Earl Blumenauer: “I looked at the website of one of the witnesses that Mr. Chabot brought from Cincinnati, and looked at a couple of the…”

“I looked at the website of one of the witnesses that Mr. Chabot brought from Cincinnati, and looked at a couple of the things that he has been successful in achieving, as significant expansion in a landfill, siting a 1,000-foot radio and TV tower. These are the sorts of things that I worked on as a county commissioner; I assume Mr. Chabot worked on when he was a county commissioner. It took years, for example, for us to deal with sitings for radio tower emissions because local people, neighbors and representation from industry were going crazy. But the lengthy process was worth it; we produced the safest standards in the country that the industry ultimately adopted. Using Mr. Chabot's approach, it would allow those powerful interests to have bypassed us and gone to Federal court. We could not have stood up to them. The neighborhood would have been at risk. It is exactly the sort of thing that people elect local officials like we used to be to protect. I think it is outrageous that Congress is going to undermine them.”