Posts Tagged → fish and boat commission
PA landowners now enjoy actual privacy rights
Bravo, kudos, and thanks to the unanimous Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Pennsylvania landowners now enjoy the actual verbatim privacy rights that both the US Constitution (Fourth Amendment) and the PA State Constitution (Article 1, Section 8) say we have.
This right to basic privacy has been a long time in coming, and like all individual rights, it was heavily, aggressively, shamefully resisted by actual Americans in government positions.
For a very long time, the idea of “Open Fields” ruled the way that wildlife enforcement officers accessed private property here in PA. Here in PA, PA Game Commission and PA Fish & Boat Commission officers would just walk right onto and deeply into a private property, regardless of its posted signs, regardless of the landowner’s demand that the officers leave, regardless of whether or not the officers had any probable cause or reasonable suspicion to be on the private property. Like kings, they would simply stride right up to within talking distance of a home, and start poking around.
You might not even hunt, or be a licensed hunter, or fish, and yet, these government agents just decided to watch you…
PGC and PFBC said this was both justified by law (it kind of was allowed by a somewhat related court ruling from the Prohibition Era regarding bootlegging moonshine), and necessary because of the unique challenges facing wildlife managers. Because PA has a strong anti-baiting law and culture among law-abiding hunters, it has been customary for Game Wardens to creep around private properties, looking for bait piles, salt blocks, some wildlife crime, etc. Without a search warrant.
But not all Game Wardens have been looking for illegal bait or signs of poached deer way out in our woods. They have also pretty brazenly walked right around people’s private homes way the hell out in the middle of large private properties, apparently at the request of the PA State Police, who were already limited to search warrants.
They have also surreptitiously hidden spy cameras on these private properties. In places where all Americans presume they can fully enjoy their rights to privacy without being interrupted or disrupted or alarmed by the sudden appearance of a man with a gun. Without “the king” surveilling them, without any reason other than simply wanting to.
That the PGC long adamantly defended this un-American behavior understandably rankled people, to the point where some sued the PGC over what was truly egregious behavior by people who should know better. And yesterday, they won; we all won. A unanimous PA Supreme Court held that our individual right to privacy is greater than the PGC’s desire (not its proven need) to simply walk around and see what Americans are doing within the privacy of their own properties.
Yes, managing wildlife is difficult. Yes, trying to outwit lawbreakers who bait deer and bear is hard. But, Americans’ constitutional rights supersede all other considerations.
And it is the role of government to protect our rights for us, not to officially chip away at them, in the name of government efficiency. People in government know this, and they should conduct themselves accordingly. But as you and I have seen so, so many times throughout our careers, once people get some power, especially the power to rule over others, they really do not want to let go of it. Americans are supposed to have government employees who are immune to this draw, but guess what, we don’t. Human nature has not changed.
As of today, government officials may not simply walk onto your property or mine, without a search warrant or without exigent circumstances, such as chasing an armed bad guy who happens to take refuge on your property, or without actually seeing a bait pile while on an adjoining property.
The result of this freedom is that poachers are going to poach more wildlife, no question about it. But that is the price of individual freedom and limited government. If the role and purpose of government was to be always efficient and always effective, we Americans would have no rights, and our government would be totalitarian. America is not that kind of place.
Better that some bad dude goes free than all of us suffer the indignity and danger of armed government agents just walking around our private properties, watching us…
Thank you to the Institute for Justice, which has done yeoman’s work for all of us Americans who cherish our freedoms. And thank you to the hearty Pennsylvanians who chose to stand and fight back against official injustice, like our predecessors did 250 years ago.
SB 619 captures tug of war between big government and the citizenry
SB 619 is PA state senator Gene Yaw’s fix to a problem that should not even exist. And yet, this bill is being greeted by so-called environmental advocates as some sort of “attack” on environmental quality and environmental protection.
Senate Bill 619 is about one simple thing: Making Pennsylvania state government regulators spell out exactly what is, and what is not, an environmental spill that is so bad that it contaminates waterways and is a violation of our state “clean streams” law.
You would think that in late 2019, 243 years after the founding of America, all state governments would be run by responsible adults who are committed to the wellbeing of their fellow citizens first and foremost. A commitment like that would first and foremost be to the rule of law and the due process rights that undergird and frame everything that is American representative government. Simply put, the government cannot willy nilly decide for itself, based on ambiguous, general, opaque, undefined, arbitrary standards, what is an environmental contamination, and what is not an environmental contamination.
