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Justin Pidot, Arizona Law professor and co-director of the Environmental Law Program, has had a front-row seat to the inner-workings of the federal government. He was deputy solicitor for land resources at the Department of the Interior during the Obama administration, and later general counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the Biden administration. He’s also served as an appellate lawyer for the Department of Justice focused on environmental issues.
His latest scholarship, which has been selected for publication in the Stanford Environmental Law Review, adds to the national debate about abundance, a political movement that has taken hold in liberal-leaning circles. In this Q&A with the University of Arizona, Professor Pidot, who also holds the Ashby Lohse Chair in Water and Natural Resources, explains what abundance is, the basics and value of public participation and why he argues in his new article to simplify the process to make government more effective, not eschew it entirely. Excerpts are below:
What is the abundance movement and why are policy wonks writing books about it?
Abundance is a political movement or idea that has arisen among some in the Democratic Party that a core problem facing this country is that we don’t build enough and deliver enough of the things that people need to live flourishing lives. The notion behind abundance is we should restructure the rules, the regulations and the laws of government to deliver more of those things – to deliver an abundance of those things, if you will.
Can you explain your central argument in this article?
The conclusion I draw is let’s not get rid of all of the process. Instead, let’s think hard about the rules that we have.
Since you’ve seen public participation up close, can you explain how it works in practice?
At a very general level, public participation is any way for the public – people, businesses and the like – to communicate their views to the government about something the government is doing. The way this usually happens, especially with the federal government, is through what we call a public notice of a proposed decision and then a comment process.
What is the core piece of reform that you advocate for in your article to improve the public participation process?
The notion in the article is not that the government should never respond to comments, but that its obligation to do so – and the ability for courts to then police whether it has done so – has turned the process into one that is very time consuming and very driven by litigation. So, if I don’t like a project, I can send in lots and lots of comments in hopes that I can lay a trap and exploit that in litigation if the government doesn’t respond.
So, the proposal is, let’s say to the government, “You don’t have to respond – you could, it’s your choice, but you don’t have to.” And that makes it so that it doesn’t become a way for opponents to try to game the system on the front end, and it doesn’t become sort of this trap for the government on the back end.
Why should the average American care about these frankly convoluted approaches to government process?
Two things: Do you care about how much you’re paying for electricity? Do you care about climate change severely crippling the future for your children? If you care about both of those things, then you have to care about both the government’s ability to act and its ability to act wisely. And that’s really what I’m talking about.
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