LET'S HAVE AN APOLOGY

What Tester’s Outburst Tells Us

By Bill Schneider, 12-30-09

	Senator Jon Tester.

Fortunately, for Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), not many people watched the video feed from the Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee’s hearing on his Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, S. 1470, held December 17.

All testimony was excellent and expertly presented, as were most questions from subcommittee members, but not Senator Tester’s embarrassing and misinformed personal attack on a witness who dared say something he didn’t want to hear.

More significantly, this outburst serves as a “tell” as what’s really happening behind the scenes of efforts to end Montana’s Wilderness Drought.

When Senator Tester’s turn to ask questions came around, he wasted no time in assailing Matthew Koehler who had testified at the hearing representing the views of a broad new alliance of 54 small conservation groups called the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign (LBPWC) and who had submitted a detailed, line-by-line analysis of S. 1470 along with many suggested changes to make the bill more palatable to the group.

You can click here to see a video of the entire hearing for yourself (go to the last few minutes for the Q&A section), but here’s a summation.

Right out of the chute the Senator said, quietly and mainly to the subcommittee members, “Isn’t it funny how the far left and the far right often connect up.” Followed by laughter.

Translation: Koehler represents a fringe element, so don’t pay attention to what he said. Even if this is true, is it appropriate for a U.S. Senator to joke about it and belittle and ridicule constituents before a congressional hearing?

Next, he asked when the LBPWC was formed, and Koehler told him mid-July after S. 1470 was introduced.

Translation: The group hasn’t been around long, so it has little standing and not much chance of knowing anything important, but ignoring the fact that the campaign is a merely a recent combine of many groups that have been working on forest issues for twenty years or more.

Then Tester asked, “I think the first time we’ve met is here today, correct?”

Koehler said, politely, no, he had come to Washington, D.C. and met personally with the Senator soon after he was elected.

Instead of apologizing about forgetting about that meeting, Tester dismissed the response and asked, “You have gotten a hold of our website? Is that correct? You’ve sent us emails? The reason I ask is that I review all the emails and I haven’t seen one.”

In his reply, Koehler tried to explain to the Senator that what he personally did or didn’t do wasn’t important compared to the issue at hand. He also reminded Tester that he was testifying on behalf of many volunteer organizations, not as an individual constituent, and he and his partners had sent emails and met with members of Tester’s staff, but without much success. “To be honest,” he replied, “there was a time when members of your staff weren’t returning our emails and weren’t returning our phone calls.”

“That’s because we didn’t receive any,” Tester rudely interrupted, “because I looked at all the emails and your name wasn’t on them.”

Montana’s junior Senator then launched into an old-fashioned scolding, reminding Koehler how privileged he was to even be on this “distinguished panel” of witnesses, and finally, more or less told the subcommittee Koehler was lying. “Don’t make the claim that is unfounded,” Tester said, “because I tend to stick up for my staff on such issues.”

No, he did not extend Koehler the courtesy of responding to the lecture. Instead, he moved onto likely pre-arranged, softball questions for witnesses who supported his bill.

There’s a lot of issues here, but the key point I want to get out is that, to be kind, there’s obviously a disconnect between the Senator and his staff. I hope it isn’t intentional because his staffers know as well as their own names that Koehler and several of the groups he represents have made many attempts to be part of any congressional efforts to end Montana’s Wilderness Drought including this bill and virtually every other wilderness and forest management issue, but have more or less been snubbed and written off as the “far left.”

I’ll take the Senator’s word for it when he says he reads all the emails sent in on the “contact” form on his senatorial website, but I doubt many in Koehler’s group used that form in lieu of sending longer, detailed emails directly to the Senator and his staff. The Senator’s staff obviously received these emails, but Tester obviously didn’t read them.

I happen to have copies of several of these emails, and they aren’t short snipes (I hate this bill, etc.). They’re thorough, professional and constructive. If I had space, I’d print some of them, but that would be even more embarrassing to the Senator. In retrospect, I most ask, why does it matter if Koehler sent an email? He was there at the hearing testifying on behalf of many Montanans and deserves the respect all other witnesses received.

I contacted Koehler after the hearing, and he told me that members of the LBPWC have had “five face-to-face meetings” with Tester’s staff and called and emailed “four or five dozen times” during the past few months. Many of these calls and emails have gone without replies and the meetings haven’t generated any agreement to change anything in the bill. Yet, Tester stands up at a congressional hearing and claims he hasn’t heard about any of this?

The truth is, Tester’s staff isn’t interested in listening to “non-supportive” constituents, more or less considering them bugs on the windshield. And, it seems, they keep the Senator in the dark about attempts by anybody except true-blue followers to affect change in this legislation and end up allowing their boss to embarrass himself at a congressional hearing. You have to wonder if his staff wrote the questions Tester asked at the hearing and demonized Koehler and the LBPWC in advance.

Now, for a little disclosure. For those who haven’t been following my frequent postings on Montana’s Wilderness Drought and Tester’s efforts to end it. I have, somewhat reluctantly and with amendments, supported S. 1470, to the chagrin of Koehler and other members of the LBPWC. But I certainly haven’t supported how the bill came to be or the uncompromising attitude of those who wrote it. Unlike Senator Tester, I’ve never met Koehler, but we’ve talked on the phone a couple of times, and we disagree on many issues, including S. 1470. I’m writing this commentary because I don’t think any constituent, in this case one representing a large slice of Tester’s constituency, 95 percent of whom probably voted for him, should be personally berated at a congressional hearing. I’d say the same thing if he’d publicly flogged an agency official or timber mill owner.

At the hearing, Tester implied that he’d invited Koehler to testify, but Tester is not a member of this subcommittee and the subcommittee’s staff put the “distinguished panel” together. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), chair of the subcommittee, sent the letters of invitation.

One more “tell.” Tester is obviously sensitive about claims that the drafting of the bill wasn’t an open process, an issue Koehler mentioned, again, in his testimony. Keep in mind that when Montana narrowly elected Tester in 2006, a strong “open government” promise was a cornerstone of his campaign. I’ve already covered this issue ad nauseam, but the fact still is, the process of crafting the bulk of this key legislation was a closed, backroom, political deal among a few major green group leaders and timber reps. Since then, there has been extreme reluctance to change anything. Tester’s inappropriate behavior at the hearing tells me he’s edgy about how this deal was done, as he should be.

He’s probably embarrassed about his behavior at the hearing, too, and his staff knows it, which might be why they only pulled out the supportive testimony to put on YouTube.com instead of posting the entire tape of the hearing, conveniently omitting the forgettable Q&A section, as well as perhaps the key part of the hearing where Undersecretary of Agriculture Harris Sherman, the main spokesman for the Obama administration on national forest issues, strongly objected to several sections of the bill. (Click here for his testimony.)

Anyway, what’s done is done, but to salvage something from this embarrassing episode, it seems appropriate for Senator Tester, on behalf of all Montanans, to send Matthew Koehler a letter of apology and release it to the press.

And, of course, if this hasn’t happened already, have a little chat with staffers about how this happened and how it can be prevented going forward.

Footnote: Not that we need more evidence of Tester’s staff snubbing “non-supportive” people like Matthew Koehler, but I just checked out the Senator’s Facebook page, where his staff has put up a series of photos from the hearing, including shots all witnesses except one, and you guessed it. It must have been a lot of work to carefully crop Koehler out of every one of them. Petty, eh?

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