Hatteras and Ocracoke have been buzzing with talk of the stellar performance of West Virginia?s Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, at Wednesday?s hearing in the Senate?s Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The committee took up a dozen Park Service bills, including S 2372, which would overturn the seashore?s final plan and regulation of off-road vehicle use on the beaches.
Manchin seemingly came out of nowhere to take on the Park Service and the environmental groups that have filed lawsuits and continue to push for excessively restrictive regulation on access to the seashore.
Folks on the islands and seashore lovers everywhere are calling the senator a ?hero,? a ?champion,? and ?a knight in shining armor? and sending other accolades his way.
You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief when it dawned on folks what Manchin was doing or had done. Here, finally, is someone who ?gets it,? who understands the situation that Hatteras and Ocracoke are in ? caught between the National Park Service and activist environmental groups.
And Manchin is not just any someone, but someone with power to do something about it.
Manchin had done his homework and been well briefed.
He understood that we are small communities and many of our businesses are suffering because of the larger-than-ever beach closures since 2008 ? under a court-agreed-to consent decree and the final special regulation that became effective Feb. 15.
He understood the difference between the seashore?s small villages and the rest of the geographically diverse Dare County — that even if communities 50 or 60 miles away are collecting record occupancy and sales taxes, it?s not always the case on Hatteras and Ocracoke.
He understood how powerless the local folks have felt while facing big, well-funded, well-connected environmental groups, most of whose lawyers and members don?t live here and don?t understand the issues.
He understood what we have been saying all along ? the seashore?s natural resources, its birds and turtles, can be protected without the excessive restrictions on access that close some of the seashore?s most popular places to swim or surf or gather for much of the year.
Manchin rose to the occasion, he said, because ?an awful lot of West Virginians have been going for generations down to the Cape.?
And they had all apparently been calling his office to enlist his support for S 2372.
However, Manchin has another very important connection to the seashore, and that is one of those ?small world? stories.
Manchin was a good friend of another West Virginia politician, one who left state politics to move to Ocracoke Island in 1991, where he and his wife built one of the island?s most successful businesses ? Howard?s Pub and Raw Bar.
That West Virginian was the late George Blackburn Warner Jr., known to all as Buffy.
Manchin is a Democrat and Buffy was a Republican, but the two became friends during the 1980s in the West Virginia Senate where they both served, and that may explain Manchin?s singling out S 2372 for its bipartisan support from both the Republican and Democratic senators from North Carolina.
?They were extremely close, and they worked really well across the aisle,? said Buffy?s widow, Ann, who worked for West Virginia state government in economic development.
?Our family and his have remained friends,? she said. ?Joe and his family have been visiting the Outer Banks, and especially Ocracoke, for the last 20 years.?
Manchin, besides serving in the West Virginia Senate, also served as the secretary of state and then governor for six years before he was elected in 2010 to fill the unexpired term of the late U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd.
Buffy Warner came from a large politically active family, and, ironically, his brother, Monty, ran against Manchin in the West Virginia governor?s race in 2004 and lost.
After he moved to Ocracoke, Warner remained active in politics and civic organizations and once ran for Hyde County sheriff.
Buffy Warner died tragically in June, 2004, at the age of 53, in an accident on his boat.
After Warner?s death, his friend Joe Manchin issued this statement, “There will never be another Buffy Warner. He was one of a kind.”
And, indeed, most of those who knew Buffy would agree that he was just one of those ?larger-than-life? people. As his family said when he died, he was a man ?who lived more in one year than most people do in a lifetime.?
Manchin attended services for Warner on Ocracoke and his funeral in Charleston, W.Va., Ann Warner said.
Ann Warner has remained on Ocracoke, continuing the business that she and Buffy built, and she is opposed to many of the changes in the island?s life and lifestyle that the Park Service?s ORV rule has brought.
So when John Couch, president of the Outer Banks Preservation Association, inquired through a mutual friend, John Manning, whether Ann would be comfortable contacting Manchin about the Senate bill, she was more than willing.
If the bill is to be as successful in the Senate as it was in the House, it will need some Democratic support.
Couch?s phone call was literally at the last minute and he talked to Ann Warner on Tuesday afternoon when he was driving to Washington for the hearing.
Ann says she did make that phone call to Manchin, who was already primed by his constituents to oppose the bill.
?He?s a hero down here,? Ann Warner said yesterday about her friend. ?He?s given people a spring in their step.?
She described Manchin as a ?sincere, hard-working public servant.?
She hopes all the folks who are appreciative of what Manchin and his staff have achieved will call or e-mail and let him know.
You can find his contact info on his Senate website at http://manchin.senate.gov/public/.
S 2372 is going to need the support of more than one Democrat to be successful in the Senate, so this is only the beginning of some hard work for supporters of the bills.
All of those supporters hope Manchin has some Democratic friends who will join him in his support of the legislation to overturn the ORV plan and final rule.
One of the things Buffy Warner enjoyed most was a good political discussion ? or debate or whatever you want to call it.
Those of us who knew him find it very interesting and most gratifying that Buffy is still informing the discussion of policy and politics on the islands, even eight years after his death.
TWO BILLS MOVING THROUGH TWO CHAMBERS
Some readers have written to ask us how H.R. 4094 to overturn the final ORV plan and rule will move forward since it passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last week.
The legislation passed in a package of bills related to the Park Service and federal lands. That bill is H.R. 2578.
H.R. 2578 is the bill that moves on to the Senate for passage, though given the Democratic objections to the package of bills during the House floor debate, it would seem unlikely that H.R. 2578 will go anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
But even if H.R. 2578 fizzles in the Senate, it doesn?t necessarily mean that H.R. 4094 is dead.
Meanwhile, the Senate has heard committee testimony on a companion bill, S 2372, which has exactly the same wording as H.R. 4094.
I asked Joshua Bowlen, legislative assistant to U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, who introduced the House bill, what happens next, and here is what he said:
?The bottom line is that to get to the President, both houses must pass the same bill. So there are any number of ways that such a bill might get through both houses. For example, a House bill could be the vehicle, or a Senate bill could be the vehicle. The bill could just include Cape Hatteras, or it could include many other things as well. The final agreed upon bill could be produced in a formal conference committee between the two houses, or it could be produced after one house agrees to just take up and pass what the other house passed.
?Even though the House has approved a bill that includes the language, we?re still dead in the water unless the Senate moves something. Bottom line: We just need something to get over the Senate finish line; then we can worry about reconciling House and Senate language.?
So those of us who want to see a bill passed in Congress and signed by the President need to keep working on our U.S. Senators to get a bill passed.
Only then can there be some conference committee and compromise on how the bills go forward.
