Deserai Crow

When regulators rule, are citizens fully apprised?

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 21:10:45 +0000

When regulators rule, are citizens fully apprised? Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/27/2016 - 15:10

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Research finds citizens lack information, effective input on rulemaking in era of gridlock

Here’s an ironic little secret: When politicians actively seek to gum up or slow down the legislative works in an effort to throw up obstacles to governors or presidents, they often increase the power of executive-branch bureaucracies or courts to make the rules.

“When Congress is so gridlocked, or state legislatures are gridlocked, regulators become more important in creating, promulgating and implementing laws,” says Deserai A. Crow, assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Deserai A. Crow

That may sound good if you happen to support the policies of the executive branch. But the processes by which regulatory agencies create and implement rules on such things as natural-resource and environmental policy are often opaque, and less likely to be covered by media than legislative or political debates.

Does that translate to a less-informed citizenry? That’s what Crow and her co-authors, Elizabeth Albright of Duke University and Elizabeth Koebele, a doctoral student in environmental studies at ��-Boulder, examined in “Public Information and Regulatory Processes: What the Public Knows and Regulators Decide,” published this year in Review and Policy Research.

“To what extent is information on rulemaking processes available to the public, and does the public decide to participate in those processes about which they have information?” the researchers asked.

To find out, they examined public comments on environmental topics in five states, media coverage, if any, and political discussions on the subject.

“There is just not a lot of research on state-level regulation. It’s kind of a wonky, boring topic,” says Crow, a �� journalism graduate and former broadcast journalist. “And because it seems so insular, you don’t expect the media to be paying much attention. If that’s the case, is there any information or outreach to try to get citizens involved?”

The answer, in short: Media do not, as a rule, cover regulatory rulemaking. However, even when media cover a broad political issue rather than regulatory processes, the public is more likely to seek out information and offer its comments.

“The role of public participation in rulemaking is a complex one,” the researchers conclude. “We find that information is not easily accessible in public venues (such as the media sources analyzed here) and is available primarily when there are broader public debates concerning the political issues surrounding the regulatory topic.”

Whether public commentary in response to those broader public debates is valuable to regulators is another question, Crow says.

That is important and not just Trivial Pursuit. We can extrapolate that if they don’t know who Joe Biden is, they probably don’t know why the regulatory process is so important or why they should care that federal and state bureaucracies have assumed so much power because the legislative branch is doing so little.”

In one example, citizens submitted 170,000 comments in less than a month in response to publicity about proposed rules governing hydraulic fracturing in California. The majority so far examined by the researchers, Crow says, “are very broadly political.”

And that may put citizens at a disadvantage, as one regulator notes: “Often times you get a lot of comments on a rule that aren’t about the rule, are very general in nature, like ‘you should do more to protect the environment,’ or just technically completely inaccurate.”

Meanwhile, the industry being regulated “provides very detailed technical comments … so it’s almost like bringing a pillow to a sword fight by comparison, where, ‘do more to protect the environment’ does not assist you in crafting a technical rule.”

The researchers are now actively examining public comments to better understand how citizens engage rulemaking processes when they are so inspired, Crow says.

Environmental advocacy groups that focus on particular issues can develop more technical expertise and serve as a voice for the public in regulatory processes, she says, but even the biggest, such as the Sierra Club, may not have the resources to sit at the table for every rulemaking process.

Crow believes American citizens’ knowledge about how their government works has been in steady decline since, ironically, the advent of 24/7 cable television. She finds that many of her undergraduate students arrive with little understanding of government; some aren’t even aware of the three branches of government.

“So we do the old ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ thing,” she says. “President Obama excited a whole new generation of voters, yet many had very little understanding of government. They seemed to think he could come in like a king and just change everything.”

She notes that most Americans can’t name the vice president or speaker of the House of Representatives.

“That is important and not just Trivial Pursuit,” she says. “We can extrapolate that if they don’t know who Joe Biden is, they probably don’t know why the regulatory process is so important or why they should care that federal and state bureaucracies have assumed so much power because the legislative branch is doing so little.”

