State Senate shoots down Ambs, Lawton appointments

On 22-10 vote, the state Senate last week rejected Gov. Evers’s appointment of former Department of Natural Resources deputy secretary Todd Ambs to the state’s Natural Resources Board, the DNR’s governing body.

Ambs wasn’t the only one in the firing line. The Senate also tossed the nominations of former Democratic Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton, former Democratic state Rep. Sondy Pope, and Candice Owley to the UW Hospitals and Clinics Authority and Board.

On the Senate floor, the GOP trained its fire particularly on Ambs, citing an inflammatory post on X in which he called Republicans domestic terrorists and traitors, among other things.

Gov. Tony Evers blasted the Senate action.

“Unfortunately, with these legislative Republicans, bipartisanship and common sense always seem to take two steps forward and two steps back, and that trend continued today when Senate Republicans took up yet another group of exceptionally qualified citizen appointees and fired them for simply doing their jobs,” Evers said. “I am endlessly grateful for the time, energy, and expertise of these individuals who’ve answered the call to serve their people of our state, and I’m disappointed their public service was cut short today for no reason other than petty, partisan politics.”

Ambs issued a two-page defense of his record, especially his ability to work in a bipartisan manner.

“It appears that my transgression is that I ‘can’t work with Republicans,’” Ambs said. “That allegation is patently false. They cannot cite a single instance where that has been the case.”

On the contrary, Ambs wrote that he had spent more than four decades working in Wisconsin, Ohio, and across the nation with members of both parties on a variety of important conservation policy issues. 

“As I mentioned at my last NRB meeting in January, I was honored to have been one of the lead negotiators for the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, better known as the Great Lakes Compact at the beginning of this century,” he wrote. “Working with both Democratic and Republican appointees from across the Great Lakes region, we succeeded in developing what many consider to be the greatest conservation agreement in North America in this century.”

In fact, Ambs wrote, while he knows how to work in a bipartisan way, it is the Legislature that does not.

“They seem to think that bipartisan is some sort of lethal virus because they avoid it like the plague,” he said. “The most significant action taken by the majority party in the legislature in the last five years was when they left town entirely in 2020. Instead of digging in to help Wisconsinites cope with the most significant health crisis on the planet in the last one hundred years, they repeatedly refused to convene special sessions called by the governor to respond to the Covid crisis and instead simply left town.”

Since that time, the Wisconsin Legislature has repeatedly refused to even come to the table to discuss critical issues like health care, education and workforce development, even when Evers requested a special session to address those important topics, Ambs said.

Ambs went on to accuse former NRB members Fred Prehn and Greg Kazmierski, both appointed by former Gov. Scott Walker, as presiding over “a circus like atmosphere as the board careened from one embarrassing meeting to another.”

“During my three years working with them I watched as they regularly shilled for the Republican Party and the state’s largest business lobby; were openly hostile to career state civil servants and belittled average citizens testifying before the board; were both patronizing and condescending to women, tribal members and DNR staff; and, Prehn openly squatted in his position for months after his term expired to prevent a democratically appointed woman from taking her seat on the board,” he wrote.

Ambs said he had spent his career working on behalf of natural resources — enforcing laws that protect those natural resources and zealously guarding against efforts to weaken protections for land, air .and water..

“In short, the majority party in the Wisconsin State Senate has made a mockery of the confirmation process and in turn diminishes the institution they purport to serve,” he wrote.

Evers was at the ready with a new appointment after Ambs was fired. He appointed Deb Dassow to the NRB, a long-time social studies and world studies teacher at Port Washington High School who has previously been a member of environmental and conservation organizations like the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust and the Sierra Club. She is also active in the teachers union. 

As for the votes for the UW Hospitals and Clinics Authority and Board, the Senate voted to reject Lawton 19-13, with Republicans Joan Ballweg, Rob Cowles, and Felzkowski opposing the motion to reject Lawton.

The vote to reject Owley was 22-10 and 20-12 to reject Pope. Evers also had appointments lined up to replace those three, appointing former state Rep. Deb Kolste, Ryan Neibauer, and former State Rep. Donna Seidel in their place.

Kolste was the representative for the 44th Assembly district in the Wisconsin State Assembly from 2013 to 2021, according to the governor’s office, serving on the Assembly Committee on Health. Additionally, the governor’s office states, Kolste is a trained medical technologist, and she and her husband, a medical doctor, started a medical clinic together in Kansas. 

Neibauer is the political director at IBEW Local 494. Seidel served as the representative for the 85th Assembly district in the Assembly from 2005 to 2013. She is a former police officer as well as an investigator for her local district attorney’s office.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.