Propositions Green Ballots vs. Greenbacks

By Richard Lacayo

Voters want clean air, clean water and unspoiled landscapes. What they don't want just now is the bill. Ballot initiatives designed to protect the environment were mowed down last week in almost every state where they appeared. Riled over taxes, fearful of recession and resentful of government propositions in any form, voters put the Green Revolution on hold.

The biggest setback came in California, where Proposition 128, Big Green, was defeated almost 2 to 1. A second measure, Forests Forever, designed to ban clear-cutting and save old-growth forests and redwoods, lost by a narrower margin. In part they fell victim to a backlash against the sheer number of ballot propositions -- 28 in all -- that Californians had to contend with in the voting booth. "They voted no on everything," laments Lynn Sadler, campaign director for Forests Forever. Big Green was a ballot buster all by itself, a 16,000-word laundry list of aims, including a ban on cancer-causing pesticides, a phase-out of chemicals that deplete the ozone layer and creation of an oil-spill cleanup fund.

Above all, the defeat was testimony to the power of well-financed opposition campaigns of the kind that clobbered environmental initiatives throughout the country. In California, agribusiness, timber and pesticide interests spent an estimated $16 million to defeat Big Green.

Other states that said no to environmental projects:

Oregon. Voters defeated strict new recycling standards for product packaging by 57% to 43%. A $2 million opposition campaign funded largely by plastics, chemical and oil companies warned that business would pass the cost of packaging changes on to consumers.

Washington. A proposal to require localities to adopt plans for controlling growth was rejected. The measure enjoyed broad support in polls taken in September. Then developers, realtors and other businesses began a $1.6 million campaign warning that the scheme would lead to higher property taxes and housing prices and transfer local power to the state capital. On Election Day the initiative was buried, 75% to 25%.

Missouri. By 3 to 1, voters turned down a plan to manage use of the state's 52 free-flowing streams. In addition to banning dams, all-terrain vehicles and noisy motorboats, it would have required local communities to submit waterway- management plans to a state commission.

New York. A barrage of bad news about the state budget gaps delivered the final blow to an environmental bond issue of nearly $2 billion. That was an embarrassment for Governor Mario Cuomo, who made support of the project a centerpiece of his own successful re-election campaign. Now money for recycling, land preservation and other programs the bond would have financed will have to come from a reluctant state legislature or higher local taxes.

Paradoxically, polls show that concern about the environment is much higher now than a year ago. But the defeats contain some valuable lessons for environmentalists. Among them: 1) proposals should be simple and well focused, 2) plans that shift power from localities to state capitals are a hard sell, and 3) a recession is a bad time to ask for money. The very strategy of favoring ballot proposals over the horse trading of legislation may also bear re-examining. "I don't predict the beginning of some trend that makes environmental initiatives more difficult to achieve," insists Jim Maddy, executive director of the League of Conservation Voters in Washington. Yet last week's results hardly suggested that the task was becoming easier.

With reporting by Staci Kramer/St. Louis and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles