State agencies hold their Line 3 information close to the vest, who are they protecting?

Minnesotans like to think we are a good government state, with sunshine laws and the ability to file State Data Practices Act requests to obtain public documents.

These laws are well and good, but they don’t replace state agencies’ responsibilities to proactively publish information they know to be of broad public interest.

The Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline provides a number of examples where state agencies have failed at information sharing.

Enbridge Line 3 might be nearing completion, but state officials still have a lot to answer for

Enbridge Line 3 construction might be nearly done, but efforts to stop it from operating are far from over. Lawsuits are still pending.

Yet as we continue the important work of Line 3 resistance, we also need to have a keen focus on the broken regulatory system that approved Line 3, and is backing harmful projects such as the PolyMet Mine.

Line 3 provides an important window into that broken regulatory system. The term now in vogue is “regulatory capture.”

Regulatory capture is an economic theory that says regulatory agencies may come to be dominated by the industries or interests they are charged with regulating. The result is that an agency, charged with acting in the public interest, instead acts in ways that benefit … the industry it is supposed to be regulating.

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State officials have dodged tough questions and accountability for their flawed decisions and complicity in the harm Line 3 will bring. Local media has let us down with its thin coverage.

What follows is a set of 14 questions that our state leaders and regulators still need to answer. In broad terms, they are: How do you understand the “public interest?” How does citizen participation affect decisions or is it just for show? How are you holding polluters accountable?

We need to keep pressing for answers.