The Texas Legislature's Chainsaw Massacre
At least 90 cities and counties in Texas have ordinances protecting trees. San Antonio has an ordinance. Weatherford has an ordinance. Austin has an ordinance. So do the verdantly named North Texas burgs of Little Elm, Mesquite and Oak Point. And, of course, The Woodlands does. Not surprisingly, the unincorporated town of Notrees in West Texas doesn’t, though Google Maps provides visual evidence that the town’s name is not entirely accurate.
People love trees, or at least value them, and many Texas communities have seen fit to protect them, typically with ordinances that require permits for removing mature trees of certain species. This wasn’t really controversial or a matter of major public interest until Governor Greg Abbott turned a personal vendetta against a pecan tree that he killed into a special session emergency.
(And before you go accusing me of being a knee-jerk tree-hugger — my Twitter handle is, admittedly, @forrest4trees — I’ll save you the trouble: guilty as charged. But I’ll also point out that I own a Stihl chainsaw that’s bucked a few cords in its day. I grew up in a South Texas farmhouse heated solely with a wood-burning stove fed by wood from our acreage. I’ve also had experience with Austin’s heritage tree ordinance: It was a simple matter to get approval to remove a huge protected cottonwood that had started to crack our foundation.)
Unlike many causes at the Capitol, there is no grassroots outcry to overturn the tyranny of tree rules. Perhaps that’s because most people, conservative, liberal or indifferent, are not ideologues who throw temper tantrums when their community has democratically decided, through the instrument of local government, to preserve a highly valued part of the commons. At a Senate committee hearing last week, only two people testified in favor of Senate Bill 14, legislation passed by the Senate on Wednesday that would more or less obliterate city and county tree rules. Forty-four people, however, signed up to speak against the measure. Abbott’s been putting out near-daily press releases with the subject line, “Governor Abbott Announces Growing Support for { }.” His release for his tree-massacre priority consisted of canned quotes from the Texas Association of Builders and other business interests.
Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-legislatures-chainsaw-massacre/