A sign acknowledging Stewardship program support at Firemen's Park in Verona. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Democrats in the Wisconsin state Legislature released their proposal for saving the broadly popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program from lapsing next year. The bill marks the latest step in a legislative effort to save the conservation program — a goal for which members of both political parties have expressed optimism.  

The stewardship grant program through the Department of Natural Resources allows the state to fund the purchase and maintenance of public lands. Created 35 years ago, the program is supported by a large swathe of Wisconsin voters, but a subset of Republicans in the Legislature have grown increasingly hostile to its continuation. 

Those Republicans argue the burden of land conservation falls largely on their rural districts in northern Wisconsin, which has the most land available for recreational purposes but the state purchasing that land takes it off the property tax rolls.

Republicans have also complained that the program lacks legislative oversight since the state Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision last year that the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee doesn’t have the authority to hold up projects through the program. 

Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk), one of the program’s strongest critics, has suggested she’d support re-authorizing the program if it included provisions that capped the amount of government-owned land in a county or allowed counties to sell off existing conservation land.

Without action, the program will end next summer. In his initial budget proposal, Gov. Tony Evers had asked for the program to be provided $100 million per year for 10 years. The version of the budget signed into law in July did not include the program’s re-authorization. 

Another bill authored by Republican Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) would re-authorize the program for six years at $28 million per year. To gain the support of the Republicans who want more oversight of the program, the bill would require that any land acquisitions that cost more than $1 million be approved by the full Legislature. 

Tuesday’s proposal from Democrats would re-authorize the program for six years at $72 million per year. The bill would also create an independent board with oversight authority over the program. 

The 17-member board would include members of the majority and minority in both chambers of the Legislature; two representatives from environmental organizations; two representatives of hunting, fishing or trapping interests; two DNR representatives, including one member from the Natural Resources Board; one representative from the Department of Tourism; one representative of the outdoor recreation industry; one representative from the Ice Age Trail Alliance; a representative of a federally recognized Native American tribe in the state; one local government representative and two members of the public. Members of the board would serve staggered three-year terms. 

Under the bill, the board would meet at least quarterly and have the authority to advise the DNR on all projects through the program. On projects involving grants of more than $2.5 million, the board would have full approval authority. If the board doesn’t meet to vote on a project within 120 days, it would be automatically approved. 

The Democratic proposal has been co-sponsored by all 60 Democrats in the Assembly and Senate, signaling the broad support for the bill among the Democratic caucuses. 

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) tells the Wisconsin Examiner that the proposal involves a lot of thoughtful effort from Democrats trying to make a “good faith” effort to answer Republican concerns about oversight over the program while getting it re-authorized. 

“Our intent in introducing these companion bills in the Senate and the Assembly was premised on a great deal of thought and seriousness,” she says. “That we have the expectation that Republican legislators will take it seriously, because, like us, they have been hearing from their constituents and constituents from across the state. This is an issue that people in Wisconsin 90% approve and they want action, and they want legislators to demonstrate that they can work together and lead with our shared values to get something done.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Kurtz said his intention remains working to find a bipartisan solution to re-authorizing the program. 

“It’s always been our intention to find a bipartisan path forward to ensuring the Stewardship Program’s future,” the spokesperson said. “We haven’t reviewed their proposal yet, but look forward to continued discussions on this important issue this fall.”

Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at the non-profit land trust organization Gathering Waters, says the fate of the program is now up to Republican leaders and their ability to compromise. Carlin points out that it’s clear there aren’t 17 Republican votes in the Senate to support reauthorization. 

“As far as anybody can tell, there’s not 17 Republican senators that are going to vote to reauthorize Knowles-Nelson,” he says. “If they were to choose that strategy of trying to do this with only Republican votes, my fear and expectation is the bill would wind up becoming so weighed down with poison pills and anti-conservation measures, it would wind up not being a workable proposal. On the other hand if leaders in the Senate were willing to say ‘OK, this can be a bipartisan exercise, nobody’s going to get quite what they want,’ I think we’re going to see there are 15 Democratic senators eager to find a solution and we could get a decent bill passed with pretty overwhelming support from both parties.”

Carlin says he sees the Democrats’ oversight board idea as a good way to avoid the Joint Finance Committee “veto fiasco” that previously held up projects through the program while allowing the board to make “smart, educated and informed decisions” separate from the political games of the legislative process. 

