunity for engagement. We did not have time to do it any other way, and meet the time deadline that had been imposed on us. This gives us the opportunity to do it right.

Steve Mahfood: I went back and looked at the minutes. We set the tone on the report. We now have something more pointed.

Jay Law: We have had a blueprint early on, as far as major reports.

Steve Mahfood: As I went back to the minutes I could see that there was no issue that was lost, and that everything should stay in.

Jon Smith: I can't see shortening the report.

Steve Mahfood: I wanted to have a feel for the Executive Order - we need to agree on a timeline - we will have five meetings.

Mark Garnett: What will we actually be voting on?

Steve Mahfood: Well the way I look at it, if we did double up the meetings it would be the end of May. Then we would have the draft, and we would be looking at the final report.

Jay Law: Are you going to have to have that hearing at the end?

Steve Mahfood: You will have to consider what the public hearing comments are, as to whether you want to change your draft.

Jay Law: I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying that we want to have a look at the final draft. We will want it to be our words.

Steve Mahfood: That's what I am saying - the final draft will be sometime in May.

Joe Driskill: My question is, for what reason do we have public comments? It seems to me we have public comments to learn what they think of the draft report.

Steve Mahfood: That is what I am proposing….public comments will give you a pretty good idea of what will go in the draft document.

Senator Childers: The final hearing is going to be in July, is that right?

Steve Mahfood: Again let me say, if we just start off with a meeting a month and work backward schedule-wise - in March, we would have a presentation and a hearing the same day. Information would have gone out on the draft document previously, so there is a thirty day period.

Jerry Conley: Let me ask you a question. A document that would be out to the public, would this be a half day meeting or what?

Mark Garnett: What I would like to know is the generalities of how it came about.

Jerry Conley: Again, if we do that, we are not talking a full day. A public hearing would not take all day, would it?

Steve Mahfood: My goal is to try to get people out of here sooner. I don't want people to have to stay here late.

Senator Childers: If new information becomes available, is it possible that it will be incorporated into the report? We are at least a year out of date already.

Steve Mahfood: Here's what I am proposing schedule-wise. In March a meeting to fulfill our obligations on the schedule. We are done with that part. April and May - those two months on all our other issues on our draft report, on comments, but we need to devote two meetings to the information that we have heard. At the end of the May meeting we will decide if our back is against the wall with a sub committee. However we do this, we need to approve a draft report at the May meeting to go out for public comment.

Jerry Conley: We have got to identify the issues that will likely be voted on in April.

Steve Mahfood: Good point. I would say that in the perspective of April and May - those are the two months that we have. We have got to have three meetings to get this done. We will try to be done in six months. We have got to get these issues squared away. Then have a hearing early in June, and then follow that closely by however long it takes to turn around a summary of comments or whatever.

Senator Childers: Would it be possible to say that I would not prefer to have in the first two weeks of May - the legislature will be busy then.

Steve Mahfood: I think what I need to work with right now - the number of meetings, and if this goes on a little longer and, Senator, I agree with what you said - whatever we all need, we need the right amount of time - so our target, I think, is six months.

Jon Smith: You are right, I think we are entering a new phase now.

Steve Mahfood: If we are able to functionally make it work quickly, fine, but it will be very difficult, and I think some of the issues you raised - because of our self-imposed timeline - we didn't know all the issues. So when you talk about the discussion, it all took place in a three month period of time.

Dave Bedan: We are talking about getting our working meeting in April and May. What should our staff be doing? It is a wasted opportunity if you just come back with one draft. Do we start from scratch? It will be hard to start talking about it in April, unless there is some extra work.

Steve Mahfood: On the agenda are all the key components. Today were comments and further actions - that is exactly it - Comments, and comments referred, additional papers, additional issues - were over and above what were pointed out today. We might be able to have a meeting and hearing in February as opposed to putting it off till March. Especially if we have the meeting in the middle. Jerry, what are your thoughts?

Jerry Wade: We have lots of information and input that we have never had the opportunity to deal with yet. We need to do a rewrite to substantially upgrade the quality without necessarily changing the content except as within input that we have, so that there is a far better document to work with at the April meeting. The other thing is that I am assuming that we would like that initial rewrite to be completed before the MDC hearing. I am anticipating that at the hearing on the MDC draft report, we will receive additional imput in terms of content and substance that should be in, and that would generate another rewrite between the March and the April meeting. So that hopefully a draft that you are working with at the April meeting will be substantially updated. What we need to do is to use this time to go ahead to do stuff we needed to do, but not had the time to do it yet. Then we will be in a better position to build in what comes out of the March meeting. Bernie wants to add his observations to that.

Bernie Lewis: I just wanted to differentiate between Part 2 and Part 3 as Jay and some others did. We have received a number of comments from the committee and others on Part 2 that can be worked on - suggestions for upgrading, and improving Part 2 - it can be worked on with part 2 as it is. Part 3 on the other hand, as many of you have commented, is rather vague and in my opinion, substantial more work than Part 2. At least Part 2 has a base to start with, and during the next month or two, or whatever, I would hope to be able to have some suggestions and improvements that I could be feeding you so that, as an example, pictures with the various scenarios and various comments people have made, and be improving on that. If you could see those on a meeting by meeting basis so that a number of those things could be done by the April meeting. I would like to incorporate the comments that we have from you as soon as we can.

Jerry Wade: We don't want to miss the opportunity to catch up with ourselves, so that we will have a much higher quality of product.

Steve Mahfood: If we have been giving you conflicting directions, then tell us that. Even in Part 2 there are areas where you have conflicting directions.

Bernie Lewis: Part three is going to involve some of these committee decisions in terms of indications of levels of support. That can be done before the facts, obviously.

Steve Mahfood: One of the first questions I asked was about comfortability with the report. We argued that there was some discomfort, and they pointed out there was still some discomfort in the second session, you have said you would be able to improve that, and that you would need some time. So what's left on the table is how we approach the recommendations section, and again what I have been hearing from everybody, there is a much stronger feeling about a yay or nay approach, but with the opportunity to make a comment or a minority report or a minority response, I know there are many ways of doing that in many reports I have seen, but - (Jerry, you look like you want to say something).

Jerry Wade: I think we can also do as much or more upgrading of Part 3.

Steve Mahfood: That is the way I was heading, because right now the way it is, under our direction it is more ambiguous and less directed than what I was feeling that we need to have. I don't know if we will be adding or subtracting issues, but we need to at least start taking what we have there, and thinking about how that can be structured. It may be we go through each one of those sections and literally vote on those pieces that we want to take forward. Under that recommendation, there will then be a minority comment or a minority position that would be public as opposed to soft, medium, hard, or high, medium, low, we would know where we are going. What Jerry is proposing is that you might get a little bit of the discussion part as we are going along, but we would do this at the meeting before the hearing.

