Will the real Mr. Pombo please stand up?
by Matt Weiser
Rep. Richard Pombo, known as the Jerry Falwell of the property-rights movement, has threatened to dynamite the nation’s bedrock environmental laws. Now, he says, he’s learning to compromise.
In their
recollections of the young Richard Pombo, people always call him
"the quiet one." He was clean-cut and serious, often serving as a
silent foil to his four boisterous brothers. He has called himself
merely a "decent" student who was more interested in deeds than
ideas.
Today, Pombo’s reputation could not be more
different.
As he settles into his seventh term as a
Republican congressman, and his second as chairman of the
influential House Resources Committee, Pombo is known as the Jerry
Falwell of the property rights movement. He’s been a
passionate preacher in a white cowboy hat, bent on restoring to
landowners the God-given rights torn from them by environmental
zealots. His standard soundtrack has been all bombast against
arrogant tree-huggers who want to turn family farms into lockups
for endangered species. People, he has said, are an endangered
species, too, and it’s time to put them back on level ground
with the "roaches" and "rats" so foolishly preserved by
environmental lawsuits and legislation.
In his 12-plus
years in Congress, Pombo has agitated to eviscerate the Endangered
Species Act, sell off public lands, and open forests and wilderness
areas to more resource extraction. He has been the loudest in a
small but vocal mob determined to drag America’s
environmental laws out behind the toolshed.
As a
politician, though, Pombo has made more noise than news. So far, he
has accomplished little in the way of actual change. But these
days, as the boss of the Resources Committee, Pombo has a tight
grip on public lands and environmental laws. He has even changed
the committee’s rules to ensure that no new environmental
laws reach the House floor without his approval.
"He’s definitely in a position now of major power when it
comes to these issues. I would say the average American probably
isn’t aware of it," says Mark Sokolove, spokesman for the
League of Conservation Voters. The group has given Pombo an average
score of 8 percent on environmental issues over his career, among
the lowest in Congress.
In response, the
congressman’s supporters say it’s high time property
rights held equal footing with endangered species. Pombo, they say,
is the right man to strike a new balance.
"I absolutely
think he’s a conservationist in the good sense of that word,
and he’s not out there on the fringe following a dogma, but
rather trying to solve problems," says Chuck Cushman, executive
director of the American Land Rights Association, a wise-use and
property-rights group. "People ought to consider themselves very
lucky that they have him in that position rather than someone who
might be considered a demagogue."
Truth be told, Pombo
has toned it down somewhat over the past two years. Compared to his
early career, he is working carefully and quietly. He seems
introspective. The once fire-breathing proselytizer has cooled his
rhetoric, and is even working with Democrats on matters of mutual
concern.
The new, mellower face of Richard Pombo may be a
reaction to shifting political ground, both at home and in
Congress. After six easy victories, 2006 could mark Pombo’s
first real fight for re-election. And in Washington, the Republican
Party seems to be fracturing, with some moderates shying away from
radical proposals such as those he has pushed in the past.
Nonetheless, Pombo seems to be preparing to launch an
overhaul not only of the Endangered Species Act, but of other
bedrock environmental laws as well.
Richard Pombo is
walking a tightrope, balancing ideology with political reality. If
he tips one way, he may lose his seat in Congress. If he tips the
other, he may miss his best chance to push through what may be the
most dramatic changes ever to U.S. environmental law.
The man, the myth
Understanding Richard Pombo
is not an easy task. He is known as a private man who rarely grants
interviews, and rarely likes the results when he does. His staff
refused to make him available for an interview with High
Country News, despite dozens of requests over two months
by phone, e-mail and in person.
But a look at
Pombo’s life provides some insight into this
rancher-turned-revolutionary. He was catapulted into power at a
very young age, and he has built an identity with one foot on the
ground in the rural West, and the other in the clouds.
Pombo spent much of his youth on the family cattle ranch in Tracy,
Calif., a dusty city of 72,000 with its history in farming and its
future in sprawl. It lies on the hot floor of the San Joaquin
Valley, once a vast inland tidal marsh that pioneers drained and
transformed into some of the world’s most fertile cropland.
The San Francisco Bay Area is a short drive over Altamont Pass.
Since Richard Pombo came to Congress, Tracy has doubled in
population as commuters have crossed the pass to snatch up cheap
housing.
