The bulldog of Constableville

As many a fish will tell you, it isn't easy swimming upstream. There are people out in our communities, however, who spend a lot of their time going against the flow. Some of them do so out of pure contrariness, but a few of them do so because they have a moral compass that tells them that the easy path is not all that often the right one.

Bruce Krug, erstwhile Lewis County legislator and chairman of that body, is one of the latter. Since he left the Legislature at the end of 2005, he has hardly kept the low profile of a retired local official. He has, rather, become the scourge of the all-terrain-vehicle crowd and a consistent opponent of the legislature on which he once served.

In the process, he has been vilified, blogged about (and not in a good way) and had his picture posted in the office of the Lewis County trails coordinator, with the caption "Do your job well – they're watching." And, indeed, he is.

Bruce's passionate pursuit of forcing county officials to reconsider their decisions on the extensive opening of roads to ATVs that is the heart of their trail system is not going to earn him the Lewis County Citizen of the Year award – although, given the reason he is pursuing this often frustrating goal, he shouldn't be barred from that honor.

In his comfortably cluttered living room, Bruce talked about his battle against what he sees as the county's official endorsement of a trail system whose foundation is built on a violation of state law. His reason is, for him, simple: elected officials should not be flaunting a violation of state law simply because some people are making money from it.

"It's flat out illegal behavior," he said. "They're trying to justify it for economic reasons, but local government shouldn't behave that way."

His growing conviction that a broad-based opening of public highways to ATVs is not justified under the law started with an advisory then-County Attorney Kevin McArdle presented to the Legislature in 2002. As more and more public roads were opened to ATVs, most of them with no legitimate connection to off-road trails, Bruce became more convinced that towns and the county were violating state law.

"I decided that we ought to fix it and abide by the law," Bruce said. "The reaction I got from the ATV people was 'Krug's an idiot and hates all ATVs.' I don't. I don't have any problem with ATV users as long as they follow the laws."

When, as chairman of the Legislature, Bruce got an opinion from the state attorney general in August of 2005 that the county's proposed system violated state law, he started working to change it, and in December, as his parting gift to the county, he muscled through a law rescinding county road openings. That didn't last long, however, as the new Legislature regime simply went back to the drawing board and started anew.

Bruce, since then, has worked hard to force the county to present what he views as a legal trails system, one that isn't built on public highways with just enough random private trails to present the appearance of propriety. It's an uphill battle, with some powerful business interests just as fervid about retaining the trails system as Bruce is about drastically changing it.

Along the way, he has helped out in several court challenges to the law, two of which have gone the way of the folks opposed to the county's trail system. Yet another is pending, and there may be more waiting in the weeds to sprout up.

The lawsuits are not something Bruce is particularly happy about. But, he said, the county has not left any other option. "Making people take them to court is not a way to operate. It's like they're saying they're breaking the law for our own good."

Through all this, Bruce has remained singularly calm about the level of opposition he has met from the ATV folks. Part of his serenity comes from his bedrock belief in his position. Part of it is that he just doesn't rattle easily – and his dictionary doesn't have an entry for "quit."

Asked if he believes there is an acceptable compromise position, Bruce said that any trail system that actually followed state law would be fine with him. Private trails and trails on appropriate public land that are not dependent on miles and miles of public highways to succeed won't face any Krug opposition.

There is one aspect of the ATV crowd that bugs Bruce, however. It's what he sees as a growing sense of entitlement that many ATV owners seem to have.

"If somebody buys an ATV, they'd better know where they're going to ride it. They shouldn't expect the public to provide riding places for them. If I bought a boat, I wouldn't expect the public to pay for a canal that links my favorite lakes," he said.

Just about every ATV owner has a trailer to haul their rides, he noted, as do boat owners. Since they're bringing the ATVs to Lewis County on trailers, it isn't unreasonable to have them haul to an off-road trail system.

County officials continue to see Bruce's position as little more than irritating. That is no deterrent in his quest to force the Lewis County Legislature to adhere to the law. He may not immediately triumph, but I'd bet a sack of $50s he isn't going to quit.