Oneida County board supports Stewardship — with big caveat

News analysis

The Oneida County Board of Supervisors overwhelmingly voted Tuesday to go on the record supporting the state Department of Natural Resources’ Stewardship program, but did so by amending a resolution of support to oppose bonding as a mechanism for funding the program and to oppose any new Stewardship land acquisitions.

Neither aspect of the amended resolution is likely to make environmentalist supporters of Stewardship happy, given that land acquisitions through conservation easements are central to their northern Wisconsin goals, and that, without bonding, most of the program’s dollars go away. 

The resolution is just an advisory recommendation to the state as lawmakers take up the state budget bill. Gov. Tony Evers has called for a 10-year re-authorization of Stewardship with funding levels of $100 million a year, or $1 billion over a decade. 

Evers has said the Stewardship budget is pivoting toward maintenance and management of existing state lands and infrastructure, including parks, but his budget proposal would still set aside $25 million a year for land acquisitions and double the amount of money that land trusts could access for such acquisitions, including easements. That’s critical for nonprofits seeking to expand the sweep of land conserved through conservation easements throughout northern Wisconsin.

For purposes of the program, the DNR considers land acquisition to include the purchase of conservation easements as well as outright fee title purchases of land.

As for funding mechanisms, the Stewardship Fund receives a small portion of its budget from the Segregated Forestry Account, but the lion’s share comes from statutorily authorized bonding: Stewardship gets no outright allocation of tax general fund revenue. Ending bonding would effectively end the program, unless, in an extremely unlikely scenario, the legislature rewrote the Stewardship statutes.

Holewinski objects

The resolution supporting the Stewardship program without qualifiers came from the Conservation/UW Extension Education and the Forestry, Land and Recreation committees and was included on the board’s consent agenda — where supposedly noncontroversial items are passed in bulk.

Any supervisor can pull an item from the consent agenda, however, and that’s what county board chairman Scott Holewinski did. Holewinski said the program had been good for parks and recreation, but there was more to it than that.

“My main concern is the amount of money being spent to take MFL (Managed Forest Law) lands off the tax rolls in northern Wisconsin, and that’s the tax base for us,” Holewinski said. “Last summer, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Joint Finance Committee and the legislature could no longer use an anonymous objection to slow down Stewardship programs. But as a result of the ruling, there has been a pushback against the Stewardship program suggesting the legislature may not reauthorize funding because of the perceived lack of oversight.”

Republican lawmakers have indeed floated the idea that they could end the program because they no longer have any ability to control spending by a program the legislature created.

“Speaker Robin Vos, who has been a long-time supporter of the Stewardship program, stated that it’s unfortunate that Gov. Evers’s lawsuit has put the program in jeopardy,” Holewinski said. 

Since 1990, Holewinski said, the state has purchased more than 723,000 acres through Stewardship and currently owes $795 million through general obligation bonds, with the state obligated to repay the principal and interest over time. 

“The proposed budget, if the funding goes through, is a 10-year reauthorization at $100 million dollars a year,” he said. “That's another billion dollars plus interest. Where does it end? Will this fund take away more future tax base out of northern Wisconsin?”

Supervisor Billy Fried said his concern with the program arced back to the purchase of the Pelican River Forest conservation easement and the lack of local government input in the process leading to the purchase.

“The question during that time was coordination with the town or county,” Fried said. “If I was to support this, I’d want to see the wording changed to require coordination with the county and the towns.”

Supervisor Collette Sorgel, who chairs the Conservation/UW Extension Education committee, said that was a good point but the committee didn’t think of it when writing the resolution.

Holewinski said the Pelican River Forest purchase was a slam dunk by the agency, but there was inadequate notification to local governments or, for that matter, to agency leadership.

“Even when the DNR was notified, they didn’t even take it to the DNR board, it was kind of hidden away,” he said. “Now with less than a month before the deadline to redo this, we’re sitting in the county board and I don’t think everybody here has enough information. It just shows up in a resolution.”

It all sounds very nice, Holewinski said.

“But the reality is, why are we borrowing money to buy more land when we have such a surplus?” he asked. “It just gives the governor more room to spend the surplus somewhere else. Who’s going to pay for this down the road? It’s $795 million today but it’s a billion in 10 years. Who’s going to pay for it?”

A promising shift

Supervisor Robb Jensen said it was encouraging that the state intended to shift its emphasis to infrastructure away from land acquisitions.