The Pombo family throws a long shadow over
Tracy. Richard’s grandfather, a Portuguese immigrant, spawned
a large family of influential farmers and land barons. A major
boulevard in Tracy — Joe Pombo Parkway — is named after
him. Pombo Real Estate, founded by Richard’s late uncle
Ernie, has made millions selling fertile San Joaquin County farms
for tract homes and strip malls. The company’s signs dot the
region today, and the family still owns hundreds of acres, ranging
from rich valley bottomlands, ideal for vegetables, westward into
the hills south of Altamont Pass, home to some of the
nation’s best grazing land.
"We used to have to
feed the cattle in the morning and work every day after school,"
Pombo, the second of five boys, told the Brentwood
Press last year. "My mother would pick us up at school
and we’d be back at work, feeding, fixing fences. I grew up
doing it, from the time I was 4 or 5 years old. And I loved it. I
loved every minute of it."
At Tracy High School, Pombo
became a fixture in the school’s Future Farmers of America
chapter. Yearbook photos show many of its members wearing cowboy
hats or seed-company ball caps, with big grins on their faces.
Pombo always wore a straight face and a faraway gaze, but he never
appears in a hat. The hat seems to have come later.
After
high school, Pombo studied agricultural business at Cal Poly
Pomona, but left without a degree after three years, he says, to
help run the family ranch. Today, he is among the 8 percent of
members of Congress who do not have a college degree.
In
1983 he married Annette Cole, his girlfriend since eighth grade.
The couple had three children, Richie, Rena and Rachel, names
chosen, like their father’s, so their initials would match
the family cattle brand. "He’s very typical of a guy who grew
up in rural Tracy," says Dean Andal of Stockton, Calif., a longtime
Pombo friend and former California state assemblyman. "If you grow
up in that kind of situation and you try to act like you’re
bigger than you are, people will cut you down to size.
"Richard is what he seems to be," Andal says. "There’s no
deception." But a closer look can lead to a different conclusion.
Pombo has often said that his rage against
environmentalists was sparked by a battle with the East Bay
Regional Park District in the 1980s. The park district planned to
open a hiking trail on an old railroad right-of-way that crossed
the Pombo family ranch in the Diablo Range south of Altamont Pass.
"The park district sought this abandoned railroad right
of way as a recreational trail through the property of two dozen
local ranchers and that of my family," he wrote in his 1996 book
This Land is Our Land, a brash credo on property
rights and the evils of environmentalism. "We were very concerned
that it would interfere with our ability to conduct business on our
own property."
Pombo claimed the park district refused to
fence the trail, police it or pick up trash, and that "viewshed"
rules would have kept the ranchers from building new structures on
their own land. All this, he wrote, and the park district refused
to pay the ranchers a dime.
But none of this actually
happened. The park district did propose a trail on the old rail
line, but on a segment some 20 miles away, near San Francisco Bay.
At that time, park district boundaries did not include the Pombo
family land, Altamont Pass, or anything near it.
"The
facts have been reported wrong," says Bob Doyle, the
district’s assistant general manager, "and it’s become
part of the robust history."
Pombo’s co-author on
the book, Joseph Farah, says he cannot remember details of the
trail story, adding that "I certainly have no interest in
researching this." Farah is former editor of the now-defunct
Sacramento Union newspaper, and founded
WorldNetDaily.com, a news Web site with a conservative bent, based
in Grants Pass, Ore.
Pombo also claimed, in testimony
before a Senate subcommittee in 1994, that his family land was
stripped of its value when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
declared it "critical habitat" for the endangered San Joaquin kit
fox in 1986. In fact, the agency has never designated critical
habitat for the fox — not on Pombo land or anywhere else.
Questioned later on the MacNeil-Lehrer News
Hour, Pombo admitted he has never been directly affected
by a critical habitat designation.
Pombo’s
formative moments seem to be myths, but that hasn’t stopped
him from raging against what he called, in a recent Resources
Committee press release, "voracious" bureaucrats and their
"overzealous application of environmental regulations."
The crusader
Richard Pombo got his start in
public life in 1990, when he ran for a seat on the Tracy City
Council. Much to his surprise, he says, he won.
He
didn’t stay in local politics for long, however.
Redistricting triggered by the 1990 Census created a new
congressional seat that included Tracy, and in 1991, Pombo ran as a
Republican, winning by just 2 percentage points. His life was
transformed overnight.
