The Pelican River area in Wisconsin. A group that worked with local officials to try to prevent the establishment of a conservation easement on land surrounding the river has influenced a propsal to change Oneida County's comprehensive plan. (Jay Brittain | Courtesy of the photographer)

A committee of the Oneida County Board has approved a number of changes to the draft of the county’s new comprehensive plan suggested by a timber industry group, aided by U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and American Stewards of Liberty, a right-wing nonprofit that has taken an interest in land use policy in Wisconsin’s Northwoods.

The five-member planning and development committee approved the recommended changes of the Rhinelander-based Great Lakes Timber Professional Association (GLTPA) at a meeting earlier this month. 

Since the approval of the Pelican River Forest conservation easement earlier this year, American Stewards of Liberty has undertaken an effort to influence local planning decisions up north. The organization has traditionally focused on ranching issues in the American west. Now it has begun to grow and, after being introduced by Tiffany, worked with officials in the region to oppose the Pelican River easement on the grounds that federal and state officials had not “coordinated” with locals. 

The group’s executive director, Margaret Byfield, later spoke at the timber group’s convention in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula this spring. 

ASL’s ideology, in the name of protecting property rights, calls for an expansion of extractive uses of land, including increased logging and the approval of open pit mines in the area. Opponents say the group twists a desire to protect private property owners into a belief system that prevents others from acting to conserve resources on their own land. 

The organization was also involved in helping to write the environmental policy sections of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation document written as a policy guide for the second Trump administration. 

Every county in Wisconsin is required to establish a comprehensive plan and update it once per decade. The document outlines goals and strategies for achieving the county’s land use plans. Oneida County has already made a number of changes to its draft plan that move county planning decisions away from support of conservation and toward more extractive uses of the land. 

The acceptance of the recommended changes concern environmental advocates, who argue that once one county has codified the ASL agenda, it becomes easier for neighboring counties to simply cut and paste those sections when their comprehensive plans are up for renewal. Opponents also worry that ASL’s viewpoint  will have more sway across the country once Trump takes office in January. 

Ahead of the committee’s Nov. 8 meeting, Henry Schienebeck, executive director of the GLTPA, sent a 31-page list of recommended changes to the body. The document mirrors the comprehensive plan, going through each chapter and recommending new, more anti-conservation language. It includes a number of provisions straight from ASL talking points, including sections that require conservation efforts to be coordinated with local officials, encouraging mining in the region and listing a need to “protect property rights” as a “top priority.”

GLTPA Oneida County Comprehensive Management Plan Comments 2024

At the nearly six-hour meeting, Schienebeck said that GLTPA’s recommended changes were developed by a committee that included the organization’s board members and Byfield as well as Tiffany and his staff. 

“We really just want to make sure that forestry is included in that and that we don’t lose access to the forest,” Schienebeck said. “And a lot of the issues that are in this plan deal with forest and natural resources, and that’s really what we’re working with every day.” 

Schienebeck did not respond to a request for comment on his organization’s recommendations. 

The GLTPA recommendations include proposals to change a section in the comprehensive plan that previously stated the county should “minimize impacts to the county’s natural resources from nonmetallic mining.” The new language states that the county should “consider impacts to the county’s natural resources from nonmetallic mining.” 

Many of the GLTPA recommendations were accepted without amendment by the members of the planning and development committee. Of the committee’s five members, four did not respond to a request for comment and one, Scott Holewinski, said he was out of the country and unable to comment. 

Eric Rempala, a member of local conservation group, Oneida County Clean Waters Action, spoke against the GLTPA recommendations at the meeting and tells the Wisconsin Examiner it’s “outrageous” to give an industry group this much influence over county land use policies.  Everyone involved should be more honest about ASL’s involvement, he argues. 

“You guys need to admit who you’re working with and what you’re trying to accomplish,” Rempala says. 

Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives for Gathering Waters, was heavily involved in getting the Pelican River Forest easement established. He says the language in the GLTPA recommendations is straight out of the ASL “playbook” and poses a threat to the health of the Northwoods environment and future conservation efforts in the area. 

“This is kind of a thing that we’ve all been worried about since Pelican River,” he says. “If that stuff actually gets written into a [comprehensive] plan, that is a dangerous foundation — both for Oneida County, but then something that could easily be copied by other counties.”