Jerry Wade: Those preliminary decisions will probably start being made in the April meeting as well.

Steve Mahfood: Probably both meetings. If we can move this up a month it would be March and April to do that.

Jay Law: You are not talking about identifying issues for us though, are you?

Steve Mahfood: Jay, this is my direction. What I am saying is that we need to start looking at Section 3 and how it would be reorganized under an up/down approach.

Jay Law: I have been in situations where a good facilitator can bring you to a majority as to how you want to say it. I think it will take us more than a day to determine what issues we think are really important, and what issues really aren't. Not issues, but actions, I guess.

Steve Mahfood: I'm confused…. That's not exactly as I see it. A lot of those issues that are in there are not irrelevant issues.

Jay Law: Oh no, they are not irrelevant, but the issues I think are very important are the ones the public can provide. Some of these things that got into that report were suggestions that we never really discussed.

Steve Mahfood: That is exactly what we were wanting to discuss. That's what we do with public comments. We do, we weed out, and what do we still think are priority?

Jay Law: What I am saying is, what we have in our draft report is, a lot of the things we put in ourselves with one person's comment, and we never discussed it.

Steve Mahfood: In the recommendations section?

Jay Law: Yes. There is a whole bunch out there.

Mark Garnett: Before we get on with the next item, I want to go back to what Dr. Wade was talking about regarding putting some of the stuff in. I am overwhelmed, we have tried to do too much in too short a time. On Part 2 the people's comments around the table need to be incorporated. If they make any sense. You haven't had time to do all that have you? In my mind that is the first thing that should be done. If they are as conflicting as Dave says, please tell him that they are conflicting.

Steve Mahfood: Does that make sense to you? Or is that confusing?

Bernie Lewis: Sometimes it is difficult if there are two comments that are completely conflicting, but can be made note of.

Joe Driskill: I'm confused. Are we talking about possible conflicting comments from us, or from the public, or who?

Mark Garnett: From us. What's happened is, if we had a couple of points along the way, we were asked to provide input on a draft basis. So what's happening is this thing is going so fast, it has been difficult to keep up. It is a very difficult situation.

Steve Mahfood: What's happened is, as we have all supplied comment, the drafters have not been able to have a chance to say, this person and this person presented comments, or what do you think, or what our position is on the draft? They have had to just incorporate everybody's comments, and haven't had an opportunity to come back.

Senator Goode: Comments on the draft that are of substance should be put on a list of decision items that would then be distributed before a meeting, just to committee members, and we would then deal with those.

Steve Mahfood: That is exactly the process that got missed because of the urgency. That is what happened.

Bernie Lewis: That really has been the problem. Some comments for example might be "drop this," and another comment might be "keep this." There might be twelve different comments, each adding a particular thing in a particular area reflecting the view of one committee member, and there hasn't been a mechanism for that to flow by the other members to react to that.

David Bedan: Because we didn't take votes. Sometimes a single members comment got in the draft, but the reverse also happened. In some of the meetings one member objected and then was totally dropped, even though there might have been a majority in favor of it, because it just wasn't discussed - it wasn't voted on. So I think that process works both ways.

Jon Smith: We need to leave ourselves enough time that we can correct all these things, and get a product that we are all going to agree on.

Senator Goode: We need a decision process at the May meeting. Then the committee has the opportunity to make a semi-final decision on this, then we send it out to public comment, and then we come back and whenever that last meeting is, then make our final decisions.

Joe Driskill: Mr. Chairman, the few groups like this that I have had an opportunity to serve with in the past who had been charged with the rather ambiguous task of drawing a report that the majority agreed upon - using the professional staff, using public input, using professionals to make testimony -it had gotten to the point of having some frame of reference for holding votes. Perhaps one way to do it is open up the document as a draft to amendment. Any member can free up any portion of the draft for discussion and some action on it, and thereby limits the need to discuss the whole draft. I guess we could go through page, by page by page, try to see if everybody agrees on every page, but that's not necessary probably. I would imagine you are not going to have a whole lot of disagreement about some of the recommendations at least.

Senator Goode: But Joe, they are getting conflicting input NOW, and there are a lot of things that have accumulated through this process, that they are aware of that is that we need to report.

Joe Driskill: But how do we identify where those conflicts are in the draft that exists?

Senator Goode: I think most of those that have been working on it for awhile are pretty aware of that. I think drafters are, just simply from the comments they got, and from the notes they have from earlier discussion.

Joe Driskill: So if I could ask the question then? Do we then go to the comments that are noted by the drafters, and literally go through them and decide what's what?

Senator Goode: I think at some point we need to do that, and of course it is open for other changes and suggestions from the members, but at that final May meeting, we need to wrap up the final.

Jerry Wade: One of the things we are asking is to give us a chance to get to the next draft. We need to move this draft one step up before we begin addressing those. There is still a level of quality improvement that needs to be made in the writing. The organization and the framing we haven't had a chance to do because of how quick we had to turn everything into a deadline.

Steve Mahfood: If we have a list of issues that we each come armed with, come into a schedule in the April meeting, it might not be as hard. If you have that next draft done, and we all came with our issues, we would literally get an opportunity, each one of us, to get those issues into that report. Start that at that April meeting, and see if we couldn't literally get a change on page six. It could be as minor as that, or you might have a new policy approach that you want to take that we would want to include in that draft. I'm not sure that is exactly what Joe Driskill was talking about, but I think that probably in April we need to be ready to do that. So all of us may be coming from a different angle, but at least we will have a point of reference, plus having had the hearing, the issues, the public comments, the additional public comments from the draft document hearing would be included, summarized.

Senator Goode: Probably an April/May meeting process would work. I would like to finalize all that in May, the reason I am saying that, is those of us in the legislature may or may not be able to be here in an April meeting.

Joe Driskill: I am going to ask my question again in a different way. What we proposed is what I was trying to say, particularly for those of us who have not been here, and don't know the material. It is nice to have a frame of reference; it would be nice to have a list of issues on which there are disagreements, because the way the draft exists right now, to the casual reader there are many disagreements. There should be a list of those things that are in conflict, if it is nothing other than just an itemized list. It would be very nice to have. Frankly, if we are going to vote on this, and I think we should, we need to have these issues to identify.

Steve Mahfood: This goes back to something that Jay said. My contention right now is that the Part 3 recommendations of the report are those lists of issues. There is consensus on a few of those things, but still those are basically our list of issues that there has been. A vote would have to be taken as Jay eluded to there may be some of them that are just eliminated because they don't fit, but then some may be added back in because of things we now know from our public comment. So I guess in my mind, what I have been doing up to now, is simply taking all the public comment we had and the summary, that the staff put together, and I sat down with part three of the report just trying to see if there was any correlation between the public's comments and what we decided to do. I found some disparities, but then other people would find different than I, and that is what we haven't discussed in this open forum.