Just 29 years old, Pombo hit the
national stage, a strapping cattleman in a white cowboy hat and
pencil-thin mustache. His timing couldn’t have been better.
Republicans were about to seize the majority in the
House. The new House speaker, Newt Gingrich, soon claimed the
spotlight with his "Contract with America," a controversial agenda
of term limits, tort reform, welfare cutbacks and harsh criminal
sentencing. Republicans hungered for outside-the-Beltway thinkers,
and Pombo’s cowboy-hat conservatism made him a natural
darling of the new movement. He became friends with Gingrich, won
seats on the Resources and Agriculture committees, and began to
clamor for what became his obsession: property rights and the
reform of the Endangered Species Act.
This Land
is Our Land was Pombo’s manifesto. A
Sierra magazine reviewer called it "carelessly
cranked-out … slanted, self-righteous and self-serving." But
its underlying philosophy struck a chord with those conservatives
who believed environmental laws were stomping on personal
liberties.
In the book, Pombo attacked what he called the
"eco-federal coalition," a cabal of tree-huggers and overzealous
regulators who seek to lock up land for obscure endangered species.
"Eco-leaders are used to winning their fights with like-minded
judges in the courtrooms and like-minded bureaucrats in
Washington," he wrote. "Their victims, however, are everywhere
— people whose way of life was threatened by activists and
bureaucrats who couldn’t tell a salmon from a salesman."
He called for a return to a literal interpretation of the
Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which states in part, "nor
shall private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation." He ridiculed Supreme Court Justice William O.
Douglas’ comment, from a landmark 1954 case: "It is within
the power of the Legislature to determine that the community should
be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean,
well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled."
Yet for
all his saber-rattling, Pombo has accomplished little as a
legislator. In his 12-plus years in the House, he has passed only
eight bills into law. Few of them have had any national
significance. Eleven times, he has proposed legislation to rewrite
the Endangered Species Act, arguing that the law amounts to a
"taking" of private property rights, because it sometimes restricts
what owners can do with their land. All failed. One was so extreme
that even Gingrich shot it down.
Despite his track
record, however, Pombo considers himself successful.
"When I got here 12 years ago, property rights were not even in
consideration when Congress was drafting bills," he told the
National Journal last year. "Now, any time you
have a land-use bill come through the House, the protection of
property rights is always part of the debate. We’ve moved the
ball considerably."
And the alliances Pombo has formed
over the years with Republican power brokers have now put him in a
position of major influence. He was appointed Resources Committee
chairman in January 2003, following the retirement of Rep. James
Hansen, R-Utah. Pombo won the chairmanship over seven more-senior
Republicans, thanks to the recommendation of his mentor, Rep. Don
Young, R-Alaska, and the endorsement of House Majority Leader Tom
DeLay, R-Texas. (Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., quit the committee in
protest.)
At 41, Pombo became the youngest House
committee chairman in history.
The chairman
As Resources Committee boss, Richard Pombo has
roared. In his first two years as chairman, Pombo spent $105,000 on
official mailings, almost seven times more than any other House
committee spent in the same period. Many of them were partisan
tirades against environmental laws.
Pombo has targeted
not only the Endangered Species Act, but the National Environmental
Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, fishing and
logging regulations and other environmental laws. In one committee
press release in 2004, he attacked the Clinton-era protection of
roadless forests in national forests as a "mindless edict" that
only benefits "the environmental scare-peddling and fundraising
industry."
The committee’s official Web site offers
a taste of Pombo’s view of the world. It defends President
Bush’s policies on national parks, and it applauds the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision not to list the greater
sage grouse as endangered — a decision that generated great
controversy when it emerged that a high-level political appointee
doctored a scientific report on the grouse (HCN, 12/20/04: Rulings
keep the West open for business). And though Pombo constantly
demands "sound science" in environmental debates, it is in short
supply on the Web site. In one report, Pombo advocates oil drilling
in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, claiming it will benefit
migrating caribou.
"He runs the Resources Committee like
his own personal propaganda machine," says Wes Rolley, a Morgan
Hill, Calif., activist who runs the "Pombo Watch" Internet blog. "I
think ‘sound science’ is anything that supports what he
wants to do."
With his party in control of both Congress
and the White House, Pombo should be poised to make good on a
career’s worth of threats — a possibility that
frightens his critics.
