One positive note in the agriculture and environment bill is a needed compromise on “buffer strips,” which help to curb ag runoff. At this horse farm in the west-metro area, a green buffer strip between pastures reduces manure runoff into Lake Rebecca. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Legislators this year are brazenly putting the needs of special interests over Minnesota's treasured natural resources with an agriculture and environment budget bill that undercuts critical pollution safeguards. In doing so, they also sent an alarming warning to anyone in years to come who challenges powerful interests such as agriculture and mining: Those who ask hard questions should expect political payback.

Thanks to a responsible veto by Gov. Mark Dayton, the sprawling ag and environment budget legislation has improved somewhat since it first passed the Republican-controlled Minnesota House and the DFL-controlled Minnesota Senate, where many pro-mining Iron Range lawmakers are in leadership roles. The revised bill will be up for a vote during the upcoming special session. While the bill still contains a needed compromise on "buffer strips," which will help curb agricultural runoff, there's still too much in the legislation that threatens environment interests.

It took the respected Minnesota Environmental Partnership three pages to sum up the myriad ways that the legislation rolls back or undermines important safeguards. Among the lowlights: raiding millions of dollars from landfill cleanup funds, abolishing the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) Citizens' Board, exempting mining sulfide waste from solid-waste rules, allowing cities to unsustainably tap dwindling aquifers, and putting in place costly and time-consuming new hurdles clearly intended to keep state pollution control officials from doing their jobs.

At a time when there's international alarm about shrinking bee populations, state lawmakers also approved funding to put deceptive "pollinator-friendly" labels on products that are not. Lawmakers also reprehensibly broke a widely heralded agreement that would have provided incentives for advanced biofuels development while spurring farmers to grow more perennials or cover crops as the raw material. The landmark incentives for these corn alternatives, which can help curb erosion and runoff, were jettisoned.

There's more than a whiff of political payback in this bill and in another key action taken this session. The move to eliminate the 48-year-old MPCA Citizens Board came after its members voted in 2014 to require an environmental-impact statement from a proposed 9,000-head dairy operation, spurring outrage from some in agribusiness. Language requiring additional notice before state officials order a "discretionary environmental review" comes after the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources ordered one earlier this year for a large North Dakota potato grower intending to convert forest land to potato fields.

The high-profile move to privatize a key duty of the state auditor's office also comes after Auditor Rebecca Otto cast a vote against mineral mining leases in 2013.

The flawed legislation will likely pass in the special session. In future elections, voters should ask a key question: How did incumbents vote on a bill that so clearly prioritized special interests over Minnesota's natural resources?