Joe Driskill: I understand what you just said about the draft recommendations being a list of issues that are going to have to be voted on, that's obvious. But are there issues also that need to be itemized - I assume there are from the previous conversations. If there are, will that be a part of our receipt to vote on?

Steve Mahfood: The answer is yes. Jerry and Bernie, would you know if within a reasonable percentage, if somebody asked you to list them, could you list the areas and the background that has become contentiousness to them, would you know those?

Bernie Lewis: Yes

Steve Mahfood: That is something that we need to know.

Jon Smith: In Section Three, when we do get down to recommendations, it will be good to have issues in bullet form.

Steve Mahfood: I haven't gotten that far. If you will look at Section 3, it is already in a kind of bullet form. That is pre-additional information that we are now gathering. But I must admit when I looked at public comment, and looked at the issues we had in this report, there wasn't very much missing. Section Two also has some contentiousness there that we hadn't really dealt with, and we need to deal with that also.

Jon Smith: In Section 3, where we are talking about having votes and clarifying the level of support, either up or down, or minority reports, are we talking about having those bulleted items as points of discussion?

Steve Mahfood: My answer is, 'absolutely'. Whether you take the current structure, or a different order, yes, that is what I am hearing from everybody, you want to look at those issues.

Mark Garnett: Do you want to discuss that now or wait till later?

Steve Mahfood: Let me ask all of you, do you want to break for lunch, and then come back and start on this? This issue needs to be discussed.

Senator Childers: I am going to ask one clarification. I heard Bernie say awhile ago, there was some information that they still had not had a chance to incorporate. If that is true, should that be put in before we deal with it? Maybe I misunderstood the statement.

Bernie Lewis: There is a little bit of information that is not incorporated. What I was talking about was Section Two, the comments from the committee that came after the final draft. If they could be put into a form as we were just saying, so you could see, they could be ready to go to be incorporated. But again, if one person says one thing, and someone else says another, we had the problem we were talking about, in previous drafts I would incorporate one persons comment, and another person would say this wasn't here before, and now it is.

Steve Mahfood: Bernie, just let me stop you. Senator, we divided this up. These are the members comments on their own draft. That is pretty hefty. Then there are the public comments, and to me it was my intention that we take these summaries of both of these, and I know we summarized the public comments, and we consider those in light of our current draft. I'm uncomfortable with this. This is our base document right here, and like it or not, this is where we could start to say, o.k. here are the issues from the committee members, here's the issues from the public, do they go in there or not? Can we work on these sections? We need to consider those. What I'm getting from the Governor's Executive Order is, look for some other information of which the draft document is just one piece. It's asking, look at whatever else is out there, and come back with more specific direction instead of a softer direction approach that we took. That is what I am hearing. We have a draft report, we have public comments, and our own comments, but we need to consider our comments before we start delving into changing this.

Jon Smith: What you are saying is we need to go to the comments.

Steve Mahfood: Yes

Jon Smith: That answers my concern.

Steve Mahfood: The thing we have added now is the fact that we have the draft report, and we do have our comments. That's what is different from this. We now have a few other pieces of information in which to relate this to, and decide if we want to make any changes at all. The narrative aside, we decided to make changes to Section 3, and be an up/down/minority approach rather than everything gets included.

Mark Garnett: Are we going to discuss this this afternoon, or are we going to vote and go on?

Steve Mahfood: You mean the process? Sure. Let's go ahead and break for lunch. I would appreciate everyone coming back in half an hour.

LUNCH

The meeting re-adjourned at 1:15 p.m.

Steve Mahfood: Let's do a quick review of the agenda, so we will know what we have left. We discussed the Executive Order, the timeline, which was going to finish up here, as we have agreed on a report, the report will be modified. I have been talking with Jerry Wade and Bernie Lewis, and we are going to try to do a better job as Joe Driskill suggested, and Jay, as you suggested. Try to do a list of those issues that are not contentious to be decided, and actually put a little meat on those issues. For example, there was a discussion on a report on logger training. What goes unsaid in that section is - there is an option of voluntary or not, or how do we get there. So we need to flush out the issues that we all agree are issues, but we don't agree on how to solve them. So they are going to take on putting together that kind of a paper, and taking your suggestion, Jerry, on the issues in Part 3 and putting them on paper, so that we can decide whether they are eliminated, or just assume that we didn't decide as a group what goes and what stays. With that, will be a summary of the public comments that we have. I'm also going to see if we can't summarize separately the comments of the committee members, cause I don't think we summarized those separately. So if you are sitting there with the issues list, and the issues are in section two, and then have the public comments, you will pretty much have the decision making tools right there to decide where your priorities are and where you would vote.

We need your input also on this, Jerry, because we will be doing this as a committee, but I just ask that we try to put something down. These are not written in stone, these are just a shot, I haven't taken into consideration. Some of you have given me slips of paper on when you are available. This may not line up with it, but we will line it up. General thought - we get a public notice out - there is nothing else to do on the draft - thirty days for public notice - there is nothing to keep us from holding a meeting halfway through the thirty days though, so we don't have to wait. (referring to dates written on marker board)

Dan Schuette: That schedule is basically based on putting something out on public notice, giving thirty days time slot for a review, getting thoughts organized, holding a closed and public commentary, hold a meeting, review meeting and public hearing, and go from there. So that can be altered however the committee pleases.

Steve Mahfood: Just for discussion, lets keep this going here. So we have got a thirty day period, meeting in March, and an April working meeting.

Senator Goode: I know I can't be here the first two weeks of May, and I don't expect anyone else will be here.

Steve Mahfood: If we have something this soon, in April, is that probably a Monday? So if it was held then, what kind of time do you need Jerry and Bernie? Because if recognized, those first couple of weeks in May won't work very well. We are talking about a fairly extended period of time between the beginning of the April report. We may, if we have the materials organized, and in good fashion and we made some progress on the report organization, be able to meet a second time in April.

Jerry Wade: I'm not available the last week in March, or the first week in April. So I can see that working meeting being the third week in March or the second week in April. If you could go ahead and have a meeting like the third week in April, I think we could be ready by that time.

Bernie Lewis: I could be ready by the first week in March.

Senator Goode: I would like you to move the May meeting back to the 22nd of May, then when I am out of session for a week, I'll have time to look at something. Then go April 3rd or April 10th.

Jerry Wade: That would work with us also. That may be better.

Steve Mahfood: I'm missing the point. I understand the May meeting, but the April meeting, what are you saying? Move it to the 10th? So April 10th, and May 22nd? So then your public notice is like the 24th or something like that.

Jerry Wade: Steve, after that May 22nd meeting, will the rewrite have to be done after the May 22 meeting?

