The Libby Mitchell campaign released a memorandum to “interested parties” in July that grossly mischaracterizes my environmental record and policies. The Mitchell attack piece uses partial quotes taken out of context to paint a portrait of my record that is totally at odds with the truth about my 40-year career.
Leon Billings, former chief of staff to Senator Edmund Muskie, strongly refutes the Mitchell memorandum. “Cutler helped Ed Muskie turn his vision of clean air and clean water into federal law.” Billings openly acknowledges my crucial role in the development of the two most significant and effective environmental laws that Congress has ever enacted, and he has praised my record as an environmental lawyer.
“Eliot Cutler is running for Governor of Maine as an Independent. I am a Democrat, but I would never question his commitment to environmental protection. Apparently, one of his opponents is making an effort to sully both his career and his reputation.
“When I was the Staff Director of Ed Muskie’s Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, Eliot worked for and with me. He was part of a small team that wrote the first tough Federal oil spill cleanup law. It not only made the oil industry strictly liable for oil spills but also protected Maine’s first-in-the-nation oil spill cleanup law.
“Later, Eliot helped Ed Muskie turn his vision of clean air and clean water into federal law. He helped Senator Muskie and me write the 1970 Clean Air Act and the 1972 Clean Water Act, laws that have both meant so much to Maine.
“When Senator Muskie started the federal clean water fight, the Androscoggin and Kennebec Rivers were choking and Atlantic sea run salmon had disappeared from the Bangor salmon pool in the Penobscot. Ed Muskie lived to see them return, and Eliot was a key participant in developing the law that led to that success. Eliot’s critics should visit the Muskie Archives at Bates College and read some of the speeches that Eliot helped the Senator write on clean water, speeches that reflected the passion that Ed Muskie, Eliot and I shared for Maine’s rivers and streams.
“In 1977, Senator Muskie personally urged President Carter to name Eliot Associate Director for Natural Resources, Energy and Science at the White House Office of Management and Budget. This may be the single most important job in the federal government in these areas, and Eliot did an extraordinary job.
“Eliot was the person who protected and furthered what Ed Muskie had achieved in clean air and clean water legislation; he restored the strength of the environmental and natural resources programs of the federal government after the Nixon and Ford administrations had decimated them; and he directed the nation’s first substantial investments in developing “green” energy technologies. He fought for the effective implementation of the Clean Water Act that he helped to write, and, but for Eliot, the Federal Superfund law never would have been enacted.
“Finally, I want to put to rest the suggestions that somehow Eliot is tainted with “oil money.”
“In 2000, Eliot merged Cutler & Stanfield – the environmental and land use law firm that he founded and built into the world’s second-largest – into Akin Gump, a huge international law firm that has its origins in Texas and has many oil companies and oil service companies as clients. Eliot became a partner at Akin Gump and headed the Project and Infrastructure Development practice group there before moving to China to open the firm’s office in Beijing. Eliot did not represent oil companies at Akin Gump. In fact, even though Akin Gump has a big lobbying practice in Washington, I do not recall Eliot lobbying for any client during his term at Akin Gump.
“Eliot was an environmental and land use lawyer and a darn good one – one of the nation’s leading NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) attorneys. His reputation grew from his success in negotiating the deal to build the new Denver International Airport, and he became the most sought after lawyer in the country for states, cities and counties that were trying to solve the siting challenges for airports, highways and other big, job-creating infrastructure projects. Eliot was so good at strategy and figuring out win-win solutions that community groups and environmental activists also wanted Cutler & Stanfield involved in controversial projects.
“One of the things Eliot and I learned from Ed Muskie is that government needs to constantly reinvent itself to be sure that it is meeting the public’s needs. All too often government agencies become perceived as part of the problem, not part of the solution. In the environmental area, administrative inertia and disorganization ends up blocking progress just because someone or some group says, ‘Not in my backyard.’ Eliot understands this, and, as governor, I would expect him to press for modernization of institutions so that public needs are met and the environment is protected.”
(Leon G. Billings served as chief of staff to Senator and Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie. He also served from 1991 to 2003 in the Maryland General Assembly. He was executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1982-83 and an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California from 1981-1995. He and his wife Cherry live in Bethany Beach, DE. He can be reached at lgb@leonbillings.com).