Sportsmen and environmentalists converged on the Capitol Tuesday, urging legislators to override Governor Doyle’s veto of a bill that would return control of the DNR to a citizens board.
Politics plays too much of a role in decisions by the DNR these days. That’s according to Kerry Schumann, Director of the Wisconsin League of Conservation voters. “We’re really trying to get politics out of natural resources decision making, and make sure that it’s based on science. And to do that, the Department of Natural Resources secretary really needs to be independent of political influence,” says Schumann. They’re urging lawmakers to override Governor Jim Doyle’s veto of a bill which takes away the governors’s ability to control the agency.
“You hear from people within the agency that their hands are tied sometimes when they need to make decisions,” says Schumann. “There’s also the perception of it. The DNR has a very hard time working with the public these days, because there’s perception that the decisions aren’t being made based on science.” Other issues important to sportsmen and environmentalists, according to Schumann, are passage of a clean energy bill and new groundwater and drinking water protections.
John Colbert, WIBA