Red And Blue States Cough Up For Land Conservation

"Suburban Cobb County faces what officials say is an urgent problem, and as with scores of other communities nationwide, voters are being asked to help fix it in November. The problem is expanding development and too little parkland for a growing population. A measure on the ballot in Cobb will test a national trend over the last two decades for bipartisan support on government-funded land conservation."

"The Cobb measure is one of at least 123 tax or bond initiatives on ballots nationwide in November at the state level or lower, according to research compiled by the Trust for Public Land, a California-based nonprofit group. Nearly $6 billion for land conservation is at stake."

"And unlike other questions facing voters, partisanship plays only a minimal role in the voting, according to the trust, which has analyzed such votes going back to 1988. That's about when local and state funding for land conservation began to overtake federal funding, said Ernest Cook, director of the trust's conservation finance program. Of the 1,862 initiatives tracked since then, 1,422 -- or 76 percent -- have passed. In 2004, voters approved about 75 percent of the 219 measures, worth a total of $4.1 billion."