September 27, 2017 at 3:59 p.m.
Former Rep. Dan Meyer tapped to be DNR secretary
As lawmaker, Meyer called for DNR reform, split
Former Rep. Dan Meyer tapped to be DNR secretary
Meyer replaces Cathy Stepp, who left in early September to take a position with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Meyer is a well-known figure in the Northwoods, serving as a Republican member of the state Assembly from 2001 to 2013. He did not seek re-election in 2012.
Meyer is also a former mayor of Eagle River and a former director of the Eagle River chamber of commerce. In making the announcement, Walker said that background prepares Meyer well for a job that demands both a passion for conservation and a knowledge of the needs of businesses.
"Dan Meyer will be an outstanding DNR secretary," Walker said. "He understands the balance between protecting our natural resources and supporting economic prosperity in our state. As a highly respected former legislator and mayor who cares deeply about conservation, Dan will serve in the best interests of Wisconsin."
Meyer, who lives in Eagle River with his family, said he was honored by the selection.
"Our state is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, and we will work to responsibly protect them and ensure they remain a source of recreation, tourism, economic growth, and rich natural history now and for our children," Meyer said.
Meyer's appointment became effective Monday, the day it was announced.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce senior vice president Scott Manley thanked Walker for the selection and also said Meyer's resume prepared him well for the task ahead.
"Meyer - a former state representative, mayor, and chamber of commerce executive director - has a unique background that makes him well-prepared to run the agency," Manley said. "The business community looks forward to working with him in his new role."
The chairman of the Assembly Natural Resources committee, Rep. Joel Kleefisch (R-Oconomowoc) said Walker had hit a home run.
"Dan Meyer has an extensive history and breadth of knowledge of Wisconsin's amazing outdoor heritage," Kleefisch said. "His lifelong experience as an avid outdoorsman, coupled with the years he spent as vice-chair of the Joint Finance Committee, give Dan the perfect balance of fiscal understanding and real-world resource preservation."
A reformer?
On the Left, environmentalists said only that Meyer had a mixed record. Former DNR secretary and Wisconsin Wildlife Federation executive director George Meyer said he thought Meyer could be worked with on conservation issues.
Conservative property-rights advocates are hoping to see a different Meyer. One of the main complaints against Stepp from the Right was that - in their view - while changes were made at the top, DNR bureaucrats remained embedded in the agency infrastructure and continued to pursue their own partisan agendas.
During his last campaign for Assembly, Meyer, in an interview with The Lakeland Times, railed against just such a bureaucratic culture and called for DNR reform. He was particularly critical of the agency's efforts to impose stricter shoreland zoning rules and to the rule's application only in unincorporated areas of the state, not in cities and villages.
"What's interesting to me is that runoff from a roof here (in Minocqua) pollutes the lake but somehow runoff from the convention center down in Madison doesn't," Meyer said in the 2010 interview. "Somehow that's clean water."
In that same interview, Meyer also said the NR115 saga underscored two important issues that needed to be addressed, reform of the DNR itself and reform of the state's administrative rule process.
"My opinion on reforming the DNR after being down there for 10 years, and I don't know if it can be done, you would need a very strong secretary," Meyer said.
But Meyer said strong leadership alone was not enough, and he foreshadowed many of the complaints conservatives make about the agency today.
"Leadership is important but it takes more than leadership," he said. "I firmly believe it's a whole culture change that has to take place. My feeling is that there is a core of people in there that have their own agenda. They are going to be there longer than elected officials are. Elected officials are looking at two to five years; they are looking at 20 to 30 years. So they are plotting and plotting and plotting and then a Democratic administration comes in and they have more freedom to get what they want."
What's more, he said, the clique within the agency does not have an understanding of the private sector.
"They are going to get their paycheck every week or two weeks," Meyer said. "If you have never worked outside of government, in the private sector, I guess you don't understand the impact of those regulations. Government is supposed to work with the people, they are supposed to listen to the people, but with the DNR I don't see that happening. And it's not just the DNR, either."
Splitting the agency
Meyer said in 2010 he would vote to split the agency into a least two separate - and perhaps three different - departments. He recalled that earlier in the decade the Legislature did vote to split the DNR. That initiative was vetoed by Republican Gov. Scott McCallum, however.
"I think you will see a drumbeat to do that again and rather than just do two (agencies) you might want to do three," he said then. "You may want to do forestry, you may want to do wildlife and you may want to do the environmental (pollution) side."
A split would take care of another disturbing development within the agency, he said in the 2010 interview.
"If you talk to former DNR employees, they agree with me 100 percent about what's happening to that agency," Meyer said. "They are spending all the money on the environmental side and forgetting the wildlife management and forestry side of it. I'm not saying give up on the environment, but there has to be some common sense in there. It's not just taxes that hurt business in the state, it's regulations and it's lawsuits."
In previous years, Meyer has also advocated for changing the composition of the unelected National Resources Board so that it reflects constituent groups instead of just what he called the governor's friends.
Some of those changes have come to pass. Beginning this year, at least one board member must have an agricultural background and at least three board members must have held a hunting, fishing, or trapping license in at least seven of the 10 years before the year of nomination except under certain conditions.
In the past Meyer has also said he would support sunsetting the Stewardship Fund. He has also said he would remove shoreland zoning from the DNR.
"I think the counties would do a better job enforcing it," he told The Times in 2008. "They are not going to be so restrictive. There is some common sense there in trying to work with people to use their own property."
One major area where he has encouraged the DNR to do more rather than less has been in the area of invasive species.
"One of the biggest problems facing this state is invasives - both aquatic and terrestrial," Meyer has said. "The face of this state is going to change if we don't get a handle on this and we have a state agency that obviously - I don't know what to say other than they could care less. It's not a priority."
Meyer has had a spotty record on open records, sometimes scoring an 'A,' only to fall to lower grades in later years in The Times annual open-records grades.
Meyer at one time said he supported ending the exemption of the state Legislature from the records retention law - which effectively exempts lawmakers from the open records law - only to later raise constitutional issues, namely, that the Legislature could statutorily end the exemption but continue to use it anyway by adopting different rules of procedure, which might not be challengeable in court.
Then Sen Jim Holperin called that a smokescreen.
In 2005, Meyer led an effort to the repeal the state's Smart Growth comprehensive planning law. His effort passed the Joint Finance Committee 10-6, and ultimately passed the Legislature, only to be vetoed by Gov. Jim Doyle.
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