Steve Mahfood: Go back to what we were discussing. This is important. This is my point. We made changes, but then you didn't get to see it. That is what I heard from all of you. We did this same thing and you didn't get to see what your suggested changes were in order to get to the draft report, now that's the conundrum that is in here.

Senator Goode: But, Steve at least you'll have on the 22nd some sort of marked up draft to finalize, and I don't see how you can do all that in two days.

Steve Mahfood: No, no forget that. This isn't the issue; I don't have any problems with that. How do you get from here to here without a meeting? I mean, I heard lots of complaints about the last time we did that, the report that went out, the public notice - every body said wait a minute, that's not the report that we approved at our meeting. Which is why I was pressing for the opportunity. We need to have a lot done by this week, that's the point, that is why I was thinking we have got the whole month of March. There may be something in here where we can define issues. I guess I had thought that we would have these working meetings, and this is just since I brought this up, that I was thinking about your comments, that this meeting would basically be it other than fine tuning and you saw the final report that was going out. Otherwise, my fear is that no matter what we do, somebody will be upset about this report if they don't see what is written.

Senator Goode: But that's the case with every meeting, when you make changes and the report comes out. You make the final changes, and be as specific as you can in putting it together at the meeting.

Steve Mahfood: Senator, as much as anything, I want to get this out on the table. That's my view. I'm comfortable with that as long as you all are comfortable and know that at this meeting we need to know pretty much what we are changing. In this meeting we have to agree, and there may be things that you ask to be done.

Jay Law: We are going to have things that we want to discuss for awhile.

Steve Mahfood: Most of those issues and the issue paper, you will have gotten all that. I would hope on April 10 we could make 80-90% progress on this thing. So that here we are not with our backs against the wall again.

Senator Goode: We would have the public hearing, if we could get something done by the last part of March.

Jon Smith: I think that will work, because in June you have a public hearing, then we have one more opportunity in July to proof the final report. So you have to bring it pretty close to conclusion on the 22nd. Have your public meeting and then you still have one more look at it.

Steve Mahfood: That's the way I felt. I had three people that were very, very upset about this time period. They didn't feel like the report met what they thought was going to be the report released to the public. So we would have been at this stage today, and I think there would have been a few people on our committee that would not have been accepting or approving this final report. I'm just alerting everybody to the fact that a lot of work has to be done.

Joe Driskill: Mr. Chairman, I have sort of a procedural comment I guess. The April 10th meeting, most importantly, also the May 22nd meeting, I think it will be really important for this framework of decision making to occur. As part of the things that have occurred up to this point, that we have to focus on, should be written in such a way that we can focus on them without getting off point. Secondly, as we have new ideas that come up that need to be either adopted or not adopted at that time, it would be really nice to actually have some way of actually arriving at the language at that time, rather than have Jerry or somebody try to write it later on. We could have an overhead projection or something like that and we could have someone actually typing in, maybe we could agree on the language and adopt it or not right there.

Steve Mahfood: It looks like in many ways, we are burning the month of February here, and we don't want to do that as both of you have stated. We need to have the issue papers and the things that are the focus of the discussion by the end of February.

Senator Goode: Another problem has been not getting the item that we are going to be working on till just a few days before the meeting. Not everybody can just put everything down and read it. If you could get something out two weeks before that March meeting. It is probably not quite as important at the March meeting, because we are going to be concentrating on the Conservation draft and public hearing, but particularly before the April meeting and before the May meeting to get something in our hands a couple of weeks ahead of time.

Steve Mahfood: That was my point about getting a lot of work done in February, and that gives a month to review a lot of the work and/or produce if there is more.

Jerry Wade: I can have, to the committee, the draft of the issues list by the 15th of February. Now, that means that the committee will then need to take responsibility for reviewing that issues list and making sure that all of the issues you think are important. I can have that ready by the 15th of February.

Steve Mahfood: The issues list, public input, anything that you might glean from the draft document and other information, that is what we are using for the basis for the decision making.

Jerry Wade: Would the committee want to think about their April work session, the evening session the 9th, and then an all day work session on the 10th?

Steve Mahfood: Does it behoove us to just have a meeting on issues in February?

Senator Goode: I think it's important to go into the Conservation Report because, quite frankly, there is more substance in that than in anything we have done. Some people may or may not like that substance, but there is more expertise in that than anything we have done, so I think having a good understanding of that is going to reflect what we do after that. So I don't think doing something in front of that works.

Mark Garnett: On the 22nd of May we would come to agreement, and then the committee would send more comments in between then and the 29th, and the report would not be the same as the 22nd. That is a problem. Are you going to commit that that won't happen again?

Steve Mahfood: I appreciate what you are saying, that is how we would have to do it. When you go to that meeting on the 22nd, and there isn't anything that happens, that's it.

Llona Weiss: I am still concerned with that 22nd and 29th again. Because that is a real crunch time, once they get their work done and give it to us to get it copied, on the web, or whatever, it is just too rushed for time.

Senator Goode: It may not be that bad though. If you do what is suggested, get a computer hooked up with a display on the wall, and go ahead and punch in most of the changes, and get it pretty well perfected, so that it is just kinda sprucing up the language, I think it is going to compact it more.

Steve Mahfood: I agree with you. That was the intent, to not leave the room until we all agreed on the wording changes, but we didn't have all that.

Mark Garnett: We put tremendous pressure on Dr. Wade and Dr. Lewis, because then we had comments coming in after that, and they were forced to make a decision. It is not fair to them.

Steve Mahfood: So Llona, I think we better do as Senator Goode and Mark Garnett said. It is important to have this be it, right here.

Jay Law: I think it will work, because we would just be focusing on the issue area, or action area, that is where I think it is critical.

Steve Mahfood: Jerry and Bernie, you have your issues list relating to Part 3, right? Is there anything that you would do under some kind of guidance, between now and April 10th to get more towards what Jay is talking about? It would be nice if we came into the two meetings and mainly dealt with the lack of recommendation or not, if we get the wording right on that, and not go back and rework Section 2.

Bernie Lewis: How about this, Steve. What if I were to submit my proposals to the committee for additions or changes to Section 2 based on the public comment, based on the committee comments, and then go by the committee, because I already have several things in line, and then everyone could see the proposed additions or changes. That would at least be a way to avoid what happened before, one person call and get one change in, and then another.

Senator Goode: Put their views together as a substantive revisions that the committee needs to make, run that by you, run that by Jerry, run that by the rest of the staff that is back here working on all this and keeping track of it, make sure that decision list is comprehensive, and send out their cleaned up draft along with this list of decision items. I think a list of decision items should just go to committee members. Does that make sense?