The U.S. Capitol. Five incumbent U.S. House members from Wisconsin have retained their seats in Tuesday's elections. (Jennifer Shutt | States Newsroom)

In five Wisconsin congressional seats, incumbents easily prevailed over challengers Tuesday. None of the races were considered close in advance of Election Day, and all of them were called by the Associated Press before 10 p.m.

In the 2nd Congressional District, Democratic incumbent Mark Pocan defeated Republican Erik Olsen by a margin of more than 2 to 1, with 87% of the vote counted. The district is centered on Madison and covers south central Wisconsin.

In Milwaukee’s 4th District, Democratic incumbent Gwen Moore easily bested two challengers, Republican Tim Rogers and Independent Robert Raymond.

In the 5th District, covering suburban and rural communities west of Milwaukee, Republican incumbent Scott Fitzgerald sailed to a third term, defeating Democrat Ben Steinhoff. With nearly 80% of ballots counted, Fitzgerald had almost 65% of the vote while Steinhoff had just under 36%.

In the 6th District, which extends west from the lower Fox Valley, Republican incumbent Glenn Grothman had a 2-to-1 lead over Democrat John Zarbano.

In the 7th District, covering northwest Wisconsin, Republican incumbent Tom Tiffany easily defeated Democratic challenger Kyle Kilbourn by a margin of about 2-to-1 with half the ballots counted. 

The mailing of about 2,200 duplicate absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s heavily Democratic capital city of Madison has led a Republican member of Congress to falsely suggest that the clerk was lying about the presence of barcodes on the ballots themselves.

Ballots in Wisconsin do not contain barcodes. Envelopes that absentee ballots are returned in do contain barcodes so the voter can track their ballot to ensure it was received. The barcodes also allow election officials to ensure that the same voter does not cast a ballot in person on Election Day.

An initial statement on Monday from Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl did not specify that it was the envelopes, not the ballots, that contain the barcodes. The statement posted on the clerk’s website was later updated to specify that the barcodes were on the envelopes, not the ballots.

Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, a strong Donald Trump supporter whose northern Wisconsin district does not include Madison, posted a picture of an absentee ballot on the social platform X to show there was no barcode.

“My office has proof that there is no barcode on the actual ballots,” Tiffany posted on Wednesday. “Here is a picture of the absentee ballots – NO BARCODE.”

He also called for an investigation.

By Thursday morning his post had more than 1.6 million views.

Tiffany later took credit for the clerk changing the wording on her initial statement.

“Why do they keep editing their statements and press releases?” Tiffany posted.

Madison city spokesperson Dylan Brogan said Thursday that he altered the wording of the statement for clarity before Tiffany questioned it by “parsing apart sentences.”

“The city routinely updates its website to provide as much clarity as possible,” Brogan said.

He called the mailing of duplicate absentee ballots “a simple mistake that we immediately rectified and it will have no impact on the election.”

“There are safeguards in place,” Brogan said. “The system worked.”

Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, rebuked Tiffany on X.

“I can’t tell if this is just profound lack of knowledge or the intentional farming of outrage,” she posted. “Both, by the way, are bad.”

The clerk said in her response to Tiffany that 2,215 duplicate ballots were sent before the error was caught on Monday. No duplicate ballots have been returned, Witzel-Behl said. Once a ballot is received and the envelope barcode is scanned, if a second ballot is returned it will not be counted, she said.

“I would simply note that elections are conducted by humans and occasionally human error occurs,” she wrote to Tiffany. “When errors occur, we own up to them, correct them as soon as possible, and are transparent about them – precisely as we have done here.”

The dustup in battleground Wisconsin comes as there is intense scrutiny over how elections are run, particularly in swing states that are likely to decide the winner of the presidential election. Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020. Nearly four years later, conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election and false claims of widespread fraud persist. Trump continues to insist, despite no evidence of widespread fraud, that he won that election as he seeks a return to the White House.

President Joe Biden’s win over Trump in Wisconsin survived two recounts ordered by Trump, including one involving the city of Madison, an independent audit, a review by a Republican law firm and numerous lawsuits.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Wisconsin congressman falsely suggests Madison city clerk was lying about absentee ballots is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.