"The long-range implications of
following the path that Pombo is leading us on really haven’t
gotten the publicity they ought to have," says Jim DiPeso, policy
director of Republicans for Environmental Protection. "His
priorities in the areas of energy, public lands and wildlife
conservation are completely at odds with the best interests of our
nation. I cannot think of a worse person to be chairman of the
Resources Committee."
The "quiet one"
Just as Richard Pombo has reached a position of
tremendous power in Washington, however, two factors have begun to
erode his traditional base of support back home. First, Tracy and
San Joaquin County are changing as extreme housing prices in the
Bay Area drive moderate voters into the more affordable San Joaquin
Valley. Second, the 2000 Census radically altered Pombo’s
district: It now includes sections of Contra Costa, Alameda and
Santa Clara counties, where voters tend to be more moderate.
Pombo’s challenger in 2004, Democrat Jerry
McNerney, a wind-energy consultant with a doctorate in mathematics,
won 39 percent of the vote, despite the fact that Pombo outspent
him by 7-to-1. McNerney had virtually no support from the national
Democratic Party, but that is sure to change in 2006. The Democrats
have already begun advertising against Pombo, and at least three
local citizens’ groups are agitating for his ouster.
Perhaps in response to all this, Pombo has toned down his
rhetoric. It’s harder to find him in the spotlight raging
against environmentalists. He says he’s willing to compromise
if it will bring about change, and that he is more apt to hear out
the other side — even solicit their views. Pombo, in short,
has again become "the quiet one" who blended into those yearbook
photos.
"When I first got here, I thought you could just
do everything all at once and get it over with," he told the
San Francisco Chronicle last year. "Over 12
years, I’ve figured out you can’t do that. It takes
incremental change."
Pombo has even changed his look. He
has lost the white cowboy hat. The dry-look hair of the outdoorsman
has become spiky with mousse. A goatee has joined the mustache to
give him a more urbane visage.
He has soothed his
Republican elders on the committee by showing them deference. He
has even won praise from Democrats for being fair-minded. At a May
25 Resources Committee hearing on reparations for the Marshall
Islands, where American nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s left a
legacy of illness and environmental degradation, Rep. Neil
Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, told the island delegation, "Believe me, you
are in good hands with Chairman Pombo. There is not a more fair
person in the U.S. Congress."
In 2003, Pombo partnered
with Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Dianne Feinstein of
California, to craft the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. Signed by
President Bush in 2003, it expedites environmental review of
logging projects to reduce fire danger (HCN, 12/8/03: Forest
protection on the honor system). Pombo teamed with Feinstein again
in 2004 to pass the Tribal Forest Protection Act, which allows
Indian tribes to log federal land adjacent to their reservations
and requires federal agencies to accelerate environmental reviews
of these projects. It is the only environment-related bill Pombo
has ever written that became law.
Despite the makeover
and the recent cross-the-aisle cooperation, however, there is no
indication that Pombo has changed his views. He is simply moving
his agenda in new ways.
In April, Pombo secretly wrote an
amendment to the House energy bill, exempting many energy projects
from the National Environmental Policy Act, which, after the
Endangered Species Act, is perhaps his favorite whipping boy. NEPA
requires an environmental impact review for major projects on
federal land, and if Pombo’s amendment survives to see the
president’s signature, it will be a godsend for oil and gas
companies. Though Pombo wrote the amendment, his name did not
appear on it; it was sponsored by Rep. John Peterson, R-Penn.
Pombo has also been working behind the scenes to funnel
industry money to his allies in Congress. Shortly after becoming
chairman, he created a political action committee, a tool that
gives politicians access to more industry donations than many
congressional committees allow. Pombo’s action committee,
called "Rich PAC," has hauled in piles of tribal money, thanks to
his support for Indian casinos. And his desire to sell off
thousands of acres of wilderness-quality public land in Nevada has
brought piles of cash from Las Vegas developers.
Pombo
also runs his own "environmental" group, called the International
Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources. The group,
funded by large corporations, challenges mainstream environmental
groups and crusades for more lenient environmental laws worldwide.
Between 2001 and 2003 the foundation collected donations totaling
$130,000 from food giants Sysco Corp., Monsanto and General Mills.
It then put out a series of "studies" and position papers on the
importance of bioengineered food. During the same period, it
collected almost $430,000 from restaurant chains, corporate fishing
concerns, whaling organizations and fur-trapping associations. The
foundation then launched a barrage of counterattacks against
animal-rights groups that had organized boycotts of those
industries.