Steve Mahfood: Jay and David, I don't know if you have this same kind of programmatic capability as you do your rewrites. If somebody could put where did you make the changes, you can circle a line or something, and say changes were made here from the original draft or vice versa. If you could do that, you would have February and two three weeks in March to do that. I would want something out to everybody no later than the beginning of the last week in March. That would give you over two weeks.

Jerry Wade: I would still do that issues list by the end of February.

Steve Mahfood: Yes. This is not replacing that.

Jerry Wade: I think that is another list that people need to have in their hands to analyze.

Steve Mahfood: You will get that to us? We will then distribute it to the members. Ultimately, by the beginning of that last week in March we need to have the cleaned up draft and the issues list done. If you get this done in three weeks, great, we'll get it out. Otherwise does this look like it?

Llona Weiss: Is everyone going to check their calendars, or are these dates set in stone?

Steve Mahfood: What I'm getting from people's faces, is that these are the dates.

Jay Law: Jerry, I think it is very important here that when you get that list together, that you say that this list is taken from public comments and from the draft. If you just say here is a list of issues, we will see it in the paper someplace. What I would like to make sure, is that we say it in such a way that we have determined all the issues, these are agenda items, etc.

Steve Mahfood: My understanding is none of these issues go anywhere without a report. New issues will be added by us when we get public input, the draft report, or anything else, but the issues he is going to do, is just reorganizing Section 3 in a issues list.

Jay Law: Don't we already have that then?

Steve Mahfood: Yes, but we haven't voted on it.

Jay Law: Well, is it going to be any different than what we have got right now?

Jerry Wade: I will state it with my perception of what the decision that needs to be made is.

Steve Mahfood: Based on what you've heard from us.

Jerry Wade: Yes, but on the issues and actions, I will not go beyond what is in Section 3 until you all add to it.

Jay Law: I'm not comfortable with that.

Representative McBride: We have to determine what it is that we want to address.

Steve Mahfood: Jay, we are on the same exact wave length. The reason we are not going to let them add to the list is because we decide that. I want a list out of them that is better put together than I see in Section 3. I want something that is easy. Take our issues that we have already put in your report, and put them in a list, then it is up to us to add to that list. So that is why you are not authorized to do anything more than what we already have approved as issues, actions, etc…

Jay Law: What are you going to do Jerry? Are you going to write them differently or what?

Jerry Wade: I'm going to do them in a list, with what I think the decision is, as a draft for you all, as you set your agendas for the April 10 meeting.

Jay Law: But what do you determine the decision is? Describe this to me. Take one and describe it to me.

Jerry Wade: Take logger training. The first decision is that you want that as an action included. The second decision, that has been part of the discussion in Section 3 is, do we make that voluntary or mandatory? But you all are to look at that as a draft for your own decision process. It is a starting point for you to then identify clearly the process that has to be worked through the 10th and the 22nd in terms of decisions.

Jerry Wade: What I am trying to do is put it in a form that is manageable and organized for you to then work on.

Steve Mahfood: I need a list that is not of the issues, and I will probably just do that myself, just go through and write down the issues. I just don't want Jerry and Bernie to do that. We have already approved a set of issues that are in the report. I am sure we as co-chairs can look at this before it goes out, and make sure that it contains no bias's, nothing other than a couple of facts with each issue, so that the committee has a concise list.

Jerry Conley: We have got the public comments here, when do we incorporate any additional issues that the public may raise. When do we add anything new to the issues list, do we do that in March?

Steve Mahfood: It would be right here. That is what these two meetings are about. We are to take the four pieces, public comment, any comment that we might have gotten at the March 6th meeting, the current report, which is being cleaned up, the issues list, which is already there, and anything else anybody else wants to add to the mix, any other new reports, new information that you may have, or anybody else has. That is what these two meetings are for, to consider all that information. We were originally going to consider the public comments today, that was the original plan, but then the uneasiness that the committee had over the report, and now the Executive Order, all of this has all fallen in, and you might as well fix a couple of things that we all were uncomfortable with. They would only be one part of the input to us. We already have a summary of the additional public comments, and I also want to summarize the committee comments, as a stand alone, and I would assume we would probably have some comments, or summary of comments, at this point in time.

Mark Garnett: You'll have another summary of comments at the end too.

Steve Mahfood: All that was to get us directly to here.

Representative McBride: Steve, I don't know if you would want to include this in the report, but it would be helpful to myself and future people that will be looking at a report like this. As we go through these different programs and dealing with legislation over the years, some of the things that we have talked about in the report as doing, departments such as yours, and Department of Conservation which will be dealing largely with these issues, has authority in certain areas already. I know some of the areas we have talked about where there are programs ongoing. I noticed the other day in the memo for instance, that you put out, it was very concise and very short, I really appreciated that, and I thought there was a lot of good points in there. Probably some of those things, some of the areas, you probably already have authority on, some of them maybe you don't. For instance, if you were going to be regulating chip mills anywhere in this report, you maybe already have some authority, and some areas that you would need authority. I think it would be well if whoever knew about logger training, that already the Department of Conservation is putting $70,000 of their money into forest products for logger training. So I know there is already some authority there, I just thought it might be something you would want to think about.

Steve Mahfood: I can respond to one part of it. We made recommendations as a Department in the public hearing period. Looking at everything we saw, we did recommend a moratorium on chip mill permits until such time as a list of issues was examined, or until we had better information about what the impacts were. That was our approach, because we didn't know. It was based on the fact that we do have some authority, some of it will probably be decided in courts whether it is appropriate. A few of us are facing a tough situation water-wise on all these regulations that are coming down that relate to silviculture, and we don't know where they are going, or if they will be successful or not, so part of this is that you bring up a good point. It seems like at one time we had a laundry list of authorities that were outlined.

Representative McBride: If we ever get to a point legislatively that we are going to really take action as to what this committee has done, we would need those things. The departments are going to be the driving force in the implementing anyway, so I guess the bottom line is we will have to get that at some point if we ever take action.

Steve Mahfood: I would think that when we get to the recommendations, we better know what it is that we need. I agree with you Senator. Do we want to set a date for the final? Is July 17th a good day? I know Senator Goode is looking to the 22nd date in May, but I am not going to cut short the possibility, we are making good progress, but I would sure try to do things sooner.

Jerry Conley: What happens if it takes two hours on March 6th? I really see we could have lots of time on the 6th.

Steve Mahfood: What I understood from what Senator Goode was talking about, we have a presentation in the morning, which you will decide how that comes about and who participates. When we schedule to set things up legally, we have to put a certain amount of time in. I would assume this could be from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon, two and a half hours maximum. Then in the afternoon, something from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., that's been our normal time period, and get out of here at 3:00 p.m., not 4 or 5 o'clock. That was my contention about having other things happen here before or after.

Jay Law: Will we move our public hearing time to allow people to come in and speak.

Steve Mahfood: I also had requests from some people to hold public hearings on Saturday or Sunday.

