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Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
State budget omits stewardship funds, includes $1 million for timber industry groups
Pelican River area in Wisconsin (Jay Brittain | Courtesy of the photographer) When Gov. Tony Evers made his 2025-27 budget proposal in February, it included an annual $100 million appropriation to fund the broadly popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program for another 10 years. The budget he signed after 1 a.m. Thursday included zero money for the program, which is set to lapse next summer. While a separate piece of legislation to re-authorize the program has been introduced by Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), the failure to provide added money in the budget has raised concerns that the program — which allows the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to provide grant funding to acquire, conserve and maintain public lands — could fail to survive the political tumult of divided government and die. Even though the conservation of public lands is widely popular among both Democratic and Republican voters in the state, a handful of Republican legislators have grown increasingly hostile to the program, particularly since the state Supreme Court ruled last year that the Legislature's Joint Committee on Finance doesn't have the authority to hold up grants issued by the DNR through the program. Republicans complain that the acquisition of public land takes parcels off the property tax roles and prevents development projects. The Kurtz and Testin proposal aims to reach a compromise by re-authorizing the program while adding more legislative oversight by requiring that any land purchases over $1 million be approved through legislation. 'While I recognize all that has gone into reaching this compromise budget, I must share that I am deeply disappointed that Republican leaders would not agree to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program — even for just one more year through 2027,' Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) said in a statement. 'Here's the situation now: Knowles-Nelson reauthorization expires on June 20, 2026, giving the Legislature one year to take action before the deadline, and Republicans have indicated they will bring this back to the agenda this fall. Trust that I will keep up the pressure on Republicans and hold them to their word. I will continue to be a strong advocate for this long-standing bipartisan promise.' The lack of stewardship program funds in the final state budget led Evers to use his partial veto authority to prevent spending money on five individual public lands projects that legislators had earmarked in the bill. 'I object to providing an earmark for a natural resources project when the Legislature has abandoned its responsibility to reauthorize and ensure the continuation of the immensely popular Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program,' Evers stated in his veto message. 'Instead of renewing the program and helping the many, the Legislature has opted to benefit the politically connected few. The Legislature must do its job and renew the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program.' The DNR budget also includes funds for a $1 million grant to the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association (GLTPA) and the Wisconsin Paper Council to craft a Forestry Industrywide Strategic Plan. This provision was included by the Joint Committee on Finance in its late night session last Friday and has raised concerns from some environmental groups that it is a giveaway to industry groups to push for increased extraction of resources from the state's forest lands. 'Taxpayers should not be made to underwrite private industry studies with no public benefit or input. Would they decide how to manage local, state, and federal forests in this study? Would it be published?' Andy Olsen, senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said. 'One million dollars is very generous with taxpayer dollars for a sketchy study with no public benefit.' The GLTPA has been involved in efforts in Wisconsin's Northwoods to oppose conservation projects and move local land use policies to be more pro-extraction by encouraging increased logging and the expansion of the state's mining industry. The association's director, Henry Schienebeck, has been influential in Oneida County's effort to rewrite its comprehensive plan to be friendlier to industry and worked with American Stewards of Liberty, a Texas-based right-wing anti-conservation group, to oppose land conservation such as the Pelican River Forest. DNR spokesperson Andrea Sedlacek said the department is 'monitoring this and all other relevant DNR budget motions as the process plays out' but did not yet have information on what the development of the strategic plan would look like or if other people or groups would be involved in its development. But despite the grant being given only to industry groups, some environmental advocates say it's a win. Fred Clark, former executive director of Wisconsin Green Fire, said the development of such a plan is something the organization has been advocating for over the past several years. Clark pointed to a study of the health of the state's forests Green Fire published last year and said that because the state's paper mills have largely been shuttered, there are fewer places for the state's foresters to bring their timber, destabilizing the industry. Without a plan to find new uses for the state's timber, the economics of Wisconsin's working forest lands could change, resulting in land sales and development that results in forests being cut down to use the land for other purposes — ultimately harming the health of Wisconsin's forests. 'The focus that we would like to see there is not necessarily on producing more timber, because we already grow a lot more timber than we harvest,' Clark said. 'What we really think the state needs is a strategic focus on developing new forest products and helping expand and refine forest products markets so that we've got places for our wood to go.' Clark said he foresees the development of the plan working through the state's Council on Forestry, which includes members representing industry, environmental groups, state and federal agencies, legislators and landowners. He added that for the project to succeed it needs input from all those groups, including those with records such as the GLTPA. 'We need everybody at the table for this, and there's a wide range of points of view in the forestry community,' Clark said. 'Great Lakes Timber Professionals have been an active member of the Council on Forestry almost since day one. We won't succeed if we don't have a pretty strong consensus all the way from the environmental groups to groups like Great Lakes Timber Professionals. So I think there's a lot of common ground there. The most important next step for us is to see that there's a really broad based committee within the Council on forestry that's helping guide this work.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Wildlife, land conservation groups push for tweaks to Republican stewardship grant bill
