Gov. Paul LePage joined President Trump in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday for a ceremony where Trump signed an executive order to review national monuments that are part of the National Park Service system.
It’s unclear whether the order will apply to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in northern Penobscot County, which former President Barack Obama established over LePage’s objections in August 2016.
Read the order
LEPAGE GOES TO WASHINGTON
Gov. Paul LePage had a busy day in Washington Wednesday.
Here’s what he did, according to communications director Peter Steele:
7:20 a.m. Met with DJ Gribbin, a special assistant to the president for infrastructure policy, for breakfast in the White House. Trump’s administration was seeking feedback from the LePage on Maine’s infrastructure needs. They talked about major infrastructure investments to help improve the Maine economy, especially in rural Maine.
11:15 a.m. Joined Trump at a press conference at the Department of Interior Headquarters, where Trump delivered remarks and signed the Antiquities Executive Order.
2:30 p.m. Joined Trump and other governors at the White House to highlight the initial actions of the Trump Administration to renew the state-federal partnership and sign the Education Federalism Executive Order. The order directs the U.S. secretary of education to review certain Department of Education regulations to ensure they comply with laws requiring state and local control of education.
4:15 p.m. With Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher, met with U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at the Department of Commerce to discuss the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, a trade treaty between Canada and the European Union. Keliher, LePage and Ross were to discuss how the Commerce Department could help the Maine lobster industry, as well as challenges facing Maine’s agricultural industry and the state’s forest products industry.
Trump’s executive order calls for a review of national monuments created since Jan. 1, 1996, that are larger than 100,000 acres. Though the Katahdin monument encompasses only 87,600 acres, the order also provides for a review if the secretary of the interior determines that a monument’s designation or expansion “was made without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders.”
LePage’s communication’s director, Peter Steele, said in an email that “The Executive Order covers a review of Katahdin Woods because at least two local referendums and the Maine State Legislature voted against it.”
Trump introduced LePage at Wednesday’s ceremony, joking about the governor’s recent dramatic weight loss, the result of bariatric surgery in September 2016. LePage campaigned with Trump during two of the Republican’s four visits to the state during the presidential campaign.
“I knew him when he was heavy and now I know him when he is thin and I like him both ways, OK?” Trump said Wednesday.
LePage had said this week that he would travel to Washington next week to testify at an oversight hearing of the House Committee on Natural Resources on the consequences of “executive branch overreach of the Antiquities Act,” but he did not announce that he would be attending the ceremony with Trump on Wednesday.
A tweet from LePage’s official Twitter account captured a television image of LePage in the office of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, where Trump signed the order. “Glad to be with President Trump for the signing of his Antiquities Executive Order,” the tweet said.
Obama created the monument after conservationist Roxanne Quimby donated the forest land near Millinocket and Baxter State Park, and a $20 million endowment to finance the monument, to the federal government. Opponents to the designation, including LePage, have been critical of putting more working forest land into public ownership and conservation.
The Antiquities Act, passed into law in 1906, authorizes the president to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict how the lands can be used.
Any attempt by Trump to rescind monument designations likely would trigger a court challenge. A recent legal analysis conducted for the National Parks Conservation Association determined that the president “has no power unilaterally to abolish a national monument under the Antiquities Act of 1906.”
Any move in Congress to rescind a national monument designation likely would face stiff opposition from Democrats.
Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument lies in an area that was once the heart of Maine’s logging and papermaking industry but now faces an uncertain economic future. Within hours of the designation, the National Park Service was in the process of opening offices in the Katahdin region while inviting visitors to discover the monument’s “rivers, streams, woods, flora, fauna, geology, and the night skies that have attracted humans for millennia.”
Pleased to support President Trump’s efforts to review the federal government’s massive land grab from the American people. #mepolitics pic.twitter.com/pyk82pchme
— Paul R. LePage (@Governor_LePage) April 26, 2017
Cathy Johnson, a senior staff attorney and the director of the woods and wildlife project for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said there was ample public participation for Maine’s monument.
“Suggesting that there was insufficient public process in the designation of Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is ludicrous,” Johnson wrote in an email to the Press Herald. “There were five years of meetings, debates, presentations and conversations.”
Johnson said a public hearing set up by Sen. Angus King and attended by National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis in Orono drew 1,400 people, with about 1,200 offering support for the monument. She also said the public forum set up by Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-2nd District, and attended by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, saw supporters of the monument outnumber opponents 4 to 1.
She also reiterated that the monument, as established, guarantees access for hunting and snowmobiling as a direct result of public input from those forums and hearings.
On Monday, LePage incorrectly said that the monument did not allow for hunting or motorized recreation. Hunting and motorized recreation is prohibited in most of Baxter State Park, which is adjacent to the national monument.
“Gov. LePage has never visited the monument and has never talked to the Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce or any of the many, many businesses in the Katahdin region who support the monument and are, in fact, now starting to reap the economic benefit of having a nationally branded natural area near their community,” Johnson wrote. “The monument is the best stimulus for economic development the Katahdin region has seen in years.”
Bishop traveled to Maine last summer to hear from opponents of the Katahdin Woods and Water National Monument at the request of Poliquin. Bishop visited East Millinocket, a meeting also attended by LePage.
Bishop praised Trump’s executive order in a statement Wednesday.
“Today’s action sends the powerful message that communities will no longer take a back seat to out-of-state special interest groups,” Bishop said. “I’m pleased to see President Trump recognize long-standing abuses of the Antiquities Act. It was created with noble intent and for limited purposes, but has been hijacked to set aside increasingly large and restricted areas of land without public input.”
Zinke, the interior secretary, told The Associated Press that the order will cover several dozen monuments across the country designated since 1996 that total 100,000 acres or more, from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah to the Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah.
He’ll provide an interim report in 45 days in which he’ll provide a recommendation on Bears Ears and a final report within 120 days.
Over the last 20 years, Zinke said, tens of millions of acres have been designated as national monuments, limiting their use for farming, timber harvesting, mining, oil and gas exploration, and other commercial uses.
Though Zinke said the designations have “by and large” done “a great service to the public,” he worries about overuse and overreach.
“I think the concern that I have and the president has is that when you designate a monument, the local community affected should have a voice,” he said.
Scott Thistle can be contacted at 791-6330 or at:
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