Steve Mahfood: I guess we have a timeline, but there are a lot of people that still aren't here, so I'm hoping that we can get everybody on that same timeline. Jerry was talking earlier about Brian Brookshire giving a quick assessment and report on the MDC Report.

Mark Garnett: (changing tapes…inaudible)

Jerry Conley: So instead of any kind of a separate minority report, what are you going to do when you get through doing this over all? Will we have another overall vote at that stage to adopt the report, and still an opportunity to vote against it if you wanted to, and the reason why? So then you wouldn't have a separate document, would it all be tied together?

Mark Garnett: That would be my thoughts.

Jon Smith: So there wouldn't be a minority report, but you would include the minorities used as part of the record of the vote?

Mark Garnett: If they so desired. We won't have to make that decision today; it was just something I wanted to throw out, and have everyone think about. Because I can see if we go to minority reports, it is going to take a longer time.

Jon Smith: I might be on the minority side of some issues, and on the majority side of other issues, but I don't know that it would be difficult for me to say why I supported the minority in total, because I might not be agreeable with some issues.

Mark Garnett: The way I see it, you would have the ability to vote "no" and say why. You might vote "no" for a totally different reason than I would.

Steve Mahfood: Some people that brought this issue up, are of course not here right now. I think that's where people were heading. We are trying to figure out how to express the minority viewpoint, particularly if you vote and it is one short on one side, it is the big issue, and maybe something that someone will want to see addressed in the report. Again, that is why we of course weren't real far off on some of these issues with the current report. We had a sense that something would have carried by vote, but that there was a strong feeling against that particular item that would have carried by vote.

Jay Law: I am a believer in "consensus building," and I think we are all called to this table, the greater table of life, and asked to find some solutions. I think the skills are in the person who is facilitating, and in the leadership. This is our report, and this is our charge, and we have to sit down and solve this problem. Let's work toward consensus of things that we can really agree upon, and those that are too contentious, that we have trouble with, I don't think they belong in the report.

Mark Garnett: I totally agree with that Jay, but all we have said so far is that all the issues be left in the report, and that is my problem with the current way we are going. What you are saying I agree with, but that is not the direction we are going right now. We are keeping all the issues in, and again that's fine if we have the ability to disagree with it at the end.

Jay Law: Let's just agree that we are going to look towards getting issues in there that we all feel need to be discussed. Some of them may not be popular, some of them may reflect badly upon the particular position some of us have, but if it turns out that the arguments are strong enough, that is what we will have to do to address the issues.

Representative McBride: I was just listening to the two of you, and wondering if there might be a middle ground in there, and if you are going to take a vote on these different issues instead of getting out and naming names. I think what the group wants is to reflect the percentage of support of the group, and you might want to do something like that. If you are going to take a vote on each of those issues, you may just show what percentage of the committee was for that issue, and what percentage was opposed. That would reflect somewhat the standing of the committee.

Steve Mahfood: The current approach was much closer to what you are talking about right now, without the percentages. We didn't vote, but we went through the issue and were able to see whether it had the majority or not, but a lot of them are very close.

Representative McBride: That is probably a normal procedure.

Steve Mahfood: Jay, this is the next level. If you don't have any give and take in the process of dealing with these issues, then in the end you will have people voting against the report. Not voting to support the report may very well lead to a minority report that is developed outside this structure. That is one of the things I was trying to avoid. Let everybody have a voice inside this process, so there is strong feelings about an issue that could be in this process, rather than some of the other states we have seen, where people have gone off and produced their own counter reports to the counter report, and I don't think that is productive.

Jay Law: That is what Senator Childers was talking about initially.

Jon Smith: The problem in our report is there are a lot of issues which there is not a consensus on, but they are issues people feel strongly about, and certainly a minority of you feel strongly about.

Jay Law: I'm not saying it should be reflected in the report somewhere, I'm just saying it's just best to see if it would work on trying to find out why you are "uncomfortable" with what we are saying. What would make you more comfortable? Try to find a way we can "scope" it or put it into something that works. With the diversity we have here, if we can't get satisfied, then it is going to be very difficult outside this group.

Sarah Tyree: At one point we were talking about what we want a report to be like. I think it would be an issue paper. You would read it, and you may come up with different conclusions, depending on what point of view you have, laying out all the issues, the pros and cons of this and that, and then it would be up to the reader to decide, and we would provide the background for someone to take such a stance. From what I understand today, is that that wasn't far enough. They wanted to have specific actions, and now we have been charged to come back and say o.k. Give us a recommendation, one through five, and you all can have consensus vote.

Steve Mahfood: That is what I am interpreting out of all of this. Some of these comments were ambiguous and unclear. I personally like the way we did it.

Sarah Tyree: In a true issue paper, it is exactly that. You have different people being able to take out information.

Mark Garnett: If we come to a consensus first on what issue we are going to talk about, that's giving up the ability to say "no", that's not what has happened so far. We have a wide disparity of views, and we get all different issues. Some people are going to be "for," and the rest of us "against." If we keep all the issues in the report, I see no way it is going to change.

Steve Mahfood: That was the point of the discussion, coming up with the issues list and trying to determine what would simplify this. What is staying in, and what is out? The added information we have now, that we didn't have about that subject is, we have public comments, we have our fellow members comments, we have been asked to look at a draft document, and we may have some other information. That would help us decide which issues to use.

Mark Garnett: We are going to have to vote at that point on what issues stay in there, that is what it amount to.

Steve Mahfood: I would assume so. Also on what else needs to be added. That doesn't leave Bernie and Jerry on the spot for deciding that. That is what has happened up to now, they have had to decide because we haven't given them the time as which issues are added or subtracted.

David Bedan: My perception of this is the other side of the coin. I felt there were a number of issues where one or two people were opposed, and one or two were in favor, but the majority was silent. Two people opposed maybe went away thinking it was "dead," but it wasn't. Now the objection is that they are back in there, but they were never really thrown out.

Mark Garnett: Well, there was one that was thrown out, but was put back in.

David Bedan: Mark, we never voted on anything! We never took a single 'vote". I think we ought to be willing to vote and be recorded.

Representative McBride: The fallacy to that though is, I can read through that report, I can change a word or two into law, and make a general statement but not any specifics, most of the things I have seen in the report, I don't have a problem with.

Earl Cannon: Mark just said we probably agree on what issues there are, but the controversy is what we do about them. Maybe we can all agree upon what the issues are, but when it comes down to voting on recommendations, then maybe we could show a percentage of support.

Steve Mahfood: I think we have a lot of good discussion, and we can work this up as some options. We have some good ways of doing this. At the next meeting we need to decide on how we proceed on a voter consideration of the issues. Most of the discussion is going to be on the strength of the issue, not the issue itself.