Clay Evans is a free-lance writer in Boulder.

When politicians actively seek to gum up or slow down the legislative works in an effort to throw up obstacles to governors or presidents, they often increase the power of executive-branch bureaucracies or courts to make the rules. The result can be a less-informed citizenry, researchers find.

Traditional

White

Citizen ‘sparkplugs’ can reduce red-zone fire danger

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 07:00:00 +0000

Citizen ‘sparkplugs’ can reduce red-zone fire danger Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/02/2015 - 00:00

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Following a catastrophic wildfire, there is a crucial, one-year window during which memories burn hot and citizens living in wildland-urban interfaces—“red zones”—are more receptive to information about how to mitigate the dangers from a future fire.

Deserai Anderson Crow

And when it comes to educating the public about wildfire dangers and mitigation, there is no substitute for face-to-face communication.

Here’s the conundrum: Most wildfire agencies are hard-pressed just deploying limited staff for fire follow-up during that first year, limiting their ability to directly communicate to citizens at the most effective time.

But researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder recently examined the aftermath of two catastrophic conflagrations and found an unexpected ally in wildfire-education efforts: the “citizen entrepreneur.”

One person could be the sparkplug for the whole community.”

“Citizen entrepreneurs are highly motivated community members who can help resource-constrained wildfire agencies encourage mitigation on private property by directly engaging with WUI residents,” they write in “Wildfire Outreach and Citizen Entrepreneurs in the Wildland-Urban Interface: A Cross-Case Analysis in Colorado,” published in the April issue of Society & Natural Resources.

The study was jointly conducted by Elizabeth Koebele, Lydia Lawhon, Adrianne Kroepsch and Rebecca Schild of the Environmental Studies Program, and Katherine Clifford of the Geography Department — all doctoral candidates and advisees of Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Deserai Crow, who also participated in the research.

An official with the Colorado Springs Fire Department discusses fire mitigation with members of a neighborhood group. Photo courtesy of the Colorado Springs Fire Department.

The group looked at two 2012 Colorado fires that caused extensive property damage: the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs and the High Park fire west of Fort Collins. They began by interviewing staff members at wildfire agencies and non-governmental organizations. Then they interviewed citizen focus groups, including residents who lost their homes, to better understand how and whether they had received information about mitigation—strategies to reduce the likelihood of destruction during a fire, including such things as replacing wood shingles or cutting nearby timber.

“What we kept hearing over and over again was that certain people, the citizen entrepreneurs, don’t just take agency information and bring it to the community,” Koebele says. “They go above and beyond, and take initiative on their own time, using their own resources, or grants or other resources, to do things like bring a (wood) chipper into a community. … They built a whole new level of trust with their neighbors.”

Elizabeth Koebele

For many residents, that is a more effective vector of information and motivation than having a public agency telling them what to do.

“One person could be the sparkplug for the whole community,” Koebele said. The entrepreneurs were able to motivate neighbors “who weren’t taking any action, who didn’t like the government coming in and telling them what to do.”

The study encountered different attitudes in the two areas. In Colorado Springs, residents expressed a greater sense of community and were more amenable to and appreciative of wildfire agencies than those in the remote High Park area, who expressed more suspicion. But both communities responded well to citizen entrepreneurs.

“They can … reach inactive residents, especially during the crucial one-year postfire window, and simultaneously reduce the burden of intensive outreach on resource agencies,” the researchers concluded.

“We know (wildfire mitigation) problems exist throughout the West, and if we continue building houses in the wildland-urban interface, it will continue to increase,” Koebele says. Making use of citizen entrepreneurs will help “balance the need for very interactive outreach about mitigation and trying to help out agencies with constrained resources.”

Clay Evans is a free-lance writer and longtime Boulder journalist.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder recently examined the aftermath of two catastrophic conflagrations and found an unexpected ally in wildfire-education efforts, the “citizen entrepreneur.”