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 compromise of extending the program 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.

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If Democrats win a majority in one or both chambers of the Legislature in 2026, the party will have more power to govern than any time in more than 15 years. 

Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, said she saw a sign of what that future could look like during the state budget-writing process earlier this year. With just a three-seat advantage in the Senate, Republicans needed to work across the aisle to advance the budget, and Senate Democrats had a seat at the negotiating table, Hesselbein said. 

For the past 15 years of Republican majorities in the Senate and the Assembly, GOP lawmakers have been able to operate largely without input from legislative Democrats. In 2011, following the Republican midterm surge during President Barack Obama’s presidency, a GOP trifecta in the Legislature and the governor’s office advanced legislation aimed at cementing a permanent majority.

They passed laws such as Act 10, which dismantled Democratic-supporting public sector unions; strict voter ID, which made it harder for students and low-income people to vote; and partisan redistricting, which kept legislative Republicans in power with near super-majorities even after Democrats won all statewide offices in 2018. 

After years of being shut out of the legislative process, Senate Democrats won’t operate that way if the party wins control of the chamber next year, Hesselbein said. 

“We have an open door policy as Democrats in the state Senate. We will work with anybody with a good idea,” she said. “So we will try to continue to work with Republicans when we can and seek common values to really help people in the state of Wisconsin.” 

Newly redrawn legislative maps put into play during last year’s elections, when President Donald Trump won Wisconsin, resulted in 14 flipped legislative seats in favor of Democrats. Following those gains in 2024, Senate Democrats need to flip two seats and hold onto Senate District 31, held by Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, to win a majority next year.

The party’s campaign committee is eyeing flip opportunities in seats occupied by Republican Sens. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green; Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield; and Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, which are all districts that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, according to an analysis last year by John Johnson, a Lubar Center Research fellow at Marquette University.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, in an email to Wisconsin Watch said a Democratic majority in the chamber “won’t happen.” 

With political winds during a midterm year typically favoring the party not in control of the White House, Democrats could see gains in the Assembly as well, although there are more challenges than in the Senate. All of the Assembly seats were tested under the new maps last year, but Democrats still made gains during an election year when Trump’s name on ballots boosted Republicans. Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this month that she is “optimistic” about chances to flip the Assembly, where five seats would give Democrats control of the chamber for the first time since 2010.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos did not respond to questions from Wisconsin Watch about how Republicans might work with Democrats if the party wins a majority next year. 

If there is a power shift in the Capitol in 2026, few lawmakers have experienced anything but Republican control of the Legislature. Just 11 of the 132 members across both political parties previously held office at a time when Democrats controlled both legislative chambers. 

Some of the longest-serving Democrats said they agree with restoring more bipartisanship in the legislative process if the party gains power in 2026. 

“I don’t want to repeat the same mistakes as the Republicans did,” said Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, who was elected to the Assembly in 1984 and the Senate in 2002. “We have to give them an opportunity to work on things.” 

Carpenter and Rep. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee, who was elected to the Assembly in 1998, said if the party wins one or both majorities they want to make sure members are prepared for governing responsibilities they’ve never experienced, like leading a committee. 

“It’s a lot more work,” Sinicki said of being in the majority. “But it’s very fulfilling work to actually be able to go home at night and say, ‘I did this today.’” 

Hesselbein said if Senate Democrats secure power in their chamber next year, members will continue to focus on affordability issues that they’ve proposed during the current session. Some of those bills included providing free meals at breakfast and lunch to students in Wisconsin schools, lowering the cost of prescription drugs and expanding access to the homestead tax credit.

LeMahieu, though, said Democrats have “no credibility” on affordability issues. 

“Senate Republicans delivered the second largest income tax cut in state history to put more money in Wisconsin families’ pockets for gas and groceries while Senate Democrats propose sales and income tax hikes to pay for a radical agenda nobody can afford,” he said. 

Senate Democrats in the meantime are holding listening sessions across the state and working on a list of future bills to be ready to lead “on day one,” Hesselbein said. “If we are fortunate enough.”

Wisconsin Democrats say they won’t act like Republicans if they win a legislative majority in 2026 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.