About Pro Bass: Getting "Pro" In The Process

It's well-known by now that a business development in Green Bay has run into trouble after the prospective tenant - - a big national fishing equipment outfit - - said with some logical consistency it didn't build stores on wetlands.

What's fascinating is that there was a process underway to determine, under Wisconsin law and procedures, if there was a way that the wetlands issue could be addressed so the store could be built with all parties, and all interests - - public and private - - satisfied.

But Scott Walker, eager to look as pro-business as possible, and get a positive jobs count going towards 250,000, made an end run - - pesky procedures ! - - and proposed a special bill to terminate the process and thus declare the site acceptable by legislative fiat.

As if that is the way to determine whether a wetlands should be filled, even for a nifty development.

That's when the project began to unravel.  It was the political equivalent of the bad Brett Favre throwing unsuccessfully into triple coverage: of course that play will fail.

So give Walker a thumbs-down for mishandling what was a delicate and important but resolvable issue, and give a thumbs-up to the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, which is trying to get the parties around a table, and to Bass Pro, for not wanting to fill a wetlands or be on the wrong side of some messy and unnecessary PR.

Walker and his new DNR team could have been the convener of a rational process, but that would have required professional governing skills that Team Walker does not have, preferring ideology to openness, and politics to persuasion and process.