However in recent years under Wisconsin’s divided government, legislative proposals have been met with hopes for bipartisan compromise only to end in partisan bickering. Last session, a proposal to get $125 million out the door to clean up PFAS contamination across the state died after initial optimism after Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree on the bill’s language. 

“That’s a real concern. Where we had the most heartburn and worry coming out of the state budget, this Legislature does not have a good track record of getting things done,” Carlin says. “Even though there were promises made that legislators would come back to work and get Knowles-Nelson done, there’s not a lot of precedent for legislators working together. There are folks on the Republican Senate side who are simply not going to work in good faith to get this done.”

He says Felzkowski’s ideas on the subject are “not serious proposals” but that there are 10 or 12 Republicans in the Senate who value conservation and understand how important it is to the state’s voters. 

“If they really engage with the Democrats’ proposal and find middle ground, we can find that success without too much heartache,” he says. “We do know that everybody’s constituents want to see this get done.”

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The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled — to vote on a fraction of the budget areas it had originally planned and to release part of the literacy funding that is set to expire next week.  

Legislative leaders have been working behind closed doors over the last week to negotiate with Gov. Tony Evers and work out the details of the state budget as the end of the fiscal year approaches next week. 

Areas of the budget still left to take up are at the center of negotiations including the University of Wisconsin system, where Republicans have considered cuts, and the Department of Children and Families, which is responsible for the state’s Child Care Counts program. Evers has said he would veto a budget without funding for the program, which will run out of federal money soon. The committee also still needs to take up the Department of Health Services, the Department of Transportation, the capital budget and more. 

The committee co-chairs did not take questions from reporters ahead of the meeting, but as the meeting started Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said the other agencies “will be taken up at a later date.” He didn’t specify when that would be.

The budget committee did approve the budget for several state agencies including the Department of Natural Resources, part of the Department of Justice, the Higher Education Aids Board, the Department of Administration and the Tourism Department. Each action the committee did take passed along partisan lines.

Portion of $50 million for literacy released

The committee voted unanimously to release $9 million of the nearly $50 million left in funding for literacy initiatives that was first allocated in the 2023-25 state budget. The majority of the money has been withheld by lawmakers since 2023 and is slated to lapse back into the state’s general fund if not released by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

Lawmakers said action on the other $40 million will be taken soon. 

“This has taken a long time to get here. One of the things that this bill was originally about was to make it so that kids could read. We want to help kids read. We want to give schools the tools to be able to do that,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said. “Unfortunately, it’s taken this Legislature a tremendous amount of time to allocate the funds for that, and ultimately, that’s simply not acceptable.” 

Born said he is glad lawmakers were releasing part of the money Friday and would have further motions on it in the future. He also said the delay on the funding was Evers’ fault. Lawmakers were holding the funding back due to a partial veto Evers exercised on a bill related to the literacy funding. The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Wednesday that partial veto was  unconstitutional and restored the original language of the law.

“We’re glad that justice has been done, and we’re here now with the proper accounts and able to do these two separate motions here in the next couple of days in the committee to get this program that was a bipartisan program moving along,” Born said. 

Certain projects funded in DNR budget, Knowles-Nelson not 

Noticeably missing from the Republicans’ Department of Natural Resource motion was funding for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, which allows the agency to fund the purchase of public land and upkeep of recreational areas.

Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) said lawmakers were missing an opportunity by not funding the program in the budget. 

“There’s a lot of individual pet projects in here that seem to be of interest to individual legislators, but there aren’t a lot of park projects that are of interest to Wisconsinites, particularly Knowles-Nelson,” Andraca said.

The committee approved funding in the budget for an array of projects including $42 million to help with modernization of the Rothschild Dam, $500,000 to go towards the repair of a retaining wall for the Wisconsin Rapids Riverbank project, $2.2 million environmental remediation and redevelopment of Lake Vista Park in Oak Creek, $70,000 for a dredging project in Manitowoc River in the Town of Brillion, $1.75 million for dredging the Deerskin River and $100,000 for assistance with highway flooding in the Town of Norway in Racine County. 

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), who is the author of a bill to keep the program going, said lawmakers are working to ensure it handles the program in the best way, which is part of why the funding is not in the budget as of now. 

“We actually have until 30th of June of 2026 to work on this. It’s something that Sen. [Patrick] Testin and I have been working on along with our staff over the last six months. It’s something that is a bipartisan effort. We’ve met with so many different stakeholders, so many different groups, so many fellow legislators on getting this done,” Kurtz said. “We are committed to get it done.” 

Kurtz said that the hearing on the bill was “good” and there will be “a lot more coming up in the future” when it comes to Knowles-Nelson. 

