The system is broken and Wisconsin residents who care about natural resources will probably see the full consequences next year, though the political gears were put in motion during the past two years.

    For the first time in decades, a new governor will have the opportunity to appoint an entirely new citizen board that sets policies for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

    The reason is that the Republican controlled State Senate, which has the function and obligation of approving appointments by different governors to the Natural Resources Board (NRB), has dragged its feet on approving appointments to the NRB.

    The best explanation is that they simply did not want to approve board members in hopes their party would win the November election and then could appoint a majority of board members of their own thinking.  This is what most likely could happen.

    The Senate Committee that holds hearings on appointees to the NRB, the Financial Institutions and Sporting Heritage Committee, has held hearings but not approved, and essentially fired, temporarily serving appointees Sandra Dee Naas, Dylan Jennings, James VandenBrook, Sharon Adams, Paul Buhr, and Todd Ambs.

    The Committee did approve Patty Schachtner, Doug Cox, and Robin Schmidt however the committee’s recommendations are hollow since they never were taken up by the full State Senate and thus they, and Rachel Bouressa, Deb Dassow and Jeff Hastings, are not confirmed.

    The only one current board member Bill Smith, of Shell Lake, was approved when originally appointed to the board but he was reappointed in 2025 and is unconfirmed for that appointment.  All seven members are unconfirmed and vulnerable of being replaced in January when a new governor is sworn in, regardless of which political party is behind the new governor.

    An unbiased person could muse that the Senate might find something objectionable with perhaps one or two people, but 13 people not being confirmed?

Some history

    The board concept goes back to 1927 when the legislature established a Conservation Commission to set policy over the Wisconsin Conservation Department.  When the Conservation Department was merged with the Department of Resource Development in 1967 to form the DNR, the policy setting commission was changed to the Natural Resources Board to set policy and approve regulations for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

The board approves rule proposals, land acquisitions, property management master plans and budget proposals from department staff.  These must be approved by the board before advancing for legislative or gubernatorial review and approval.

Board members serve without compensation, except for their expenses, and they must be confirmed by the state.

    The tried and tested design is that seven board members serve for six-year staggered terms, so that each succeeding governor could have the opportunity to appoint one or two board members.  Terms expire on May 1.

    The idea is to get a mixture of inputs into a board that has the best interests of the state’s natural resources at heart.

    But political interests have put that engine on a side rail.

    Jim Kurtz retired as the chief legal counsel to the DNR in 2002, after working at DNR for 37 years.

    He said that he has never seen anything like this where there could be almost no holdovers on the NRB. 

    “The process was always straight forward, like it was supposed to happen,” he said. In the past the governor would appoint board members and the senate would confirm them, figuring if they had interest in natural resources the governor had the right to appoint people he felt would look-out for the resources.

    Kurtz believes the dysfunction started when Scott Walker was elected, and the state senate stopped confirming people.

    “The system is broken, there is no question about it,” Kurtz said.

    He also blames past governor Jim Doyle, who campaigned on bringing back the appointment of the DNR secretary by the NRB, but when the bill was passed that gave him authority to do just that, he vetoed it.

    Kurtz saw that then the legislature began emasculating the DNR water regulatory program.

    Kurtz admits that one of the advantages of the citizen board is that it forces the agency to be more open in its decision making.

    “The board forced the agency to be very public in what it was doing, making regulations,” Kurtz said.

Retired Republican State Senator Dale Schultz, who served in the legislature from 1983 to 2014, including two terms as senate majority leader, agrees that politics need to be reduced, and believes the NRB should have a more significant role.

“The political process is pushing out independence, the ability of boards to act independently for the good of the cause. We are not being well served by it.”

“The bottom line is it’s a broken system and we need to get past stupid partisanship; I can’t put it any other way.  This tolerance of legislative members listening to leadership and not talking to the other political party, is the root of all of this.”

Schultz said that the way the systems were designed originally were to treat people fairly, and assure continuity, but that has all been thrown out because some people want to get everything their way.

“We should do better, but it has to come from the public, especially people who love the outdoors,” Schultz said.

    The underlying foundation of the system was upended earlier, in 1995, when then Governor Tommy Thompson brought the function of appointment of the DNR secretary into his cabinet, eliminating what once was at least “arm’s length” distance between the DNR secretary and direct politics.

    Under the current arrangement, where the Governor appoints the DNR secretary, Kurtz realizes there are “murky areas,” where the secretary who runs the agency is now responsible to the governor and the board sets policy for the DNR, which all came about when Tommy Thompson was governor and changed the system.

    Dr. Christine Thomas, emeritus professor and retired dean of the College of Natural Resources at UW-Stevens Point and past member and chair of the NRB, wrote her Ph.D. dissertation at UW-Madison about the NRB.

    For her research in 1988 she interviewed all of the living board members who had served from 1967 until 1987.

    When she asked representatives of various groups, such as industry, the legislature, conservation groups, the governor, they all responded that they thought the board represented their interests.

    “But, when I asked the board members, they said they were representing the natural resources of the State,” Thomas said.

    When she served on the board, she said there was a camaraderie on the board even though they had different backgrounds. There was no rancor or disrespect for others and they looked at their number one responsibility was to incorporate new members onto the board as they were appointed, assuring continuity.

    “Governing should happen with an eye to the bigger picture, and setting up a system that works no matter who is in power,” she said.

    She adds that the statute is clear that board members serve six-year, staggered terms and it was set up at a time so that not everyone came onto the board at the same time.

    Past senate committees have turned down nominees for the NRB, but not as blatantly as in the past year knowing that they were assured of a new governor since current governor Tony Evers is not running for re-election.

Their goal has evidently been overshadowed by putting people on a citizen natural resources board who have political feelings similar to the majority in the legislature, rather than a diversity of people whose primary passion is the good of natural resources in this state.

    There once was a time when both Democrats and Republicans could work together and actually accomplished good things for natural resources, and the public lands purchased by the Knowles/Nelson Stewardship Program, state parks and natural areas,

    Politics is a part of probably every decision, but Wisconsin’s natural resources used to keep direct partisan politics at a respectable distance, and one of the reasons for that has been the citizen NRB.

The potential replacement of the vast majority of board members next year will be just the next nail in the coffin of what once was an admirable system established by the likes of Haskell Noyes, Aldo Leopold, Bill Aberg, and other conservation leaders of the 1920s who should be  rolling over in their graves.