WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?

Secrecy Clouds Credibility of Poll on Tester’s Wilderness Bill

By Bill Schneider, 9-04-09

	Kent Peak in the Sapphire Mountains Wilderness Study Area. Photo by George Wuerthner

Anybody following the build-up to the official announcement of Senator Jon Tester’s (D-MT) wilderness bill, what he calls the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, probably read the stories and commentaries about refusals from Tester’s staff and the coalition of environmental groups and timber industry reps drafting the bill to release any advance details to the press. This refusal fueled a lot of skepticism, to say the least, and cast a negative shadow on what otherwise would’ve been a grand event for Montana--our newly elected senator stepping up to the bar and making an sincere attempt to end Montana’s Wilderness Drought.

Now, they’re doing it again.

Three weeks ago, the coalition released the results of a poll conducted by Harstad Strategic Research, a well-known pollster based in Boulder, Colorado, and used primarily by democrats, which found that roughly 70 percent of Montanans supported the bill. (Click here to read the story.)

It may be true that most of us support the bill, or at least the concept of it, but some people don’t believe it. They let me and several other members of the media know about their doubts, mainly claiming that the questions and sample were “loaded” to guarantee the desired result. 

Granted, people casting doubt on the survey are the same people who already oppose the bill, ironically from both the left and right of the political spectrum. And, I might add, people Tester’s staff and the coalition treat like bugs on the windshield. They have little interest in including “non-supportive” people in the process.

We’ve heard a lot about how the process of drafting this bill was very open. Well, I say, no way. Perhaps the Three Rivers Challenge and the Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Project came close to being all-inclusive, but definitely not the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership Project (BDP), which has become the bulk of Tester’s bill.

After meeting with some local groups and governing bodies, a handful of coalition members wrote the BDP and refused to change anything thereafter. Then, the same people worked with Tester’s staff to write the bill. Nobody else was allowed to participate or even know it was happening.

Now, we hear Senator Tester welcomes everybody to be part of the process, but will that really happen? Will any meaningful changes be made in this bill? I hope so, because it needs it badly (more later on that point), but I worry about the stake being already driven deep in the sand with little chance of change lest the so-called coalition fall apart.

In other words, a few timber industry reps and a few environmentalists have decided what they can agree on. Now, they have little interest in what the rest of us, the outsiders, the voters, want, so this is the bill we have now and probably the bill we’ll have in the end.

Regardless of claims of openness, the truth is only insiders, those who support the essence of what Senator Tester is doing, have been welcomed into the process. This doesn’t make it a bad bill, but it sure makes it an exclusive, not inclusive, process--not what we want for our first Wilderness bill in 26 years. The recent poll gives us another case in point.

I made two formal requests to coalition leaders to see the actual wording of the questions and get information about the sample polled, but they flatly refused to release anything or even talk on the record about the poll, how it was done or who paid for it. Plus, I know at least two others in the media who made similar requests.

I was actually among those initially did not question the ethics or methods of the poll, but now, after getting stonewalled for no valid reason, I’m starting to wonder. What do they have to hide? What do they have to gain by not releasing the questions and real information on who was surveyed?

I can answer that. They have nothing to gain, but a lot to lose, which in mind is what they’ve done again--turn a positive event into a negative outcome.

I suspect some commenters, probably those who insist on abnormity, will jump into the comment section and say I am among those who turns the positive into the negative, but I don’t see it that way. All the coalition has to do is open up and reap the rewards.

I know these surveys cost money and those who pay for them consider them proprietary. And I can see that some of the scientific methodology that goes into survey being proprietary, but the wording of the questions?

I was told that the coalition primarily intended to use the poll internally to see what arguments against the bill might be sticking and which ones were lost in the public wind. If this is the main purpose of the poll, no problem, but that isn’t how the coalition used it. The coalition quickly sent out a press release applauding the positive results. As soon as this happened, in my mind at least, it ceased to be an internal document.

Earth to coalition members and Tester’s staff. Let’s clear this up problem right now. Put the survey questions and specifics of how the sample group was selected into the comment section of this column to show us you have nothing to hide and that the poll wasn’t loaded or skewed. If you don’t do it, well, don’t blame people for having doubts.

Footnote: For a chronology of four years of NewWest.Net’s extensive coverage of this issue, click here.

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