Pombo’s industry friends have been
generous supporters of his campaigns, too. In the campaign cycle
that ended in 2004, nearly two-thirds of his $1.1 million in gifts
came from energy, agribusiness and developers.
During the
Republican National Convention last year, his backers threw a
$250,000 party in his honor at a New York City nightclub. Dubbed
"Pombo-Palooza," it was organized by the American Gas Association
and paid for by more than 40 special-interest groups, including the
American Forest and Paper Association, Chevron Texaco, National
Association of Home Builders and National Mining Association. It
featured dance-hall girls passing out cowboy hats, a mechanical
bull, music by the Charlie Daniels Band, and a curtained VIP area
where Resources Committee members could meet privately with
industry bosses.
"More people should be concerned," says
Mike Casey, with the Environmental Working Group. "He’s one
of the loyal foot soldiers in the takeover of government by
influence-peddling industry."
Others say Pombo’s
opponents portray him as a radical because it suits their own
interests.
"I know how much he infuriates some of the
environmental groups," says Andal, Pombo’s longtime friend.
"A lot of that’s just rhetoric. But from where I sit,
there’s a lot of extremism to go around on both sides."
The test
The Endangered Species Act
has been amended three times since it became law in 1973. These
amendments all occurred before Richard Pombo came to Congress
— in 1978, 1982 and 1988. All kept the act’s original
framework intact, but added important deadlines and definitions.
Numerous other attempts to amend the ESA — including the 11
led by Pombo — have collapsed under pressure from
environmental groups. "The American people basically love the
Endangered Species Act," says Brock Evans, president of the
Endangered Species Coalition, an umbrella group representing
hundreds of conservation, scientific and religious organizations
nationwide.
President Clinton’s Interior Secretary,
Bruce Babbitt, helped defuse some of the anti-ESA fervor by
championing Habitat Conservation Plans. Created under the 1982
amendments, HCPs allow property owners to displace or kill
protected species in some areas, in return for habitat protection
elsewhere (HCN, 11/10/03: San Diego’s Habitat Triage).
Contention over the Endangered Species Act has risen
again under the Bush administration, however, which has taken to
quietly undermining many environmental laws by manipulating agency
science (HCN, 12/20/04: Riding high on political inappropriations).
As a result, endangered species battles are again building
nationwide, and Pombo is expected to roll out another Endangered
Species Act reform bill this summer.
The effort so far
suggests a man at war with his worst instincts. Apparently working
in his more deliberate, cooperative mode, Pombo is first holding a
series of public hearings on the act around the country. He also
released two reports in May, totaling 93 pages, ostensibly
assessing the act’s effectiveness.
Like
Pombo’s report on Arctic oil drilling, however, these reports
are an exercise in selective fact gathering. The 83-page
Implementation of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, published by
Pombo’s committee staff, criticizes a low success rate in
recovering species. But the 1,264 species currently listed as
threatened or endangered have been protected by the act for an
average of only 15 years, and research shows it can take 30 to 50
years to revive a nearly extinct creature, says Evans. Most
glaring, Evans says, the report ignores outside factors that
contribute to species decline, especially habitat degradation.
The report spends most of its time addressing the cost of
lawsuits against the government. But it ignores the fact that many
of those lawsuits are triggered by the government’s failure
to meet deadlines in the act, or by its refusal to protect species
that merit listing, both often caused by inadequate funding. It
also overlooks the fact that the courts have ruled overwhelmingly
with environmentalists (HCN, 5/10/04: Shooting Spree).
While the report again makes the case that the Endangered Species
Act infringes on private property rights, the law has not created
serious enough economic impacts on private property to justify
"takings" rulings in the courts, according to John Echeverria,
executive director of the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy
Institute.
The second, shorter report, written by Pombo
himself, amounts to a summary of the staff report.
And
Pombo’s hearings are heavily weighted with the law’s
critics. At one recent hearing, only one witness represented the
environmental community, while seven represented farm groups, water
agencies, and the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation.
"He’s spoken individually to some of our people and
he’s civil in tone," says Evans. "But we’re not part of
this process."
That’s a shame, says Evans, because
many leading environmental groups believe there is room for reform
in the Endangered Species Act. Many support "safe harbor"
provisions to exempt property owners from new regulation if they
commit to certain land-management practices. And many agree with
Pombo that property owners need incentives to protect endangered
species.