Rep. Tony Kurtz testifies on his proposed legislation to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner) Organizations representing wildlife, land conservation and local governments testified Wednesday at a public hearing to push for the passage of a Republican bill to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program while advocating for a number of amendments to the bill's text. The proposal's authors, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), say the current version of the bill is a starting point for negotiations. Without a deal, the 35-year-old program will lapse despite its popularity among voters. The challenge for legislators is that despite overwhelming public support for land conservation, a subset of the Republican members of the Legislature have grown opposed to the grant program. In their view, the grant program allows land to be taken off the local property tax roll and blocks commercial development. That opposition has grown stronger since the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision last year that the Legislature's Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee's authority to place anonymous holds on stewardship grant projects is unconstitutional. Kurtz has said that without returning some level of legislative oversight, the Republican opposition to the program won't get on board with reauthorizing it. But the bill also needs to be palatable to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers so that he will sign it and any Republican opposition to the bill could make the votes of Democratic legislators more important. In an effort to recruit Republican holdouts, the bill includes a provision that requires the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to submit a list to the Legislature each January of any major land acquisitions costing more than $1 million the department plans to purchase with stewardship funds that year. The Legislature would then need to approve each proposed project in a piece of legislation and provide the required appropriation. To gain the support of environmental groups, the bill allows stewardship dollars to be used for the first time to fund habitat restoration projects. Following a recent trend of Republican-authored legislation, the bill separates the policy changes to the program from the budget appropriation to fund it in an attempt to sidestep Evers' partial veto pen. Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at non-profit land trust organization Gathering Waters, said in his testimony at the hearing Wednesday that the bill's authors had to 'try and thread a challenging political path towards reauthorization.' At the hearing, testifying members of the public mainly highlighted two areas for improvement on the bill — clarifying how the DNR should prioritize habitat restoration, facility upkeep and land acquisition in award grants and more clearly laying out how the legislative approval process for major land acquisitions will work. As currently written, the bill would require the DNR to prioritize property development over land acquisition projects. Brian Vigue, freshwater policy director for Audubon Great Lakes, said those types of grants are so different that they should be considered separately. 'Because habitat management projects are so different from land acquisition projects, it really will make it difficult for the DNR to determine which of the two types of grant applications would have priority over the other,' he said. 'It's kind of an apples to oranges comparison to make so I think a practical solution to this challenge is to create a separate appropriation for wildlife habitat grants.' A number of organizations testifying called for more direct language outlining how the legislative oversight process will work, such as binding timelines for when the Legislature must consider the projects on the DNR list, clear guidelines for how projects will be evaluated and quickly held votes on project approval. Representatives of organizations that work to purchase private land and conserve it through conservation easements or deals with the state said that the opportunities to purchase a piece of land and save it for future enjoyment by the broader public come rarely and that those real estate transactions can often be complicated and take a long time. If a deal is largely in place except for the required legislative approval — which could potentially take years or never even come up for a vote — landowners might be unwilling to participate in the process. 'Opportunities to provide such access sometimes only come once in a generation,' said Tony Abate, conservation director at Groundswell Conservancy, a non-profit aimed at conserving land in south central Wisconsin. 'We are concerned with the funding threshold and the logistics of the proposed major land acquisition program. Real estate near population centers is expensive, and we often compete with non-conservation buyers to secure farmland or recreational lands.' Abate said that of the conservancy's 16 current projects, four would surpass the $1 million threshold and require legislative approval. He suggested raising the threshold to $5 million. Carlin, with Gathering Waters, said the provision as currently written could indefinitely delay projects. 'We appreciate legislators' concerns with oversight, and we welcome discussion about how to provide effective and efficient oversight,' he said. 'Unfortunately, the current proposal lacks defined timelines, transparent evaluation processes or mechanisms to require timely votes. Without these elements, worthy conservation projects could languish indefinitely. So we would ask that any review process include binding timelines, transparent project evaluation and timely votes to ensure strong oversight while maintaining predictability for applicants.' At the hearing, members of the committee asked few questions of the testifying groups and members of the public. Democrats on the committee pushed more than once to make sure they see the partner bill providing the money for the program before voting on the policy changes. All of the testimony at the hearing Wednesday was either to provide information only to the legislators or in favor of the bill. The committee received one written comment against the bill's passage, from the Wisconsin Bear Hunters' Association. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Audubon Society pushes lawmakers to protect stewardship funds
Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) speaks about how advocates can convince Republicans to fund the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program at the Great Lakes Audubon Society's 2025 advocacy day. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner) Wisconsin Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said Wednesday the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program is 'on life support,' adding that some of his Republican colleagues give it a 20% chance of being extended in this year's budget debate before its expiration next year. Kurtz, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine), Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Secretary Karen Hyun spoke Wednesday to a gathering of members of local Audubon Society chapters and staff of Audubon Great Lakes ahead of the organization's advocacy day to lobby legislators to support conservation funding. The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program was established in 1989 to help preserve local natural environments. Throughout its history, the program has enjoyed mostly bipartisan support as it has provided grants through the DNR to help local governments and nonprofits fund the acquisition, restoration and maintenance of public land, parks and wildlife habitats. In recent years, the program has become a flashpoint in the fight over the boundary between the executive and legislative branches of state government. Until a decision by the state Supreme Court last year, any member of the Legislature's powerful Joint Committee on Finance had the authority to hold up a project funded through the stewardship program by placing an anonymous hold on that spending. The Court's decision entirely removed the Legislature's oversight of the program, a change that further turned Republicans against its continued existence. 'We could make that process better, where it was not just one individual not liking something and being able to kill a project. I agree with that,' Kurtz said. 'When the court case came in and basically took that entire process away, that was not good either, because there was no oversight. And I understand some of you believe whatever the DNR does is fine. That's great. Some of my colleagues don't believe that.' Especially in the northern part of the state, Republicans have objected to stewardship funds being used to conserve land that then gets taken off of local property tax rolls — taking money away from already struggling small local governments. In other cases, Republicans have complained that proposals for projects under the grants rely too heavily on the state funds without the local governments providing enough of their own money. In his proposed 2025-26 budget, Gov. Tony Evers has requested the stewardship program be increased from its current funding of $33 million per year to $100 million per year for 10 years. Kurtz said he's working on a bill that would return some oversight authority over the program to the Legislature without the anonymous objection provision. He added, though, that if the Audubon members went to Republicans Wednesday saying, ''It's the governor's budget or nothing,' you already lost.' 'I don't need you to do that, because, I'm being very sincere, I'm trying to keep this alive, and if you go over there [saying that], there's a good chance it'll die,' he said. 'So don't do that. Let them, especially when you're meeting with my colleagues, ask them what [their] concerns are. 'Why don't you like this? What is it about the program that we can do better so we can have another day to make sure we protect all our wonderful birds and animals.'' Habush Sinykin noted that 93% of Wisconsinites support the program and said that in her purple district covering Milwaukee's northwest suburbs, the stewardship program is hugely popular. She said the anonymous hold of a project in the district drew the ire of community members of both parties. 'There's a lot of understanding at the legislative level that in these uncertain times, with these newer maps, that our state representatives and senators, including those on the Joint Finance Committee, have to be wary and strategic about issues like this that are bipartisan,' she said. 'They're actually non-partisan. They are successful community building issues. So I think that's a little bit where your leverage is to lean in hard. How popular these are.' Aside from the stewardship program, the society members lobbying in the Capitol Wednesday were pushing for the state to increase protections for wetlands and grasslands, advance sustainable practices in the state's agriculture and forestry industries and grow renewable energy production. On Wednesday morning, the administration of President Donald Trump announced a proposed rule that would rescind habitat protections for endangered species across the country. Marnie Urso, Audubon Great Lakes' senior director of policy, said that with the federal government retreating from conservation efforts, state level efforts have become more important. 'With that uncertainty, this kind of work is even more important, for state lawmakers to be on the path to conserving our natural resources,' Urso said. 'The Knowles Nelson project program is bipartisan. It always has been a permanent foundation. So we know it has wide, widespread bipartisan support.' Urso said leaning into that popularity could help advance the group's priorities. 'Even Trump voters like the Knowles Nelson Conservation Fund,' she said. 'So we're confident that by coming and talking, telling our story and getting to understand what's important to our lawmakers, we can inform those decisions. And now it's more important than ever to have state conservation programs continue.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
