Journal Sentinel Says Stop Tinkering With The Great Lakes Compact, But...

In a much-anticipated Sunday editorial, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tells obstructionists in the state legislature to stop holding up the Great Lakes Compact.

Though the editorial board softens the sting by also giving one major private sector opponent primo op-ed space to further spin efforts to undermine the Compact as mere "minor revisions."

More about that in a few paragraphs, but back to the editorial, which is a setback for the Compact opponents.

The legislative critics want the agreement sent back to the other Great Lakes for a renegotiation, even though it has taken seven years for the states to draft and begin approving the agreement, and four states' legislature have already passed it.

It's a last-minute effort to throw a monkey wrench into the process. and change the rules to obtain special advantages.

You don't play eight-and-a-half innings of a baseball game, then tell the umpires you want your last batter to be able to swing until he hits a home run.

With less than a month left in the current legislation session, it is unlikely that those obstructing the Compact's introduction and approval will give the bill an Assembly hearing, then a vote.

In the unlikely event the Compact were to pass the Assembly, along with the Democratically-controlled Senate, it would mean a victory for Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, a Compact supporter and chairman of the Council of Great Lakes Governors, the regional body that has moved the Compact this far forward.

In an election year in our politicized state, the GOP Assembly leadership, steered by Speaker Mike Huebsch, (R-West Salem), would never let that happen.

Such is the political environment surrounding the Compact in Wisconsin - - an ugly reality found also in Ohio, where Huebsch has forged common ground with far-right legislators whom the Cleveland Plain Dealer has editorially blasted for their obstructionism in language far tougher than the Journal Sentinel's.

The Journal Sentinel also printed a Sunday op-ed by Compact opponent Matt Monroney, executive director of the Wisconsin Builders Association, that endorsed the Ohio/Wisconsin Assembly pipe-dreamy substantial revisions as "minor revisions."

What the Builders, and their allies in the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and elsewhere on the right want when it comes to Compact rewriting is nothing minor.

They want the unanimous, eight-state approval procedure for certain diversion approvals deleted or changed to a simple majority - - just so the City of Waukesha can easily get more water to speed development and enrich fresh annexations.

That would gut the Compact.

There is no way the other states are going to give that up. The eight-state approval process for communities like the City of Waukesha has been set in federal law - - since 1986.

Why would the other states approve a document that overturns a federal protection that was put into the law in the best interests of the Great Lakes they share?

And adding additional language sought by Team Waukesha ostensibly to protect property rights that are not endangered in Wisconsin by the Compact is a stalling tactic to artificially add more years to now-closed negotiations.

All to make unreasonable and inappropriate demands on seven other states' legislatures and their negotiators who have been at this since 2001.
Those other states - - especially the four whose legislatures have already approved the Compact as is - - should tell Wisconsin to go fly a kite, and rightfully label Wisconsin as the renegade in the region, if the detractors get their way.

The Council of Great Lakes Governors, chaired by Gov. Doyle, has already said there will be no new negotiations to satisfy a few loud, self-interested critics.

Bottom line:

The other states and their Canadian counterparts are not going to grant Waukesha County special status at the table as if it were a separate state or nation.

Waukesha County often treats Milwaukee as if it indeed were a sovereign entity, with all the entitlements and trappings of a sovereign power, but don't look for Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Canada, to treat Waukesha County as the 51st State.

My hunch is that the Monroney/Huebsch/WMC plan to keep the Compact bottled up in the Assembly this month will succeed.

But it could be a short-term win, long term loss for the GOP, since legislative campaigns take place this fall and the Great Lakes could and should become a leading issue.

The framework:

Huebsch and his troops are willing to leave the Great Lakes vulnerable to water losses through diversion far from their basin, harming the Wisconsin and Great Lakes regional economies.

What's the difference between a Mike Huebsch being willing to leave the Great Lakes open to unregulated diversion and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson wanting Wisconsin to send its waters to the parched southwest?

Nothing.

More than 80% of Wisconsin residents recently said when polled that they favored a strong Great Lakes Compact - - and it is possible that as the campaign season unfolds, six and perhaps all seven of the other Great Lakes states - - even Ohio - - will have approved the Compact.

Making Wisconsin the anti-conservation state.

Where political and business leaders in Waukesha County consider Great Lakes water management so foreign, so incompatible with their business and political bottom lines, that they would put the Great Lakes at risk.

And spin their obstructionism as "reasonable...minor tweaks" that actually strengthen the Compact!

Spare us the double-speak.

If there is any justice and common sense in Wisconsin, this tacky episode in partisanship and parsing should backfire, giving Huebsch et al the same backlash that made former presidential candidate Richardson something of a Great Lakes pariah.

The GOP's ideologically-reactionary but thin, three-vote Assembly majority - - in what looks like a Democratic landslide year nationally - - may not be, shall we say, sustainable?