by Jeff Peterson

Mr. Peterson, of Cumberland, wrote this column for the Polk County Ledger.
 

People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either being made. So goes the old saying, brought to mind by the fact that Governor McCallum recently received for his signature the new biennial state budget, which runs to nearly 1000 pages and $50 billion.

As laws go, the state budget is the giant kielbasa.

The most disgusting aspect of the budget process has to do with the legislature’s habit of slipping in items which really don’t belong there and which would never stand the light of day if proposed as stand-alone legislation.  If you’re a legislator and owe somebody a favor, the budget bill is the way to go.  No awkward public hearings, no unfriendly amendments, no problem.

This year’s sausage maker of the year award has to go to Republican John Gard of Peshtigo, who represents the Assembly on the powerful Joint Finance Committee. For reasons which may be clear only to himself, Gard inserted language in the budget that would split the state’s Department of Natural Resources into two separate agencies, spinning off a new Department of Forestry.

Earlier efforts by Assembly Republicans to rend the DNR in half -- one half to deal with conservation and recreation, the other with pollution -- went nowhere, mostly because absolutely no one supported the idea.

Two public hearings produced 115 speakers opposing the split and only eight in favor.  Virtually every environmental and sporting group in the state weighed in against the Republican plan, which was widely seen as a blatant attempt to weaken environmental protection.

But Representative Gard still carries that torch, insisting that splitting the DNR into its component parts would provide for more efficient management of the state’s natural resources.  Actually we’ve been there, done that.  Conservation programs, including forestry, existed apart from environmental management programs for air, water quality and waste until 1967, the year they were merged to form the modern DNR.

If they don’t recognized the benefits of integrated resource management from an ecological standpoint, you’d think Republicans like Gard would at least recognize the inherent efficiency of having all the various natural resource agencies under one roof.

Merrill Foto-News editor Richard Moore has called the proposed isolation of forestry management illogical.  “The creation of a Department of Forestry is absurd on its face,” he wrote in a recent column, “for taking forestry out of natural resources is a tacit assertion that forests are something other than a natural resource .... The victim in this political butchery is the integrated management of resources and a healthy environment that such management ensures.”

It may be that, having been shot down on the 50-50 DNR split, Gard is now pursuing an incremental approach toward dismantling the agency.  Once a separate forestry department is established, future budgets may give it more and more authority over other aspects of resource management.

One reason this doesn’t sit well with Wisconsin’s conservation community is that Gard’s plan would remove certain segments of the state’s resource management apparatus from citizen control.  Right now, the DNR is controlled by a citizen board which in turn is advised by a democratically elected body, the Conservation Congress -- a system which has been in place since 1928.  These mechanisms for public input would not be part of a new Department of Forestry.

Meeting in emergency session last week, the Natural Resources Board issued a statement calling on McCallum to veto those provisions of the budget bill which authorize the removal of forestry from the DNR.

“Forestry works hand-in-hand with the other functions in DNR to accomplish its mission and sustainably manage Wisconsin’s 16 million acres of forestland,” said board chairman Trygve Solberg.  “Our forests have been carefully stewarded by private and public landowners with guidance from the DNR.  Splitting this important function from the larger department would cause great confusion and weaken natural resource management in Wisconsin.”

To share your opinion on splitting the DNR, contact Governor McCallum by phone at (608) 266-1212 or by email at wisgov@gov.state.wi.us.