Any further discussion on this right now? There has been good discussion; we needed to have this to get ready for the next meeting. If no further discussion, we will have Brian (Brookshire) come on up if he is ready to begin on the MDC Report.

MDC Draft Chip Mill Report

Brian Brookshire: When we saw the agenda, we prepared some background information on working with the MDC internal report. Given that it will be discussed on March 6th, I'll try to put this in a framework where there is some background information that you can take to read this report, and maybe put it in the right context. I will go through a chronology of events that have taken place over the last year or two, and what has led up to the development of the Department getting involved, and try to put together some information concerning chip mills, how the Conservation Department was involved with some other studies, and things going on over the past couple of years.

Starting early in 1997, when chip mills came on the scene, and MDC started to receive a lot of questions about chip mills, and what their potential impact was, as were a lot of other agencies, such as DNR, Economic Development, etc. We don't know a lot about chip mills, but the facility itself could not see them as a real threat or concern, as far as MDC's responsibilities are, and how we would deal with them, but more of the potential harvesting practices that would be used to feed those mills. That is what we were concerned about, and still are concerned about.

In 1997 the Forestry Division within MDC basically started gathering some information on chip mills, what they were all about, and educated ourselves as to what was going on. October 3, 1997 is when our Conservation Commission met and MDC's staff was called to brief the Commission on chip mills coming into Missouri. During that discussion, the Commission made clear that MDC's role is to work with private landowners, to insure that trees are properly harvested, regardless of market. Additionally, the Commission instructed their staff to prepare what would outline the Department's current position, and what they could do to assist private landowners, and to include in that report the impacts and results of the chip mill industry in other states.

In November and December of 1997 the interdisciplinary team within MDC was appointed to prepare the report mandated by the Commission at the October meeting. This is another thing that was going along about the same time. On March 30, 1998, the department's of Natural Resources, Agriculture, Economic Development and Conservation were called to a meeting with Brad Ketcher of the Governor's Office to discuss chip mills. The departments were charged with preparing a chip mill issue paper that would be forwarded to his office at a later date.

Again on May 28, 1998, there was another Commission meeting in which Director Conley reported to the Commission that the interdisciplinary MDC chip mill committee was working on their report, and they were proceeding as he felt was appropriate. He, (Director Conley), added that any direct draft recommendations that could eventually become state policy would be thoroughly discussed with the Commission prior to any filed recommendations. The Commission concurred, and also stated, that any decision about a moratorium on permitting chip mill facilities was beyond their constitutional authority, and was to be dealt with by the Department of Natural Resources. At this meeting the Commission also agreed that their responsibility should be two-fold. 1) to reach out to the owners of over eleven and a half million acres of privately owned forest land, and through an educational campaign, let them know about services available to them, to assist them in making good decisions.

At this meeting the Commission stated that to fulfill the MDC's responsibilities, we must maintain a forward looking approach that insures the health and well being of the state's forest resources, they recommended a two point approach for the staff to pursue. One, the department should be an active leader in any government sponsored study of the chip mill issue, and two, the Department should work with the US Forest Service to develop a more complete inventory of the state's forestry resources. In August of 1998, Speaker of the House, Steve Gaw appointed a legislative committee chaired by Representative Jerry McBride to investigate Missouri's chip mill issue. The third meeting that the Commission was given information on chip mills occurred on September 25, 1998. At this meeting, staff reported working on two government sponsored chip mills studies, the house legislative committee, and the Governor's executive committee that had just been established on the 18th of the month. Staff also reported that funding, as was mandated in the earlier Commission meetings, was provided by the US Forest Service to double sampling intensity in the Ozarks. Then, in December 1998, the MDC draft report was submitted to Director Conley, and Deputy Director Jon Smith.

That's the background on what we have been involved in in the Conservation Department, that has led up to us needing to put together information on the chip mills, and that's what we did, and Jerry discussed this morning what went on beyond that. Are there any questions on that? That is just simply the background on what has led us up to drafting this report.

Jay Law: You had met with the Governor's Office?

Brian Brookshire: Yes. The Department staff met with the Governors Office in March to discuss the chip mill issue along with three other state agencies.

Any other questions?

We can get into this report any way you like. I worked on this report myself as a representative of the Forestry Division. There were representatives from our Fisheries Division, Wildlife Division, Outreach and Education, Natural History, and Administrative Services provided the facilitation of the report. Basically how the thing worked, is that we met and discussed what was appropriate for various staff to bring to the table, what their expertise was, do the literature search, and then bring that literature search to the table, write down how that might pertain to the state of Missouri. That was discussed, then reviewed by the whole committee. One comment I would make about this particular draft, is this is certainly not a research study in my mind. This is the literature review you would begin a research study with. There were no studies that were implemented on the ground, in the state of Missouri, in an effort to put together this report. As you go back, I encourage you to really look at the literature review that was put together for this report, and note that most of the information came from states all over. The east, I know, was drawn on very heavily; West Virginia, Virginia, even some of the west coast studies, from a water quality standpoint. Basically, what happened, the staff put together this information, and drew their own conclusions how that might pertain to the state of Missouri. That is how the report was structured and put together.

The other thing I wanted to point out, on the recommended actions, I believe there are nine. Again, the concern about this being a draft, is that, as Jerry indicated this morning, this has not been reviewed by division heads or the Commission, and Jerry and John haven't given us any instruction or anything. These were some recommendation that this committee felt comfortable on moving forward through the process. I might point out that recommendations one through five there - and this is fairly typical - that some of the recommended actions are going to be such that a division head has the authority to move forward with, if they can get the appropriate budget, and others are certainly going to be discussed by the Commission, because of all other kinds of ramifications within the Department. Some of these recommendations, we have no idea being at the level we are in the department, if there is funding for this. We don't know how to weigh one program versus the other program, it was just recommendations that we thought might be useful in considering the chip mills issue in the state of Missouri, as it pertains to the Conservation Department. So if you go through the recommended actions, as in number one, this whole concept of the adopted MDC policy that required loggers that purchase timber on MDC lands to have to go through the logger training program. That has already been implemented. That is on the ground. You folks have heard that. Go on down the list there. One through five are already in place. They were recommendations that were such that we could go ahead and move forward with them shortly after they were recommended. Number six, for example, is one that pertains to the state forestry law that would address harvest notification and the severance tax, and the nature of that is something that the Commission has to get involved with, the Director has to get involved with. There is no way we could move forward with something like that. The seventh one, create a pilot project, we've done that. We are in the process of doing that right now. Again, that is something we can do internally, we can shift some resources around within the division, and make that happen very quickly. So that is the report in a nut shell. In the March meeting we can get into more detail on that and get the people involved in the report itself to where you can ask questions of them also.

