Compromise, in politics and elsewhere, occurs when opposing sides have been persuaded (or pressured) to believe that they have more to lose by not negotiating. In the years between the '92 election and the '94 election, environmental groups, unions, state and local government, and timber and development interests had started to develop broad-based approaches to the environment. It was not so much that the two sides had started to develop a single-minded approach, but there was, in the opinion of many, a good faith effort to solve problems created by scarce resources and increasing demand for those resources.
Judy Turpin, a lobbyist for the Washington Environmental Council, describes efforts before the election to develop some principles for a new approach to water policy in the state as "bi-partisian and broad based." The effort was "a forum of people working together from all perspectives."
David Williams of the Associaton of Washington Cities used similar language when talking about efforts at regulatory reform in HB 1724, a piece of legislation which was the product of Governor Mike Lowry's Task Force on Regulatory Reform. The governor's goal was to take a honest look at regulations and strike a more sensible balence between the needs of business and the environment. According to Williams "All the different perspectives were involved and were able to get beyond the rhetoric to achieve some consensus."
In both of these efforts, all sides felt compelled to negotiate and to make some compromises in order to assure that each side could get most of what it wanted. Oftentimes, the public can become disgusted with government because it moves so slowly and because no one in the process seems to stand for anything. But this frustration is often the product of the efforts of two sides of a controversial issue to build on common ground. Businesses, says Williams, are very much invested in improving their bottom line, not eliminating regulations entirely.
The legislative process is unpredictable for both sides of any issue and decisions are often made based on who controls a majority of votes in each house. Machiavelli wrote that "one ought to be both feared and loved, but it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved."
Fear plays a role in getting people to the table to negotiate. The fear of an unsympathic majority in the legislature works wonders in getting to consensus. The election of an irrational and fiercly partisan majority can lead to one side initiating gratuitous and extreme legislation.
Many environmentalists are saying the same thing businesspeople were saying two years ago: "Now that they have a majority they think they don't need to talk to us." And, from the perspective of many environmentalists, the other side has the advantage and has stepped away from a process that might have lead to compromise.
"This Congress and Legislature are more hostile than ever before" says Bruce Wishart of the Sierra Club. "They want it all and they want it now."
The underlying political reality that had allowed for good faith consenus building completely shifted after the election. Business and industry interests found themselves with a sympathetic majority in the Congress and in the state Legislature. Environmentalists were faced with newly elected officials who had promised to roll back environmental regulations.
The election was "a significant interruption" according to Turpin, who says the process to find some consensus on water policy ground to a halt after the election.
But Turpin went on to say that "even though the change in the [Washington State] House of Representatives had a huge impact, the election isn't the whole story."
Williams pointed out that the last bill of the regular session was HB 1724. He says this broad-based effort by business, government and environmentalists to reform parts of the State Environmental Protection Act and the Growth Management Act was successful in addressing the concerns of everyone involved.
Most who worked on these issues during the last legislative session agree that even though there has been a profound change in the political agenda, both sides have a significant interest in continuing to work toward solutions rather than resorting to hard-knuckled political tactics.
Even Wishart, who says that "there is no trust left after the election" and that there is "more polarization," agreed that there are some legitmate concerns about government regulations. He pointed to HB 1010, a legislative effort to reform regulation of forest practices, as an example of how "the system can be improved and that we can reduce bureaucracy" but not at the expense of the environment.
The problem in Wishart's estimation is that conservatives in the Legislature are "out of step with the general public's concerns." Everyone in Olympia these days expresses concern about "the public" and "those in the middle" who are presumably not particularly satisfied with extreme policies.
Jill Mackie with Pacific Lumber and Shipping, one of the state's largest purchasers of timber, agrees that often "both sides can get out of touch with the people in the middle." Businesses, she says, are not interested in doing anything that is going to produce short-term profits but long-term collapse. She says that is why companies like Weyerhauser and Boeing are still willing to sit down at the table on many of these issues.
"We want balanced policies that are going to provide people with decent jobs" argues Mackie. Clearly, businesses are interested in sustainable profits as well.
Another issue threatens to aggravate the current political situation even more: property rights. Initiative 164 - which would have required that property owners be "compensated" whenever environmental or zoning laws allegedly decreased their property values - was passed by the Legislature last session. The initiative created strains between business and developers on one side and environmentalists and local government on the other. It was also an example of the kind of excess that can be created by a dramatic political shift.
Environmentalists, labor activists and growth management advocates quickly rallied in opposition and gathered 231,000 signatures to put their answer to Initiative 164 - Referendum 48 - on the November ballot,. The referendum takes the language of 164 and puts it up for a popular vote. A no vote on the referendum will defeat the property rights effort.
Some business interests have found the campaign to redefine and broaden private property rights so extreme they are staying out of the campaign. One, Murray Pacific, has actually withdrawn support.
But the referendum has strengthened relationships among liberal and progressive groups concerned with the environment. Wishart says that Referendum 48 "has brought activists together. We are working more with labor, church groups and good governement groups to oppose the initiative, more closely than ever."
Don Hopps of the Coalition for a Livable Washington says that the election had the effect of pushing the groups in his coalition - a collection of labor, church, progressive and environmental organizations - closer together.
But Hopps talked about the election as being more complicated than just one side of the political spectrum gaining advantage. "People are becoming aware of a breakdown in the political system" he says. "We have a tendency to deal with facts while the right wing and conservatives address values. We have to be able to effectively discuss values and vision and address legitmate concerns people have with government."
Both business and environmental advocates, as well as the leaders of coalitions with environmental agendas, keep talking about the concerns of the majority of people somewhere in the middle. People who feel a great deal of mistrust for government but who by no means want to entirely end all forms of regulation. The election was not a vote for anything, but a vote against a system which has lost touch with a public increasingly afraid of the future.
Republicans and conservatives were successful because they effectively spoke to those fears, even though to a significant degree much progress had been made in the direction of reforming regulations without harming the environment or severly limiting industry.
"We assume that everyone has the same vision and values" says Hopps of progressives. He makes the point that advocates on both sides of the environmental debate must speak to the fears of the majority of voters, even though the origin of those fears might be a different set of values and asumptions. Otherwise the political process will continue to swing wildly between extremes, as each side resorts to more extreme rhetoric to persuade voters that it is they who offer "real change."
Turpin says that when it comes to policy, "change is more evolutionary, you make course corrections. There is no way you can change the system very quickly."
But voters are are increasingly demanding more change more quickly and often elections are won or lost by the ability of a candidate to speak to legitimate but irrational fears the public has about government. Rarely does this lead to real change in policy. Instead it leads to drastic and ill-conceived legislation or initiatives that only make matters worse.
The future ability of groups to work together will depend on efforts to address what almost everyone acknowledges are problems with government. But such efforts will always encounter the political arena in which politicians often appeal to the most basic anxieties faced by voters.
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Contents on this page were published in the October/November, 1995 edition of the Washington Free
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