If DNR's Stepp quits, a clone will step in

Celebrations may be premature, because the Walker-WMC-Pollution Complex can easily supply an equally ill-informed, ill-fitting replacement, but for the record there is a published prediction in Outdoor News that Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wrecker-from-within Cathy Stepp may be about to leave behind Wisconsin.

Stepp is often gone from the office, and has missed the last two Natural Resources Board meetings. Previous secretaries, such as Les Voigt and Buzz Besadny, would never miss a meeting of the Natural Resources Board.

Stepp, a home builder with no academic natural resources education, is building a retirement home in the Ozarks of Missouri. Once the budget passes, I expect her to resign as secretary of the DNR.

 Also that she'd be leaving behind the agency mess she helped create.

The DNR, once a nationally-regarded science-based resource protection agency, has been disregarded, defunded and degraded by management "deliberately and proudly uninformed," according to one first-hand observer among several whom I surveyed over the course of ten days. 

Wisconsin's far-right Governor Scott Walker set the DNR's downfall in motion when he appointed at the beginning of his tenure Racine developer and unabashed DNR-trasher Cathy Stepp - -

- - read her anti-DNR-staff-and-program rant while a revealing Stepp video has been taken off-line - - to oversee the DNR as Secretary with what Walker called "a chamber of commerce mentality." 

Walker then added other top managers with work at leading builders, transportation and commerce trade associations on their resumes to oversee crucial air, water and other environmental policy development, implementation and decision-making. 

While Stepp, at times, has promoted in-house activities or made remarks which one first-hand observer has called "not very professional. I think she is deliberately and proudly uninformed." 

A summary post about some of this is here.