Jay Law: In Item 5, you said these were all things that could be done. I'm not sure what that means regarding state forestry law, wouldn't that have to go back to the legislature?

Brian Brookshire: Right. Item 5 we worked on with Representative McBride.

Mark Garnett: Brian, would the Commissioners support number six in your opinion?

Brian Brookshire: In my opinion? No.

Jay Law: Number 8, would that be something that an interagency agreement with DNR might lead to EIS or something in the chip mill area?

Brian Brookshire: That's what we hadn't finished with, Jay. I think it has been pointed out on numerous occasions throughout all these deliberations, that Missouri simply does not have the studies that we need to draw from, to really look at the impacts of what is going on. We can do the best job we can to draw from Arkansas's experiences, West Virginia, Virginia, but we felt in this committee, we are going to get serious and really tackle some of the impacts of different harvesting practices that had not readily occurred in the Ozarks prior to some of the different machinery and that type of thing coming in. You would probably have to implement a research study to really get a good handle on what is really going on. Then base good solid recommendations on scientific information rather than speculation.

Jay Law: Would you see something coming out of MOFEP within the next two or three years that might be helpful?

Brian Brookshire: MOFEP doesn't really have included within the group, some of the harvesting practices that you saw in your field trip, for example. You may have the different type of machinery etc., that are associated with some of these cuts, it doesn't have it's more traditional, even aged, uneven aged harvesting, and there is really no water quality program set up within the MOFEP sites to begin with. Primarily, one of the biggest reasons was there were no drains that went through MOFEP sites.

Jay Law: What about soil compaction study?

Brian Brookshire: Soil compaction studies are in place, soil productivity, nutrient cycling, those type of things can be looked at, and a lot of that information is available now.

Steve Mahfood: Just for the sake of some of us that have this blank look, can you explain MOFEP?

Brian Brookshire: Missouri Ozark Forest Ecosystem Project. Started in 1989 by the department to look at the impact of various forestry management practices on a number of ecosystem attributes.

Jay Law: What is the size of that area?

Brian Brookshire: About 9,000 acres.

Mark Garnett: Would the Commissioners support Items 8 and 9 in your opinion?

Brian Brookshire: Yes, they would, in my opinion.

Steve Mahfood: I think for today we have gone through quite a few issues, a little bit different than everybody thought originally, before this agenda came out. We still have our public comment period which I have six cards here for six speakers. Unless there are any other issues the committee wants me to deal with, we will just go into the public comment period.

Representative McBride: Before we do that, I don't know whether I should comment or not on that last report, I read a lot of articles about the Conservation Department, and the reports. You heard our name mentioned as being selected by the speaker to set up a committee, and we did that, and we took a look. Probably in the department's defense though, if you will look back at the record, we never did file a report, because when the Governor named his committee again and they wanted me to serve on it, I really felt like we were going to spend so much more time on this issue, so we decided not to put anything on record and let you all have at it, so in their defense, that is what we did too.

Public Comment:

Tom Kruzen: I had planned to release to you some pictures that we took recently on January 6th, but I took the wrong pile of papers this morning, so I will get them to you ASAP. I have to take issue with Mr. Brookshire, with regard to when MDC knew about chip mills. I have a memo here from Shelby Jones dated August 25, 1995, stating that they are currently working with two domestic companies exploring the possibility of an oriented strand, or a medium density fiber or manufacturing plant. Chips are mentioned six times in this memo, and the subject is described as new hardwood chip markets. So I think MDC knew, possibly as early as 1994, that "chips" were coming and that they actively recorded this industry. So that is all I have to say. I may return again as a reincarnated Ken Midkiff.

Scott Brundage: Thank you Mr. Chairman. This will be very brief. I would like to tell you about a meeting. Friday, March 3, in the afternoon, in Columbia, the Missouri Consulting Foresters Association are having their semi-annual meeting in the morning, and then on a subject that we know very, very little about, there has been some discussion of a number of foresters for a number of years, but nothing has ever been done about it. Our afternoon program may be of interest to you on the committee. This is strictly an exploratory, learning type, afternoon session. I have three speakers coming in from out-of-state to talk about timber buying and licensing which they have in Indiana and Illinois. Why they don't have logger licensing, I don't know, we will find that out from the speakers. Those states have had legislation from back in the early '80's. We in Missouri, to the best of my knowledge, and talking to foresters for years, know little to nothing about the subject. That is the reason for the meeting. So I have the two gentlemen from their respective state organizations that administer those programs, coming in to speak. Iowa has had a logger bonding program since 1981. We know zilch about it. We will have an update at that time about the Consulting Foresters Association on professional forester registration, which we are still in the process of having a number of meetings, and we will have two meetings between now and then, and right now we are dealing on the wording of it. Then we will be checking with non-consulting foresters, and work our way through that process. But right now, as we talked before, Steve, we are highly in favor of it, if we don't get priced out of the market, on what it would cost to go through this registration program. When I get the particulars of that program, even though we have had a number of conversation's with the State, I will send each of you an agenda of the program, and you are welcome to be our guest in Columbia. It is a subject that we all should know more about.

Mark Garnett: If we can't get there, could you just do a one page paper for us regarding what they say, and send it back here?

Scott Brundage: There will be some of the committee members there, because Jay has not missed one of our Consulting Foresters meetings. There is going to be a number of the committee members there.

Steve Mahfood: Thank you Mr. Brundage. Now the third commentator, Roy Hengerson.

Roy Hengerson: Thanks to Governor Carnahan for extending the life of this Advisory Committee, and to be sure that the committee has adequate time to finish its work. I was one of the people who didn't think the original schedule was accurate to finish the work, with or without the Conservation Department report, so I am glad you have more time to work on it. I also want to thank the staff of the Conservation Department for their report. It does convey some things that are very much in line with our concerns, and I'm glad to see that they were aware of those concerns, and express them in the report. While I am going to make some critical comments about the Conservation Department, I want to assure everyone that we certainly respect the many dedicated professionals that work for that department. It is basically a fine department. Finally I want to thank all of you, the advisory committee. I know these things always seem to be more than originally designed. I was on an EPA storm water advisory committee, and they told us we would be done in about a year and three months, and it was over three years before we got done. We are troubled by this withheld report of the Conservation Department. We are troubled for the following reasons: The whole reason that we set up the Conservation Department was that politics was supposed to be taken out of Natural Resources, and this seems like you have a report that doesn't seem to jive with what the leadership of the Department is saying publicly, so it is withheld. This seems like "politics are back in" in the Natural Resources Department. The other thing that is troubling, is that this agency is a very powerful agency, it has considerably more independence and authority than most of the other state departments. Not subject to the usual appropriation process, they have considerable attitude there. They also have the earmarked sales tax that has nothing like DNR's tax does. They are distinctly the second largest land managing agency entity in the state. Only the Mark Twain National Forest