The committee also approved raising nonresident vehicle admission sticker fees, nonresident campsite fees and campsite electricity fees. 

Office of School Safety, VOCA grants get state funding

The Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety will get 13 permanent staff positions and $1.57 million to continue its work. That’s about $700,000 less than what the agency had requested, but is about what Evers had proposed for the office. 

The office serves as a resource for K-12 schools — helping them improve security measures by providing training on crisis prevention and response, grants for safety enhancements, threat assessment training and mental health training. It also operates the Speak Up, Speak Out tipline where students can anonymously report safety concerns.

The Wisconsin DOJ will also get help filling funding gaps for Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grants left by federal funding cuts. 

Wisconsin’s federal allocation for VOCA grants has been cut from $40 million to $13 million. Domestic violence shelters and victim services organizations along with the state DOJ have been navigating the limited funding for over a year. The organizations that receive VOCA grants help people who are the victims of a crime by assisting them with finding housing, providing transportation to and from court appearances and navigating the criminal justice system.

The Republican-approved motion will provide $20 million to cover the federal funding loss. It will also provide $163,500 for two staff positions, which will expire in July 2027. The Wisconsin DOJ had requested an additional $66 million in the budget to make up for the funding gap. 

McGuire noted the funding would be significantly less than what the state agency had requested and would essentially create a two-year program rather than an ongoing one.

“[This] maintains the Legislature’s level of input, but it doesn’t actually maintain the same level of service because of the declining revenues as a result of the federal government,” McGuire said. “While we can’t fix all the things that are the result of what the federal government is doing wrong … this is something that will have an impact on communities across the state. It’s going to have an impact on people who’ve had the worst day and the worst week in the worst month of their life. It’s gonna have an impact on people who have been harmed by violence who have been in toxic, abusive relationships. It’s going to have an impact on people who desperately need services through no fault of their own. These are really vulnerable people and they should receive our support.  

Wisconsin Grants to get slight infusion, UW budget postponed 

The committee did not take up the budget for the University of Wisconsin system. It’s been one of the key issues for debate as Republican lawmakers have considered cuts, while Evers and UW leaders have said the university system needs $855 million in additional funding. Evers has said that in negotiations he and lawmakers were discussing a “positive number.”

The committee did take up the Higher Educational Aids Board, which is the agency responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s student financial aid system, investing in the Wisconsin Grant Program. The program provides grants to undergraduate Wisconsin residents enrolled at least half-time in degree or certificate programs.

The Wisconsin Grants program would receive an additional $5.6 million in 2025-26 and $11.9 million in 2026-27 under the proposal approved Friday. The UW system, private nonprofit colleges and Wisconsin Technical College System would receive equal dollar increases. It also includes a $75,000 increase for tribal college students.

Evers had proposed 20% increases for the Wisconsin Grants for the state’s public universities, private nonprofit colleges and technical colleges — a total $57.7 million investment.

The Wisconsin Technical Colleges System had requested $10.8 million in each year of the biennium, saying there has been a waitlist for the grants for the first time in 10 years and that list is projected to grow.

The committee also approved $3.5 million in 2026-27 in a supplemental appropriation for emergency medical services training costs to reimburse training and materials costs. 

“Recruiting volunteer EMS personnel is a challenge all over the state of Wisconsin — certainly is in my Senate district,” Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said. “We believe that this will remove one barrier to recruitment of volunteers in our EMS units all across the state.” 

Other portions of the budget approved Friday evening include: 

• $30 million to the Tourism Department for general marketing, and an additional $1 million in the second year of the budget, as well as about $113,000 for state arts organizations and two staff positions and funding for the Office of Outdoor Recreation. The motion includes $5 million for Taliesin Preservation Inc. for restoration projects at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin home located in Spring Green supporting private fundraising for an education center, the restoration of visitor amenities and the stabilization of some buildings.
• $193,700 to the Wisconsin Elections Commission with over $150,000 of that going toward information technology costs and the remaining going towards costs for the Electronic Registration Information Center.
• $20.9 million and 147 positions for 12 months of personnel related costs for a Milwaukee Type 1 facility, which is meant to serve as a portion of the replacement of youth prisons Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, which the state had been working to close for years. The 32-bed facility in Milwaukee has a planned completion date in October 2026.
• The WisconsinEye endowment received $10 million to continue video coverage of the Legislature.
• The committee also approved $11 million for grants to nine of Wisconsin’s 11 federally-recognized tribes. The committee has been excluding two tribes — the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa — from the grant funding for several years due to disputes over roads. The exclusion “strikes me as inappropriate,” McGuire said. He added that it’s “an insult to those people.” 