"It doesn’t bother me to see outright
payments," says Evans.
Any doubts about Pombo’s
intentions were dispelled in July, when a summary of Pombo’s
new Endangered Species Act reform bill was leaked to environmental
groups. Apparently to be called the "Threatened and Endangered
Species Recovery Act of 2005," it contains many of the same
revisions he has proposed unsuccessfully in the past. It includes
compensation for property owners; rigid data and record-keeping
requirements for listing decisions; and a larger role for local
government in the listing and recovery process. It also
consolidates enforcement solely in the hands of the secretary of
the Interior, not with the Fish and Wildlife Service where it
resides now. Most significant, it includes an unprecedented "sunset
provision" that would cause the Endangered Species Act to expire in
2015, along with all related "permits, licenses, and other
authorizations."
In short, this bill is the death of the
act that Pombo has long dreamed about.
The future
The next 18 months could be the most challenging
yet for Pombo, and for the nation’s environmental laws. With
preliminary work under way to amend both the Endangered Species Act
and the National Environmental Policy Act, he will feel pressure to
advance legislation on both fronts before the 2006 election.
The big question is whether Pombo has the timing and
political capital to succeed.
While Pombo is a powerful
man, he is also still seen as an extremist in many corners, and
reform bills would likely have a better chance under another
sponsor. It seems unlikely that Pombo would avoid taking credit for
his life’s work by leaving his name off the Endangered
Species bill, says Kristen Bossi, press secretary for the
committee’s Democratic minority.
But Brian Kennedy,
Pombo’s Resources Committee press secretary, recently told
the congressman’s hometown newspaper, the Tracy Press, that
he may do just that; unraveling the act is apparently more
important to Pombo than getting credit for it.
But Pete
McCloskey, a former Republican congressman from California,
believes Pombo faces another challenge: The growing concern among
some conservatives that today’s Republican leaders have set
aside core values, such as prudent spending, free speech and
natural resource protection, in pursuit of power. A congressman
from 1967 to 1982, McCloskey co-sponsored both the Endangered
Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, and also
co-chaired the first Earth Day in 1970. He says many rank-and-file
Republicans have grown sensitive to the corruption of science and
the pillaging of environmental law under the Bush administration
and the Republican majority.
There are many signs that
conservatives are shying away from more radical agendas, including
their failure to support the Bush plan for Social Security reform,
and their retreat from the "nuclear option" that would have ended
the filibuster of judicial nominees.
As with those
proposals, there is apparently no public groundswell for major
reform of the Endangered Species Act. Many politicians may find
that yet another complicated attempt at legislative reform will be
a tough sell with constituents, especially with mid-term elections
ahead.
But Pombo remains determined to push his agenda,
regardless of what anyone else has to say about it. "I wrote Pombo
last year and asked, since he was having hearings on the Endangered
Species Act, would he give me the courtesy of letting me testify,"
says McCloskey, the former congressman. "I never heard back."
How will history judge Richard Pombo? The coming months
will tell. He could be known as the man who blew apart the
nation’s environmental laws, handing the public lands and
wildlife to private interests. He could become a man who truly
transforms himself, ditching the dogma to find some common ground.
Or perhaps he’ll be remembered as a man full of sound and
fury who, like a prankster pulling a fire alarm, ultimately
signified nothing.
Matt Weiser reports for the Sacramento Bee.
Sidebar(s)
From the chairman
House Resource Committee press release headlines
Pombo's power grows — and so do the scandals
Since Richard Pombo took over the House Resources Committee in 2003, the number of scandals around him has steadily grown
CONTACTSRep. Richard
Pombo, R-Calif. pombo.house.gov
rpombo@mail.house.gov, 202-225-1947
resources.committee@mail.house.gov, 202-225-2761
Democratic Minority resourcescommittee.house.gov/democrats202-225-6065
Alliance for a Better Congressinfo@votepomboout.org www.votepomboout.org
Pombo Watch Blogwww.refpub.com/PomboWatch
American Land Rights Associationwww.landrights.org , Chuck Cushman, executive director, ccushman@pacifier.com, 360-687-3087
Republicans for Environmental Protection www.repamerica.org Jim DiPeso, policy director, dipeso@repamerica.org, 253-740-2066 © High Country News