River News: Our View

There are moments when local governments reveal whether they actually believe the policies and principles they themselves adopted, or whether those principles are merely performative words for public consumption, to be tucked away and forgotten the moment political pressure arrives.

Oneida County will be facing one of those moments in the near future.

That’s because a majority of the county’s executive committee is going to ask the full board to throw its comprehensive land-use plan entirely out the window to appease a few Madison elites. Not only are they going to be asked to turn a blind eye to their own plan — which they voted for just last August — they will be asked to help raise taxes for future generations, to place the county’s tax burden on fewer and fewer taxpayers, and to help exacerbate an already serious housing crisis.

That’s some pretty heady stuff the executive committee is asking for.

Specifically, the county board will consider a resolution supporting the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ proposal to spend Stewardship dollars to acquire 77 acres of developable land in the town of Minocqua along the Upper Tomahawk River corridor.  

The executive committee, on a 4-2 vote with county board chairman Scott Holewinski and supervisor Debbie Condado dissenting, said by all means, go ahead and poke us in the eye. Make it hurt if you can.

Let us be clear. We don’t like to suffer, so, in no uncertain terms, the county board should reject the resolution and oppose this purchase with every ounce of resolve it can muster.

Because this is about a whole lot more than 77 acres.

It’s about whether Oneida County means what it says when it talks about protecting its tax base, about preserving housing opportunities, about respecting its land-use plan, and about preventing northern Wisconsin from becoming an increasingly exclusive playground where ordinary working families are priced out while more land disappears forever into government ownership.

And make no mistake: forever is the operative word here. Once land enters the state estate through Stewardship acquisition, it almost never returns to private ownership. It will be gone down the well forever. The tax base will shrink permanently, and so will development opportunities, and there will be no Lassie to rescue us from the deep hole we fell into.

County board chairman Scott Holewinski understood exactly what was at stake when he introduced a resolution opposing the acquisition. His proposal correctly pointed out that the purchase directly conflicts with the county’s own comprehensive land-use plan, which “discourages the conversion of existing privately owned lands to public lands using federal, state, and local tax dollars to purchase existing MFL (Managed Forest Lands) lands or purchase easements over them.”  

That language was not an accidental afterthought, coming as it did in the wake of the DNR’s purchase by easement of 56,000 acres in the Pelican River forest. Apparently, those principles are negotiable now. 

That is the frustratingly hypocritical reality of northern Wisconsin politics. Officials cry out loud about shrinking tax bases, wring their hands over the lack of affordable housing, mourn the loss of developable land, and vow to curb growing state control over local economies. 

Then, parcel by parcel, they turn around and approve the very policies producing those outcomes. Eventually, hypocrisy ceases to be incidental and becomes institutionalized.

As Holewinski pointed out in the executive committee meeting, approximately two-thirds of the land in Oneida County is already either non-taxable or taxed at significantly reduced rates through programs such as MFL enrollment. He warned that the county “can’t just keep letting the DNR keep buying little chunks away from us.”  

He’s absolutely right.

At first blush, these 77 acres don’t seem to amount to much. The proposed acquisition would replace approximately $532 annually in property taxes with roughly $388 in PILT payments. What’s more, this proposed DNR purchase is different, the agency says. Look how limited in scope it is. And hey, it’s adjacent to current DNR holdings; it will enhance recreation.

To take the last point next, recreation for whom? Oneida County and the Willow Flowage offer numerous access points to vast areas of recreational land. More than abundant, actually. To put things in perspective, according to the county’s comprehensive plan, 33.7 percent of the county’s total land is already publicly owned. Another 33.56 percent has reduced taxes, either because they are enrolled in Managed Forest Law, are agricultural lands, or are undevelopable wetlands and soils.

All totaled, just 32.74 percent is fully taxable. Only a third is developable, leaving commercial, industrial, and residential uses to fight over the remaining scraps. In many towns, residential development is 2 percent or less of the land area, and now the geniuses at the county want to make it even less.

Oh sure, 77 acres isn’t, by itself, comparable to 56,000 acres. But have our supervisors never heard of the straw that breaks the camel’s back? A small parcel here, a small parcel there — and pretty soon you have what we already have in Oneida County, a housing crisis, caused in part by too much government-owned land.

