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Green Says 'Cumbersome' DNR Should Be Split in Two: Move Would Shield Conservation Efforts From Politics, He Says

Posted on: Saturday, 13 May 2006, 03:05 CDT

By Patrick Marley and Lee Bergquist, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

May 13--Madison -- Republican gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Mark Green unveiled a plan Friday to split the state Department of Natural Resources into two agencies.

Green said the vastness of the agency has led to a lack of focus and poor decisions.

"The DNR, I think, has become too broad and too cumbersome," he said.

Scott Hassett, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's natural resources secretary, called splitting the department "a big step backward" because interrelated programs should be overseen by one agency.

Green first announced the plan Friday in remarks at the Wisconsin Conservation Congress Convention in his hometown of Green Bay.

He said he would split the agency to create a Department of Conservation, Forestry and Outdoor Recreation and a Department of Environmental Quality. The former would oversee state parks, fisheries, wildlife and forestry. The latter would enforce environmental laws and manage air and water quality.

The split would insulate conservation programs from politics and ensure that conservation funds are not spent on other efforts, he said.

The environmental secretary would be named by the governor, but the head of the conservation agency would be appointed by the Natural Resources Board, Green said.

"I want the decisions to be based not on politics but on science and the views of the Conservation Congress," he said.

Green's plan would put Wisconsin in line with Minnesota and Michigan, which each have separate conservation and environmental agencies.

Green noted that the DNR, which spends about $500 million a year, is frequently in the middle of heated public debates. The agency tried to block Milwaukee festivals from launching fireworks from the island across the Summerfest grounds, but reached a compromise on the issue last year.

More recently, in trying to protect shorelines, Doyle and the agency set rules to limit the size of piers that critics say will lead to many homeowners having to modify their docks or get permits for them. The DNR maintains that 99% of the state's piers will be unaffected by the change.

Hassett said creating a new bureaucracy would likely be costly. And he said it makes more sense to keep one department that, for instance, manages fish and oversees water quality. "Our programs are integrated, and it's one of our strengths," Hassett said.

But Senate President Alan Lasee (R-De Pere) praised Green's idea, saying the DNR had grown "unwieldy and certainly unwilling to work with people."

Assembly Speaker John Gard (R-Peshtigo), who is running for Green's seat in the U.S. House, said the proposal would clear up "blurred lines of accountability."

The proposal resurrects an idea that surfaces in Madison from time to time.

In 2001, Gard and then-Sen. Robert Welch (R-Redgranite) tried breaking up the department, but then-Gov. Scott McCallum, also a Republican, vetoed the measure.

The DNR was once two agencies, but Republican Gov. Warren Knowles consolidated them in 1968 in an effort to make government more efficient.

In 1995, the Legislature gave Republican Gov. Tommy G. Thompson the power to appoint the secretary of the DNR -- a move that Thompson said would make the DNR more responsive. Others said it made the agency more partisan.

Former DNR Secretary George Meyer applauded the idea of returning to the board the authority to hire and fire the DNR secretary.

In part to appease business interests, McCallum replaced Meyer, saying he wanted to have his own secretary running the agency.

But Meyer on Friday sharply attacked the proposal to divide the DNR into two agencies.

"When you deal with issues like fish and wildlife habitat, you need the natural resources people working with biologists," said Meyer, executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.

"When you have two agencies, they end up pointing fingers at each other," he added.

Environmental attorney Peter Peshek said Green's plan "would be a mistake," adding that a single agency should be in charge of all environmental and natural resource matters.

Peshek decried the partisanship between the Legislature and the DNR, saying the agency grew more political in part because it was brought into the governor's cabinet in 1995.

Peshek was nominated DNR secretary by the Natural Resources Board in 1992, but withdrew several days later after Democrats and environmentalists raised concerns about his industry connections.

When Doyle ran for governor four years ago, he called for returning the appointment power of the DNR secretary to the seven-member board. But since taking office, he has not pursued the policy.

Doyle aide Dan Leistikow said the governor still supports that plan, but that he had not tried to implement it because the Republican-controlled Senate has blocked four of his five nominees to the board.

Doyle campaign spokeswoman Melanie Fonder said in a statement that Doyle had done a good job running the agency and protecting the environment.

She said donations to Green from the oil industry and his support for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge showed Green was "in the pocket of big polluters."

In response, Green said: "They don't seem to have any ideas; they just want to throw stones."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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Source: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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