Submitted by Martha Phillips, CTLCV Co-Chair
Why is it that the Council on Environmental Quality (along with several other watchdog agencies) are targeted for zero funding in the governor's proposed budget and their functions are being transferred to the agencies that they are supposed to keep tabs on? (To see the depressing details, go to http://www.ct.gov/governorrell/lib/governorrell/budget_documents_30jul09.pdf.)
Surely we are not expected to imagine that the Department of Environmental Protection will blow the whistle to call attention to itself when it falls down on the job or has a less than stellar performance.
Worse, these watchdog agency cutbacks are occurring at a time when the news media is retrenching and there are fewer knowledgeable reporters and investigative journalists than ever. How are citizens to find out when things are amiss? CEQ will no longer be there -- its responsibilities will have been subsumed (submerged?) under the agency it formerly monitored. And we won't read about any shortcomings it in the press either—because most of the reporters who knew the beat and had contacts and news sources have been laid off.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Evidently we are expected to believe that if environmental programs are mismanaged or environmental laws go unenforced, it won't matter since we will hear nothing about it.
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