Bear in mind, too, that that’s just part of the government interference. Within the boundaries of actual land available for development, you have to factor in existing zoning regulations, which whittle down even more the amount of land that can be used for housing and other activities. 

No one seems to be considering the long-term tax consequences, either. Oh sure, the loss of taxes to PILT isn’t a whole lot now, but, as Holewinski pointed out, the PILT payment won’t grow much over time, but a sensible improvement on those 77 acres could raise property tax revenue from those parcels significantly.

The argument for the acquisition deliberately ignores the cumulative effect of these acquisitions over decades.

Not to mention, every time one of these proposals comes along, we hear the gobbling goblins of government gobsmack say, well, this parcel is unique. There is always an excuse why the parcel is unique.

For example, if land borders existing DNR property, bureaucrats almost always argue it should be acquired to “complete” a corridor. By that rationale, the state could theoretically justify purchasing all of northern Wisconsin over time simply because new acquisitions would always be adjacent to previous ones.

To them, all of the Northwoods is one big corridor to complete. 

At some point, local governments must draw a line and say, ‘Enough.’ And if not here, where?

The DNR and supporters claim the purchase would protect water quality and provide recreational opportunities. But let’s be honest. This is not some pristine ecological treasure hanging by a thread. This is developable rural residential land that has long been contemplated for subdivision and housing.  

It is also already accessible from a town road. The DNR touts that fact as a reason it should be able to purchase the property with tax dollars, but that’s equally a reason to keep it on the tax rolls — it would give a responsible developer better access and more viability.

Developing it responsibly would not destroy the Tomahawk River corridor. It would not suddenly poison the Willow Flowage. It would not trigger an ecological apocalypse, though it might trigger some meltdowns in Madison.

All of which finally comes down to the bottom-line question: Why are we using taxpayer dollars to remove developable residential land from the market during a housing crunch, which is exactly what this does?

The less land available for housing and development, the more expensive the remaining land becomes. Scarcity drives prices upward. Working families, young residents, service workers, teachers, and first responders end up competing in increasingly distorted markets shaped not only by tourism and second-home demand but by government acquisition.

Astonishing, unless we stop these governments, we taxpayers are financing the squeeze ourselves.

Perhaps the most revealing detail in this entire fiasco is the purchase price. The DNR proposes paying $231,050 for property with a fair market value of approximately $144,400.  

Say what?

This is how Stewardship doesn’t merely remove land from the tax rolls but distorts the market itself. The state enters the market backed by taxpayer-funded bonding authority and can outbid ordinary buyers while creating powerful incentives for owners to sell into permanent government ownership.

The state might as well be buying slaves because that is what the program eventually turns us into: wards of the state who will eventually be forced to leave and live in their 15-minute cities. In practical terms, taxpayers subsidize the erosion of their own tax base, yoking them to the whims of government overlords, even as the Stewardship debate intensifies statewide.

The state’s Stewardship Program is scheduled to sunset June 30 after lawmakers declined to reauthorize it during the last legislative session. They declined to re-authorize precisely because of this very kind of abuse, especially in the North, and now we have the DNR rushing to push their projects through the pipeline before the state closes the door.

What is especially galling to us is that, in dispensing with Holewinski’s resolution, the executive committee majority also removed the language stating that the comprehensive plan discourages these purchases and why they are antithetical to the long-term interests of taxpayers.

At the very least, if the county board is going to pursue such folly, they should re-insert that language and acknowledge they are sticking it royally to their constituents for whatever reason they decide to pitch that day.

We do appreciate Billy Fried’s emphatic support of the town’s position, but we would remind him that supervisors are not elected to represent the institutional interests of town governments. They are elected to represent their constituents and to do what is best for them. The institutional interests don’t always necessarily align with the public interest — often they don’t — and in this instance, we don’t believe they do.

We do acknowledge that the landowner had every right to sell his land to the state. We — and the county board — also have every right to insist that the purchase does not come from our tax dollars, and that, to avoid the appearance if not the reality of anti-competitive incentives, it cannot exceed the fair market value of the listed property.

In the end, the county may not have any real say in this proposed acquisition. But it doesn’t mean we should surrender or go out of our way to glorify what is nothing more than another act of property theft. We should stand up and say to the state: Don’t Tread on Us.

The county board should say no, or the state will be right back real soon, gobsmacking us with yet another unique parcel the state simply must have.

It’s now or never, folks. Get serious.