LANSING, MI -- Is the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality overly zealous about protecting the environment and beholden to green group ideology, or too deferential to businesses that promise jobs in exchange for pollution permits?

That debate sits at the heart of a bill package the Michigan Senate passed this week. The trio of bills would, among other things, create a governor-appointed panel within DEQ to hear permit appeals and a powerful oversight committee with the authority to review, amend or kill all proposed environmental regulations.

The business community likes the idea, which the Michigan Chamber of Commerce says will ensure decisions are "focused on the science rather than personal opinions or politics."

Environmental groups and Senate Democrats are aghast, warning that companies like Enbridge could, in essence, be allowed to vote on regulatory decisions affecting their business -- a major interest conflict on a powerful oversight committee.

They worry foreign interests could have major sway over state environmental policy because the legislation doesn't require panel members live in Michigan.

The 11-member review panel includes five obvious business and industry seats with few restrictions on who could fill them. Among the rest, environmental groups would get one seat, which the bill sponsor considers more than adequate.

Decisions would require a simple majority.

"For far too long we've listened to everything environmental groups say as the truth," said Sen. Tom Casperson, a Republican who represents the western Upper Peninsula.

Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba.

Casperson thinks environmental groups have too much sway over state regulators and conflates what he considers an onerous permitting process that drives away business with the influence of those groups, which, he says "are flat out lying."

The animosity for environmental activism hearkens from Casperson's past in the logging business, where, in floor remarks this week, he said such groups vilified his father and grandfather.

"They need to be challenged," Casperson told MLive. "So, that's what we're trying to do here."

On Thursday, Jan. 25, all 26 Republican senators voted to advance SBs 652, 653, and 654 to the state House of Representatives, where they were referred to the natural resources committee.

Committee chair Rep. Gary Howell, R-North Branch, a sponsor of a companion bill introduced in December, said he plans to hold a hearing after the committee finishes with another Casperson bill that would let counties veto state land purchases.

Democrats spent hours Thursday trying to poke holes in the legislation's impact by adding language that would make individual panel members civilly liable for injury or environmental damage resulting from a decision less health protective than the DEQ director's, or require any panel member be a Michigan resident.

All amendment attempts were voted down.

In floor statement, Sens. Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, and Steve Bieda, D-Warren, said the bills amend the Administrative Procedures and Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Acts to essentially hand regulatory authority to private industry.

"With a name like the 'Environmental Rules Review Committee,' the bills before us sound like the reforms we've been waiting for years to implement," said Bieda.

"It sounds like we can finally get a chance to review and modernize the outdated PFAS regulations to protect the residents of Kent County."

But Bieda said the devil is in the details. Eleven voting members of the rules review panel would include:

- One person representing the solid waste industry.

- One person representing a statewide manufacturing group.

- One person representing a statewide small business group.

- One person representing the oil and gas industry.

- One person representing a statewide agricultural group.

- One person representing public electric utilities.

- One person representing local governments.

- One person representing a statewide environmental group.

- One person representing a land conservancy group.

- One person representing the general public.

- One person who is a medical professional.

Rules panel members would be appointed to 4-year terms by the governor and subject to Senate approval. Directors of the DEQ, Department of Health and Human Services and Michigan Economic Development Corporation would be non-voting members.

The legislation would prohibit anyone who previously worked for the DEQ within the last three years from serving on the committee.

Decisions would be made by majority vote. Nine members is a quorum. Meetings would be held in public and hearings would be held on proposed rules. The panel would get a year to make a decision about proposed regulations.

"If you actually read the bills, you will find that this so-called review committee is actually a ploy to implode our most trusted protections and make it easier for businesses to exploit our lands," Bieda said.

The legislation "packs the committee with biased members from the very industries that seek to profit from our natural resources -- effectively, and I hate to use the cliche -- putting the fox in charge of the hen house," he said.

Gov. Rick Snyder's office and the DEQ declined to take a position on the bills this week, both saying they planned to continue working with legislators.

"DEQ staff have recently met with stakeholders who are encouraging the passage of this package of bills to gain a better understanding of the intent of the legislation, the perceived issues the bills are focused on addressing and to have our questions answered," said agency spokesperson Tiffany Brown.

The Michigan Chamber said the legislation expands "openness, accountability and transparency in DEQ rule-making."

"It's time to reinvent the top-down regulatory culture at the DEQ and we believe this legislation will get the job done," said Michigan Chamber CEO Rich Studley.

James Clift, MEC policy director, says the bills undermine the accountability of current or future administrations by allowing regulators to wipe their hands of decision making and argue that final authority over rule-making and permits is out of their hands.

Snyder or successors would have to demonstrate cause for any panel member's removal, unlike other appointed positions which serve at the governor's will. Appointees could overrule a new administration's rule-making.

Clift argues that taxpayers would likely bear the burden of any litigation arising from challenged panel decisions, for which panel members would not be accountable.

While the DEQ wouldn't necessarily cede quite as much authority with the permit appeal committee, Clift said the public would not be allowed to appeal a permitting decision, only the permit applicant.

Clift is not aware of any such panel for other state departments.

"This is taking executive branch authority and giving to the regulated community," Clift said -- in essence, "demoting the governor" much the same way the "no stricter than federal" legislation would prohibit state regulations more stringent than federal rules.

The DEQ already "bend over backwards trying to get to 'yes' to give people a permit to do what they want to do, within the law," Clift said. "If anything, we have a department that's already in industry's corner, but this seals the deal."

Clift says the DEQ already issues the vast majority of permits, but Casperson calls that misleading because the numbers don't account for people or businesses who quit the process because it's convoluted and expensive. He claims the DEQ puts regular folk through the wringer for trying to build a culvert or fill wetlands.

He claims the DEQ routinely steps outside statutory boundaries with permit reviews, citing as example alleged scrutiny on emergency roads around the proposed Aquila Resources Back Forty gold mine in Menominee County, which is nearing final approval to remove acres of wetlands as part of plans to build 700-foot deep, 83-acre open pit mine on the Menominee River banks.

Permitting for the mine has taken several years. It's vociferously opposed by local tribes and environmental groups, who've sued to force the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take over the process.

Casperson said he was "pulled into" the fight by Toronto-based Aquila as the company seeks clearance of the final hurdle. He said scrutiny on existing roads has nothing to do with permit requirements.

"There is zero reason to have that included in questioning to get a wetlands permit, yet that's part of the stuff the company is having to deal with," he said.

Conversely, Clift says legislators need to consider the wider implications of what they're proposing. Should an industry-stacked panel get final say in how much of the carcinogenic 1,4-dioxane plume under Ann Arbor gets cleaned up?

"Basically this is an effort by industry to be put in charge of regulating themselves," he said.