week of 1/15/03
 
 
 


Taylor chosen to head Interior Appropriations
SMN
WNC Rep. Charles Taylor has been tapped to serve as chairman of the Interior and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee for the 108th Congress. Taylor, who has represented Western North Carolina in Congress since 1991, has served on the Appropriations Committee since 1993 and previously served as chairman of the Legislative Branch and District of Columbia Subcommittees.

“I’m humbled that Speaker Hastert and Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young have asked me to take on this task,” Taylor said. “We have an opportunity to restore scientific management of our national resources and to move forward with important energy research as well as preservation of our national treasurers,” Taylor said.

Some environmental organizations are wary of Taylor’s brand of scientific management. Molly Diggins, director of the North Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club, told the Asheville Citizen-Times, “Over time, Rep. Taylor has been antagonistic to environmental concerns, and we feel that he is out of step with the values of people of North Carolina and people across the country with respect to the environment. We especially fear for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”

Taylor helped appropriate $16 million in 2000, for construction of the long-debated North Shore Road through the park along the north shore of Fontana Lake, a project opposed by environmentalists since the 60s and 70s. Taylor also has a bill in Congress, HR 5468, which would circumvent the current public process initiated between the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the National Park Service regarding the proposed Ravensford land exchange.

Taylor, the only registered forester in Congress, was raised on a farm in Translyvania County and continues to be active in 4-H and other soil conservation and silvacultural programs. Taylor served as Chairman of North Carolina’s Parks and Recreation Commission in the 1970s and 1980s and, as a member of Congress, commissioned a scientific report on Forest Health by the Forest Health Science Panel in 1997. Taylor was instrumental in founding the Pisgah Forest Institute at Brevard College (www.brevrd.edu/pfi), which teaches North Carolina schoolteachers scientifically based environmental management.

“I am conservative, and that makes me an enemy of some of the ultraliberal, radical, so-called environmental organizations, and I don’t expect that to change,” Taylor said brushing aside Diggins’ criticism in the Citizens-Times.

But all of Taylor’s opposition may not come from ultraliberal environmental organizations.

Tennessee’s new Republican Senator, Lamar Alexander, a who will serve on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told the Knoxville News-Sentinel, “I think it ought to be a higher priority to take care of our national treasures, including the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”

One of the avenues Alexander said he would pursue to assist national parks with their huge backlog of needed maintenance and other projects would be any unspent funds from the $16 million appropriated for the North Shore Road.

The Interior subcommittee funds more than $20 billion in federal government activities, including many important to Western North Carolina such as the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Carl Sandberg Home and the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests.