SPRINGFIELD - March 12, 2012. Lt. Governor Sheila Simon is advocating for more transparency and public input as a proposal to open a sand mine on 300 acres of farm land adjacent to Starved Rock State Park moves ahead.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources is only required under state law to hold a public hearing on the proposed Mississippi Sand, LLC mine if a hearing is requested by the LaSalle County Board, Simon said. IDNR is not expressly required by law to hold a public hearing at any other party's request.

Simon sent a letter today to the LaSalle County Board urging it to request IDNR hold a hearing on the project's reclamation plan. The plan explains how the mine would be used in 40 years, after the sand is exhausted. Mississippi Sand, LLC proposes to fill the mine with water and turn it into a recreational lake.

"Your action in demanding the hearing will show your commitment to an open, public process that serves all citizens of your county," Simon said in the letter addressed to LaSalle County Chairman Jerry Hicks. "Democracy is not speedy, and it works best when as many people as possible, representing all sides of an issue, can provide input."

Simon serves as chair of the Illinois River, Mississippi River and Ohio and Wabash Rivers Coordinating Councils, advisory bodies comprised of citizens and government agency officials that work with local communities to raise awareness of watershed issues. The Illinois River Coordinating Council adopted a resolution in February to promote public input into the mine proposal and ensure local, state, and federal agencies consider fully all impacts of the proposed mine.

Starved Rock State Park is located along the south side of the Illinois River, one mile south of Utica. Known for its hiking trails and eagle watching, the park celebrated its centennial anniversary in 2010 and set an attendance record in 2011, attracting nearly 2.2 million visitors.

Mississippi Sand, LLC is seeking a permit for phase one of the project, which would mine sand from 80 acres near the east entrance of the park. The proposed sand mine would create 39 jobs.

The week started out in an exciting way! We had four advocates speak in favor of a statewide ban on using nicotine or tobacco products on all K-12 school property at a public hearing in the House of Representatives on Monday night. Three of us were the final three speakers of the night and we definitely had an impact on legislators who were present. We anticipate an amendment will be filed to the House Education Reform bill on this next week. Watch for an Action Alert!

The House was supposed to debate the Health & Human Services spending bill yesterday, but didn't. That bill zeroes out spending for tobacco prevention and cessation programs. For more on this issue, check out my opinion piece that was published in last Saturday's Des Moines Register here.

More ammunition for our position came this week in the form of a new report from the US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin. Dr. Benjamin said youth tobacco use is a "pediatric epidemic" and a grave threat to public health. Why then is the Iowa House Appropriations Committee proposing eliminating all funding for tobacco prevention and cessation?  To see the press release sent out by the Iowa Tobacco Prevention Alliance yesterday tying the Surgeon General's report to the situation in Iowa, click here.

The man who served as NBC-TV's legal counsel for 25 years warns the FCC is poised to resurrect broad censorship rules that were revoked in 1987 because of their chilling effect on both free speech and the television press.

Corydon B. Dunham says the proposed new Localism, Balance and Diversity Doctrine could eventually also affect news on the Internet. The FCC is reportedly planning to transfer the broadcast spectrum used by local television to the Internet to make it the nation's primary communications platform, and the agency has started to regulate the Internet.

In his new book, Government Control of News: A Constitutional Challenge (http://freespeech.authorsxpress.com/), Dunham recounts the evolution of government control of television news and the Fairness Doctrine. The book, the result of a study initiated at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institute, examines the history of the Fairness Doctrine - the rules by which the federal government regulated TV journalism. Similar rules had governed radio news since 1934 and were applied to TV in 1949 by the Federal Communications Commission.

"TV was a powerful new medium and there were only a few broadcast stations in many communities. It was thought that this gave unusual power to station and network owners," Dunham explains. "The government justified the Fairness Doctrine as a way to ensure stations aired opposing viewpoints on issues."

But what was touted as an attempt to encourage robust discourse became a tool for censoring the news, Dunham says.

"If a complaint was made about a view that had been broadcast, the FCC investigated. If it concluded that a view should be changed, it ordered that. If it concluded other views should be presented, or even related issues, it ordered that," Dunham says.

Failure to comply could result in no license renewal, renewal for a shorter period of time, or a "negative record" applied at renewal time.

In 1987, the FCC unanimously revoked the Fairness Doctrine, with court approval, after finding it had deterred news reporting on controversial issues, and had repeatedly been used to suppress viewpoints and help some officials pursue their own political objectives, Dunham says.

After two decades of failed attempts in Congress to revive the Fairness Doctrine, support began building anew. In 2008, the FCC released a new proposed body of rules for TV news - the Localism, Balance and Diversity Doctrine.

"It has many of the same characteristics of the old Fairness Doctrine and can be expected to have similar results," Dunham says. "News broadcast by television stations would have to meet government criteria for 'localism' - local news production and coverage - as well as a regulatory balance and diversity of viewpoints. A three-vote majority of five FCC commissioners at a central government agency would make local news judgments and override those of thousands of independent, local TV reporters and editors."

It would also be enforced by having a local board at each station monitor programming, including news, and recommend against license renewal if the station did not comply with FCC policy.

In 2011, the FCC-sponsored Future of Media Study recommended the localism doctrine proceeding be ended. The present chief of the White House regulatory office has long recommended that the government regulate news to advance its political and social objectives, Dunham says.

"There is unprecedented silence from the FCC about its plans for television news in this country," Dunham says.

TV is not the only medium potentially affected.

"At the end of 2010, the FCC decided to take over regulation of the Internet in this country. It will regulate its traffic and gain some power to review content," Dunham says.

"The president, Congress and the FCC have also agreed to transfer the entire broadcast spectrum (currently used by TV stations) to the Internet over the next 10 years. If the localism doctrine is adopted, it could apply to the Internet and its participants as users of the FCC-controlled spectrum."

Dunham says requiring journalists to comply with a central government agency's policy on how to report the news means those journalists will no longer be free and independent.

"As the Fairness Doctrine broadcast history shows, the threat of loss of license will deter station news coverage, particularly of controversy, and the public will lose news and information.

"If the broadcast press is not free and independent of government, it cannot act as a watchdog for the public, which is its constitutional role."

About Corydon B. Dunham

Corydon B. Dunham is a Harvard Law School graduate. His "Government Control of News" study was expanded and developed for the Corydon B. Dunham Fellowship for the First Amendment at Harvard Law School and the Dunham Open Forum for First Amendment Values at Bowdoin College. Dunham was an executive at NBC from 1965 to 1990. He oversaw legal and government matters and Broadcast Standards. He was on the board of directors of the National Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Corporate Counsel Association, and American Arbitration Association among other posts.