Monday, May 7, 2012

DNR Enforcement Pull Back Is Walker At Work

DNR Executive Assistant Scott Gunderson, Deputy Secretary Matt Moroney, and Secretary Cathy Stepp are the instruments of the agency's pullback on pollution enforcement, but the driving force is Scott Walker's ideological, robotic servitude to corporate power.

In fact, the Governor praised the DNR's wrist-slapping just two days before news of the human waste dumping fiasco broke:
Increasing compliance and decreasing the number of environmental regulation violations is a good thing for Wisconsin's valuable natural resources, Wisconsin residents, tourism, our economy and ultimately for the next generation. 
This unbelievable, unacceptable, unprecedented case of human waste dumping gone amok -- and the business owner involved is not new to pollution enforcement action - - is the public-interest-be-damned tipping point for Walker and his tenure of sixteen divisive, disgraceful months unambiguously now fully look, feel, sound and smell like recall.
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousMay 7, 2012 at 7:01 AM

    In Wisconsin, DNR now stands for Department of No Regulation. The really infuriating part of Stepp's rebuttal to the WSJ story is her invoking "consistency of enforcement," essentially saying that if one case of illegal dumping resulted in referral to the DOJ only after the second offense, that must be the standard for all cases. The trouble is that some cases are far more serious than others and some may warrant DOJ referral the first time. Consistency really is the hobgoblin of Stepp's pea-sized brain.

    On a deeper level, the trouble with Stepp's "education first" philosophy of enforcement is that it gives violators a get-out-of-jail free card for a first offense. Most businesses are eminently responsible, but there are always some that will cut corners, or worse, given the opportunity. Now such businesses pretty much know that they can violate at will and risk nothing more than an "enforement conference" the first time they get caught. After that maybe they need to clean up their act, but in the meantime they have gotten away with murder. Or possibly they risk facing a minor fine that amounts to less money than they saved by cutting corners on compliance. It becomes a business decision: I can risk a $5,000 fine in order to save $10,000 by acting illegally. I come out ahead!

    This brave new DNR is a joke and Stepp is a disgrace to the long legacy of DNR leaders in Wisconsin.

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