“I would share the concern [about land purchases] and I know in the case of the Monico, they felt that a significant portion of their land was taken off the tax roll,” Jensen said. “So I think we have a lot of land. I don’t know if the emphasis should be on purchasing land. I don’t know how we go about stressing here that we support providing infrastructure for the land that we already have. I certainly would be supportive of that.”

Supervisor Lenore Lopez noted that the resolution didn’t express support for the $100 million a year proposal, or for any specific monetary number.

“That number has to be worked out by the legislature,” Lopez said. “So it’s not specific and it doesn’t focus on the program details.”

Lopez said the vast majority of the people support funding for land and water conservation, and for wildlife conservation.

“With the federal government retreating from conservation efforts, we think that a program like this on the state and local level is more important than ever,” she said.

Sorgel said studies have shown that protected land boosts local economies by attracting tourists, hunters, anglers, and other outdoor enthusiasts. 

“In Oneida County, the biggest driver of our economy is tourism and forestry,” she said. “When tourists come here and spend money, we do get tax dollars. Minocqua Winter Park attracts over 14,000 visitors per year and benefited from a [Stewardship] grant. The grant allowed a key parcel to remain in the trail system. The park continues to provide recreation and economic opportunities in the Minocqua area. Over many years and multiple grants, more than $860,000 was used to develop and maintain the Bearskin Trail. More than $637,000 was given to the city of Rhinelander to develop the Timber Drive bike trail. So that help and support of economic growth, infrastructure, and making sure that tourism’s still very viable is very important to our county.”

Holewinski said he was all for such development, but the problem was, without oversight, the governor could borrow up to $100 million every year for 10 years.

Forestry director Jill Nemec explained how the forestry department used the fund.

“We’ve used this program a lot in order to fund not only our land acquisitions like Gillette/Wickham [a park], for instance, but also development projects that we’ve had,” she said.

Nemec said the department had tapped into Stewardship for infrastructure projects like a park shelter area. 

“So we have used it quite extensively,” she said. “I anticipate that we would probably, if we need to pull stuff out of county [MFL] and purchase replacement lands, this could be a funding source for the county to pay for some of that. But, like a few others have mentioned, what one of the really important parts of this program is about is a potential funding source for us to try to help take care of the infrastructure that we currently have on the ground — trails, buildings, boardwalk, stuff like that to try to keep our recreational facilities up to date and going, which with increased costs, it’s nice to have another option available to us as well.”

Supervisor Linnaea Newman said the two drivers of the county’s economy are forestry and conservation. 

“Our budgets for that are disappearing,” Newman said. “If we don’t have funding coming in for [infrastructure], there’s not going to be the conservation that we have going on now. The tourism isn’t going to keep coming. How do we build those two drivers of our economy? How do we build forestry? How do we give you more land that you can draw from to do cutting to build up that area? How do we build it for tourism? How do we get people to keep coming in? If we don’t have the boardwalks, if we don’t have the trail systems, if we don’t have the infrastructure to back those up, those are going to shrink.”

Supervisor Steven Schreier said it was important for the county to start talking about how it is going to invest in infrastructure to accommodate ATVs and UTVs.

“Because that’s already the growing sport or recreation, and are we doing enough and what do we need to do to modify and develop that kind of recreational activity?” Schreier asked. “I think this is a valuable resource for something like that. We don’t have the money and the funds that the state does to redirect and pivot. We’re going to have to rely on every source we can. And so many funding sources right now, as every single department of ours can tell you, is up in the air.”

What’s more, Schreier added, if someone feels there could be stronger language in any resolution, then propose that language.

Holewinski said there was already enough government-owned land in northern Wisconsin.

“We have the Nicolet Forest, the Chequamegon Forest, the American Legion Forest, the county forest,” he said. “When does it end? Do we do a billion dollars a year and keep buying up the land? What’s going to happen?”

One thing was for sure, Holewinski said.

“They’re not going to buy around Madison and Milwaukee,” he said. “They’re going to take it off our tax base up in northern Wisconsin. So I think this is kind of a push to get this through no matter what. It’s about borrowing money. They keep talking about future generations and we just keep digging a bigger hole for them.”

Jensen made a motion to amend the resolution. 

“It seems to me that we’re all in agreement that this program should be used to support infrastructure,” he said. “The question seems to be whether or not we support in Oneida County using these funds for land acquisition.”

Jensen’s amendment added that the Oneida County Board of Supervisors does not support the additional acquisition of land and borrowing funds. It passed with two voting no, Michael Tautges of Minocqua and Kristopher Hanus of Rhinelander.

The amended resolution passed with Hanus voting no. Supervisor Debbie Condado was absent from the meeting.

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