An oak savannah in southern Dane County that the Badgerland Foundation is working to conserve using Knowles-Nelson Stewardship funds (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

The broadly popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program is on life support after Wisconsin Senate Republicans canceled a vote on a GOP-authored bill to extend the program during the body’s floor session Wednesday. 

For nearly four decades, the program has allowed the state Department of Natural Resources to support the acquisition of land for conservation purposes. The program is set to expire June 30 when its funding runs out. 

Lawmakers have been working for nearly a year to reach an agreement on an extension. A Knowles-Nelson extension in Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed budget last year was stripped out by Republicans and a Democratic-authored bill supported by all 60 legislative Democrats has languished in a Republican-controlled committee. 

In recent years, a handful of legislative Republicans have become increasingly hostile to the stewardship program, complaining that it has taken too much land off local property tax rolls in the northern part of the state and that a state Supreme Court decision last year removed the Legislature’s oversight authority over the program’s spending. 

In January, Assembly Republicans passed a bill that would extend the program without any funding for land acquisition. With the Assembly holding its final scheduled floor session of the year on Thursday, the Senate’s failure to hold a vote on its version of the bill Wednesday means it’s unlikely a bill will make it to Evers’ desk. 

Democrats have said they won’t support a version of the bill that ends land acquisition under the program. 

In recent weeks, Republicans have begun to lay the groundwork for claiming that any failure to extend the program would be the Democrats’ fault. 

But Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), the author of the Republican proposal, said Wednesday after the bill was dropped from the schedule that the Senate needs to pass a version of the bill with 17 Republican votes.  With supporters and opponents of the program divided within the Republican caucus, advocates for the program have said for months it’s been clear that any version of stewardship extension would require bipartisan support. 

“This has been one of these bills that’s been very difficult to thread the needle on,” Testin said after the Wednesday floor session. “So it’s been sort of a tug of war, you do X, Y, and Z on one provision of the bill. You have members that raise concerns, and if you do X, Y and Z a different way, they’ve got concerns as well.”

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay), who wrote the Democratic proposal and has been involved in legislative negotiations over the program, said it’s disingenuous for Republicans to point fingers at Democrats, when Democrats are united in their support for the program and have tried to compromise. 

The initial bill proposed by Habush Sinykin included a provision to provide independent oversight of the program as a response to Republican concerns and in recent days offered a “stop gap” compromise of extending the program for one year with $5-6 million in land acquisition funding — about $10 million less than budgeted currently. On the floor on Wednesday, Democrats attempted to force a vote on a motion that would have extended the program for one year at current funding levels. 

“Their efforts to try to cast blame or aspersions on the Democrats when it is apparent that they have too many members of their caucus who are strongly opposed to this program … they have not been shy or reticent about voicing publicly strong opposition to the continuity of this program,” Habush Sinykin said. “So it takes not just a lot of nerve, but a questionable honesty, to try to pin this on Democrats.” 

Habush Sinykin said the Assembly version of the bill was “not even tempting” because it doesn’t include any land acquisition funds. 

“What they are looking for and needing are more Democratic votes, which is a big responsibility, because we care about the integrity of the program,” she said. “So you don’t want to give votes for something that doesn’t have value and isn’t true to the purpose.”

“Everyone in the building knows, and many outside the building know, that Republicans don’t like Knowles-Nelson,” she continued, “that they can’t get it done in their caucus.”

Baylor Spears contributed reporting to this story.