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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.

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Republicans on the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee rejected a funding request from the City of Ashland to build a new boat launch at Kreher Park. (City of Ashland)

A pair of Republican lawmakers has introduced legislation that would re-authorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, a popular program that allows the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to fund the purchase of public land and the upkeep of recreational areas. 

The decades-old program is set to expire next year and despite its bipartisan support among the state’s voters, a subset of Republicans in the Legislature — largely from the northern part of the state — have become increasingly opposed to the program due to concerns that it stops land from being developed for commercial activities. 

Until a 6-1 decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last summer, members of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee had the ability to place anonymous holds on proposed grants through the program, which resulted in many projects being delayed or prevented altogether. Without that ability, Republicans who were already wary of the program became more opposed because of what they characterize as a lack of legislative oversight. Proponents of the program say the Legislature exercises oversight through the budget writing process when it allocates funding for the program. 

In recent years, the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program has received $33 million annually in the state budget. In his budget request this year, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed re-authorizing the program with a $100 million annual budget. Republicans stripped that provision out of the budget along with most of Evers’ other proposals. 

Last week, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) introduced a bill that would keep the program alive with $28 million in annual funding. The bill would also create a major land acquisitions program for stewardship grant awards which would require the DNR to annually submit a list of all its proposed land acquisitions costing more than $1 million for that year. 

Those acquisitions would need to be approved by votes of the full Legislature. 

Additionally, the bill would create a sub-program to use stewardship grant funds for habitat restoration projects, require the DNR to prioritize projects that develop already existing public lands over new land acquisition, require local governments to match 20% of the state funding, get rid of the current 10-acre minimum size requirement and limit the state’s contribution to 40% of the total cost if the sale of a piece of land is already closed when stewardship funds are applied for. 

In a co-sponsorship memo, Kurtz and Testin, who did not respond to requests for an interview about the bill, said the initial proposal is meant to be the start of negotiations, not the final version of the bill. 

“It’s important to note what we’re proposing is not an agreed upon deal,” the memo states. “It’s a first offer to provide a starting place for negotiations on this important program. It’s very likely the bill will continue to change during the legislative process, but it’s important to put something forward to allow feedback, have open-minded conversations and ultimately find a good place to ensure the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program’s legacy continues.” 

At a meeting with the Wisconsin chapter of the Audubon Society in April, Kurtz said the program was on “life support” and he was trying to save it from dying but any bill would need to put some oversight on the DNR in order to receive enough Republican support. 

The opposition to the stewardship program from a subset of the Republican caucus in both chambers means the bill might require Democratic votes to pass the Legislature and reach Evers’ desk. 

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) has spent months pushing for the program’s reauthorization – often pointing to a stewardship grant project in her district that was subjected to an anonymous hold, the Cedar Gorge Clay Bluffs on Lake Michigan. She said the hold on that project angered a lot of her constituents of both parties. 

“That really got people upset,” she told the Wisconsin Examiner. “People would not at all want to see a reenactment in any fashion of that anonymous objection process.” 

Habush Sinykin said that she’s closely watching the bill to make sure it protects a program that enjoys wide support outside of the Capitol building and will stir up significant opposition if it’s allowed to die. 

“Once people understand that this program is at risk, they are coming forward to express their opposition to any permanent damage to the program,” she said. “And so what we are engaged in right now is this process to keep it going forward, and there is going to be ongoing negotiation, because the devil is in the details. We need to make sure that what is one step forward will not ultimately be two steps backward.” 

Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives for Gathering Waters, a non-profit aimed at land conservation across Wisconsin, said that Kurtz and Testin should be credited for working to get the conversation started and provisions in the bill like the habitat restoration program. But he added that there are still a lot of questions about how provisions such as the requirement for legislative approval will work. 

“I think part of what they are trying to balance here is a recognition that this is an incredibly popular program with voters, while trying to balance that against the fact that there are a handful of legislators who are deeply skeptical of the DNR and deeply skeptical of additional investments in conservation,” he said. “So I see that major land acquisitions component as a way for them to try and balance those competing interests. The way that that major land acquisitions program is currently described in the bill just leaves a lot of question marks.”  

The bill is set to receive a public hearing in the Assembly Committee on Forestry, Parks and Outdoor Recreation Wednesday at 11 a.m.