The Bureaucratic Politics Paradox: The Case of Wetlands Legislation in Nevada

The importance of the environment in which public managers work and in which public organizations seek to thrive is undeniable. Organization theorists maintain that organizations both are shaped by and seek to shape the environment in which they exist. That public managers need to be aware of and work with forces in their environment is almost commonsensical. Yet there is little empirical evidence in either the organization theory literature or the bureaucratic politics literature of lower level and middle level professional career public managers actually attempting to shape their environment. This article examines a successful clandestine effort by lower and middle level bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Interior and the Nevada Department of Wildlife to have legislation enacted at both the federal and state levels that empowered them to make changes in their programs against the wishes of their superiors. The bureaucratic politics behind the legislation is documented and the paradox posed by these policy innovators who are also "organization deviants" is assessed. This is done by examining fourteen guidelines or lessons learned from the Nevada experience from the perspective of the "deviant" bureaucrats and assessing the implications of this phenomenon for public management. In the waning hours of its final session of 1990, the U.S. House of Representatives passed S. 3084. That bill, which was signed into law by President Bush on November 16, 1990, as Public Law 101-618, was a path-breaking change in western irrigation policy.' The new law significantly addressed irrigationinduced water quality problems in several ways. First, the law settled a long-debated issue of whether the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) has a right to buy water rights originally designated for Bureau of Reclamation irrigation projects and then to use those water rights to maintain wetlands areas. The law gave 'The law also settled one hundred years of litigation over water rights in Nevada and California. For a summary of those portions of the law, see Rusco 1992. J-PART, 4(1994):4:443-467 443/Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory This content downloaded from 157.55.39.152 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:24:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Bureaucratic Politics Paradox: Nevada Wetlands DOI this authority. Second, under the new law the secretary of DOI was authorized to take such actions as may be necessary to prevent, correct, or mitigate for adverse water quality and fish and wildlife habitat conditions attributable to agricultural drain waste originating from federal irrigation projects. Third, the law ordered the DOI to close the "TJ Drain, a major irrigation runoff pollution site in Nevada. The bill, sponsored by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, officially was not supported by the U.S. Department of Interior (testimony of John Sayre, Constance Harriman, and Eddie F. Brown, assistant secretaries, DOI, February 6, 1990). The bill officially was supported, however, by a vast "web" comprised of environmental groups, Indian tribes, chambers of commerce, hunters, trappers, and conservation groups.2 One strand of the web that many people will never know existed comprised career bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Interior and the State of Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW). These public officials worked behind the scenes,first to develop support for the bill before Senator Reid decided to sponsor it and later as ghost writers of parts of the final Act. At some junctures they put their jobs in jeopardy by directly disobeying their superiors and promoting policies against which their organizations both officially and unofficially argued. In this article I examine this strand supporting S. 3084 with the goal of documenting the bureaucratic politics behind the legislation and assessing the paradox posed by these policy innovators, who are also "organization deviants." I accomplish this by examining fourteen guidelines or lessons learned from the Nevada experience from the perspective of the "deviant" bureaucrats and by assessing the implications of this phenomenon for public management.3 Before I examine these guidelines, however, two caveats are in order: First, this study examines only one strand of the web that underlies the bill. As such, it is not meant to be a complete portrayal of how the bill became law. Nor is it meant to be an exhaustive study of all the actors behind the scenes. Rather, it is an examination of the actions of career civil servants to get their agenda on the table of policymakers. Second, I stumbled upon this research topic I was while a member of a National Academy of Sciences panel investigating irrigation-induced water quality problems in the western United States. Something just didn't ring true when some DOI employees initially maintained that legislation imposed "from outside the department" forced them to change their internal departmental policies. After confirming my suspicions through a private conversation with one of the speakers, I began this research. While 2Other scholars have referred to similar "webs" as issue networks (Heclo 1978), policy networks (Rhodes and Marsh 1992) and regulatory communities