Misuse of Funds

Several billboards have gone up around the northwest touting a website that Jay Gordon with WA Dairy Federation says is a big concern.

GORDON: The big concern here is that this appears to be an activist campaign and if you go to the whatsupstream website, the very homepage you click on it and there's a button on it that says click here to take action and it produces a form letter that they say will be sent to your legislators based on your zip code. Ok, that's fine, free speech and this is the United States and that's all fine and dandy except that the entire thing is paid for by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Any research done on this issue from a federal standpoint say that's a no-no.

GORDON: You can't use federal dollars to lobby Congress or state legislators or county commissioners. It's funding, lobbying and advocacy and over $500-thousand dollars has been allocated to this project to develop websites and advocacy and advertising to drive people to their website which is an advocacy website.

Gordon and others are reaching out to our elected officials.

GORDON: I had a chance to talk to Dan Newhouse about it, he's aware of it. His office is looking into it. I know there's been some communication with Suzanne Delbene's office, it's in her district and obviously we want EPA to stop this, want to see why they funded it in the first place, want to see why you seem to be cart blanche fund a project that's attacking farmers and funding advocacy.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.