In representative government, We, The People are entitled to know our boundaries, where the borders are to our behavior, and where the government gets to step in and correct us. This understanding keeps us from making decisions in good faith that end up getting us entangled with government enforcers who hit us with fines and penalties for making an incorrect decision.
Presently, and unbelievably, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has no clearly defined standards for what qualifies as a reportable spill and contamination into a waterway. PA DEP’s entire standard is, get this, for real: “We will know it when we see it.”
Folks, I am not exaggerating, I am not making this up. This is how much infinite latitude the state government has now and wants to maintain. This means that literally every time something – a cup of coffee, a can of paint, a bucket of mine sludge, or any miniscule part thereof – falls from its original container into the environment, and into or next to a waterway, it must be reported to PA DEP. And PA DEP reserves the right to fine whoever is responsible, irrespective of whether or not that spill involved anything dangerous, toxic, or at such a small dilution that it is de minimus in its effect.
In practice, this means that PA DEP both chases its tail going after ridiculously unimportant “spills” that pose no threat to anything, which underserves the citizenry who underwrite PA DEP’s budget, and that the agency also holds a huge arbitrary hammer over the head of every single citizen, contractor, and industrial or commercial operator in or passing through the Commonwealth. While being arbitrary is bad enough, reports from the field – you know, the little people who actually work outside getting stuff done for the rest of us consumers – is that plenty of PA DEP staff use that arbitrary standard in capricious ways. These PA DEP staff are, simply put, empowered to be vindictive and petty little tyrants whenever they want to be.
To their shame, the opponents of SB 619 are acting as if the bill is some sort of assault on environmental quality, when it is not, not even close. The PA Fish & Boat Commission is actually on record opposing SB 619 because it allows for “interpretation” in the law. This is embarrassingly bad government to say things like this. Needless to say, the private sector opponents of SB 619 say even worse and less accurate things than the PFBC has written.
Can you imagine something so horrid as there being two sides to a story, some “interpretation” about what happened, and not having just one omnipotent government agency position, take it or take it, because you can’t leave it, because the government agency has 100% of the say in what happened, and you can’t figure it out until some government employee tells you? Is it really so terrible to rein in our government agencies and require them to live by defined standards like the rest of us have to live? Like our Federal and State Constitutions require? Like a whole bunch of other states already have?
SB 619 simply asks PA DEP to establish criteria and standards so that the citizenry and the industries they work in can know when they are following the law, and when they are not. It asks government employees to live by the rules everyone else must live by. It asks government to not engage in arbitrary and capricious behavior, which undermines everything our Republic and our Commonwealth are about. You know, that liberty and freedom stuff that seems so insignificant to the self-appointed guardians of environmental quality. One thing is clear: My fellow environmental professionals may care about the environment, but they do not care about democracy or good government.
This bill is not about environmental quality, it is about democracy, the role of government, good government, government transparency and accountability, and limits on government power. It represents the tug of war going on nationwide between people who want unfettered big government power, and those of us who want government to live within the Constitutional boundaries everyone else lives in.
SB 619 needs to be implemented now.
(c) 2006 Bonnie Jacobs
PA House Bill 1576 pulled, for now
Pennsylvania House Bill 1576 would have dramatically changed the way PA regulates and manages endangered, threatened, and rare species of plants and animals. It went overboard in so many ways, too numerous to recount now, and missed an important opportunity to actually bring a needed level of professionalism and accountability to the way the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission interact with and serve citizens.
Legislation setting timetables for the agencies on permits and regulatory actions is a good start. Allowing citizens to recoup legal costs from successful lawsuits against the agencies would be fair, as the agencies occasionally get that bully’s “Go ahead and sue me” attitude, so inappropriate for any government agency.
HB 1576’s proponents bit off more than they could chew, probably a result of making an emotionally charged effort, rather than a carefully calculated and strategic effort at reining in government behavior that is sometimes seen as failing to serve citizens in the ways they deserve. Advocates for the two agencies, myself included, should be asking how HB 1576 came up in the first place – what kind of agency over-reach, or failures to serve – resulted in elected officials from both parties becoming so frustrated that they decided to drop that bomb.
Now, HB 1576 is not on the next list of proposed legislation to get a vote. There is talk in both parties about getting more finely tuned and focused legislation passed, and I certainly support that. Government’s role is not to dominate citizens, but to serve them. Protecting vulnerable plants and animals is a way of serving citizens’ interests, but there is also a way to do that without unnecessarily damaging the people who are supposed to benefit. That includes ensuring that the two agencies have sufficient funding and staff to implement their respective missions.