Farming newspaper digs into tribe-directed advocacy campaign

An advertising campaign overseen by the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community has prompted lawmakers to ask for a federal investigation into possible misuse of taxpayer money, the agricultural newspaper “Capital Press” has reported.

The “What’s Upstream” advertising campaign calls on state lawmakers to require 100-foot buffers between salmon streams and farmland.

According to Capital Press, the campaign was commissioned by Swinomish with money funneled to the tribe from the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, which had received a grant of $18 million from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Earlier this spring, the What’s Upstream campaign included billboards and bus advertisements showing cows standing in a stream — such a photo is still on the What’s Upstream website.

Capital Press reporter Don Jenkins, who writes about issues that impact farming, said he received an email tip in late March about the signs on buses in Whatcom County — the signs bore what turned out to be stock photos available for purchase online. Jenkins said the photo was identified as one from “Amish country.”

Jenkins said when he contacted the Whatcom Transportation Authority to inquire about the ads, he was told they were being taken off buses after farmer complaints. The billboards are gone, too.

“I thought the issue would go away,” Jenkins said.

Then he said he learned the campaign was funded by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

So he dug in to investigate “the element of tax money being used to fund an advocacy campaign,” he said.

Over the past several weeks, Jenkins has followed the story through a maze of government records, many he said were incomplete, and interviews with federal and state officials. Based on records he was able to obtain, Jenkins estimated that Swinomish spent around $570,000 on the campaign before the state Legislature started this year’s session in January.

In a comprehensive report published in Capital Press on April 29, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy was quoted by Jenkins as saying the agency was “distressed by the use of the money and the tone of that campaign.”

Jenkins reported that Rep. Derek Stanford, D-Bothell, sponsored a bill that would require property owners to leave buffers along salmon streams under a voluntary farmland preservation program. While that bill went to the House Agriculture Committee, it never had a hearing.

According to Jenkins’ report, Committee Chair Brian Blake, D-Aberdeen, told him: “You may get 95 percent of the benefit with 10 feet of buffer. Adding another 95 feet makes no sense. It’s taking land out of production with very little benefit.”

Last week Jenkins filed another story on the issue, quoting Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake. In the story she told Jenkins, “I was angry about how it was paid for, how it came about and even more angry about where the actual picture of cows came from.”

Capital Press editor Joe Beach has given this newspaper permission to direct our readers to the publication’s website for quick access to the April 29 story package.

You can find a link at the bottom of this story.