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

A Wisconsin Assembly committee deadlocked 6-6 Wednesday on a Republican-authored bill to prevent the broadly popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program from lapsing next year. 

The program, which allows the state Department of Natural Resources to purchase, conserve and maintain public land enjoys bipartisan support among Wisconsin residents. However a subset of Republican legislators have soured on the program’s intentions, arguing too much land has been pulled off local property tax rolls in northern Wisconsin. Republicans have also complained that a state Supreme Court decision removed their authority to conduct oversight of the program. 

Previously, members of the Joint Committee on Finance had the ability to anonymously hold up stewardship projects. 

Republicans in the Legislature stripped money to re-authorize the program out of the state budget earlier this year and both parties have proposed competing pieces of legislation to keep it running beyond 2026. 

On Wednesday, the Assembly Committee on Forestry, Parks and Outdoor Recreation took up the Republican bill, authored by Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc). Democrats and environmental groups have been unsupportive of the Kurtz bill since its initial release because it requires that any attempt by the DNR to acquire land at a cost of more than $1 million be approved by the full Legislature through standalone legislation. 

Critics have argued the full legislative process is the opposite of what the Court intended when it took the anonymous hold power away from JFC, that the Legislature could never move quickly enough for the speed at which real estate transactions must sometimes take place and the public nature of legislation could scare off potential sellers. 

Earlier this week, Kurtz released a proposed amendment to his bill that would lower the threshold requiring legislative approval from $1 million to $250,000. 

A Democratic proposal, which was introduced as a separate bill this summer and offered as an amendment to the Republican bill this week, would create an independent board, nominated by members of both parties, to oversee the program outside of the legislative process. 

On Wednesday, the committee voted 7-5 in favor of accepting Kurtz’s amendment to his bill. Rep. Paul Melotic (R-Grafton) voted with the committee’s four Democrats against the amendment. 

But on the vote to advance the bill out of committee, Reps. Calvin Callahan (R-Tomahawk) and Rob Swearingen (R-Rhinelander) joined the Democrats to vote no, resulting in the 6-6 tie.

When an Assembly committee votes for a bill, it reports the bill to the full Assembly floor and recommends that it be passed. According to Assembly rules, when a committee ties on a vote, the chair of the committee has the discretion to report the bill to the full Assembly “without recommendation.” 

The bill has already been reported to the full Assembly for a potential vote, according to the office of Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), the committee’s chair.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), a co-author of the Democratic proposal, said “Wisconsin Democrats are united in their support and vision for Knowles-Nelson,” while “Republicans cannot seem to agree on a path forward.”

Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at the non-profit land trust organization Gathering Waters, told the Wisconsin Examiner that Wednesday’s vote shows the only way to save the program is with a bill that can get support from both parties. 

“Today’s hearing was a missed opportunity for bipartisan cooperation on the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program,” Carlin said. “There is ample room for compromise across the aisle. But today’s deadlocked committee vote demonstrates that no reauthorization is going to move forward without buy-in from both parties. The hearing should motivate legislators on both sides of the aisle to come together and work out a compromise that keeps Knowles-Nelson working for Wisconsin.”

A bill introduced on Monday would grant Devil's Lake State Park the rights to "flourish, evolve, and be clean." (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

To celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, Democrats in the Wisconsin Assembly announced a package of bills Monday that would grant rights to Devil’s Lake State Park and reinstitute a law that effectively banned mining. 

The proposal to grant “rights of nature” to Wisconsin’s most popular state park comes just months after a group of Republicans introduced legislation that would prevent local governments in the state from enacting similar legislation. The Milwaukee County Board passed a rights of nature resolution promising to protect the Menominee, Milwaukee and Fox rivers and Lake Michigan. The Green Bay city council is also currently working on a rights of nature resolution. 

Under the bill, Devil’s Lake has the right to “flourish, evolve, and be clean.” The bill gives the state attorney general the authority to enforce the law against people who infringe on the park’s rights and allows anyone to sue or intervene in a lawsuit in the name of the park to enforce the park’s rights. Anyone who infringes on the park’s rights by damaging the environment will be liable to pay damages to restore the park to its previous state. 

In addition to the Devil’s Lake bill, the package includes a joint resolution acknowledging that “nature has inherent rights” and the state of Wisconsin “has a duty to uphold those rights as part of its enduring conservation legacy and its responsibility to future generations.” 

The resolution also states that the Legislature won’t pass laws preventing local rights of nature ordinances.

The Republican bill preempting local rights of nature efforts is “anti-free speech, it’s anti-democratic,” Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), one of the bills’ co-authors, told the Wisconsin Examiner. “Whereas our bill is, ‘Hey, let’s get this on the docket and actually have a productive conversation, actually bring in stakeholders about what it means to look at nature actually having rights.’”

Miresse said the more symbolic measures passed by local governments are important statements of values, but he wanted the bill to have “teeth.” 

“I would like to move beyond mission and vision statements. I think those are great for guiding principles and taking us in the right direction and keeping our mission and vision top of mind when we are creating and drafting policy at the local level. And I want to make sure they have a right to do that regardless of what the preemption bill would do,” Miresse said. “However, when we were looking at this in terms of crafting policy and changing statute, there would be some teeth here.”

Miresse said the bill is targeted only at Devil’s Lake, rather than all the bodies of water in Wisconsin, because it was simplest to start with a piece of nature that has defined political boundaries already under the state’s control. 

In their preemption bill, Republicans Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) argued that laws granting rights to nature posed a “dangerous shift in legal precedent” that would result in “threatening property rights, stalling development, and burdening the judicial system.”

Democrats counter that granting legal rights to a park or a body of water isn’t much different than granting First Amendment rights to a corporation — which Republicans successfully argued for in court cases such as Citizens United. 

Also announced Monday is a proposal to reinstate Wisconsin’s “prove it first” mining law, which requires that in order to obtain a permit from the Department of Natural Resources, mining companies must prove the mine can be operated for 10 years and be shuttered for 10 years without harmful effects on the local environment. The law was enacted in 1997 until Republicans repealed it in 2017. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, authored the bill to repeal the mining ban when he was in the state Senate. 

This year, a Canadian company has begun exploratory drilling projects in the state, potentially leading to the first operating mines in Wisconsin for the first time in decades. 

Miresse said he wants decisions about mining to consider local environmental health rather than just being about “dollars and cents.”