If WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos
is serious about passing budgets without anyone being "held hostage" - - though his track record suggests he has been more the perpetrator of punitive legislating than the victim - - he would root out, name names and banish the anonymous budget drafting/amending that has infected the current process and its predictable, toxic consequences.
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin is rightly outraged that one of these freshly-discovered, sponsor-free, anonymous budget amendments - - and wouldn't you know it's yet another attack on local decision-making - - discourages and could prevent municipalities from building or finishing valuable bike trails and sidewalks.
So GOP budget-writing legislators - - elected officials - - want kids to walk to school in the street, and also hope to set up more bike-motorist conflict in traffic lanes?
That's partisan stupidity gone mad - - so of course this would be handled anonymously by author and leader with no legislator saying, 'Hey, put my name on that.'
This same contemptible and corrupting no-name, no-hearing, no-explanation legislating is also the way someone slipped right past Joint Finance Committee co-chair and cheerleader for fake transparency Alberta Darling an amendment to devalue existing teaching training and certification by allowing an online alternative.
Though I'm surprised that whichever GOP State Rep. or Senator from Bashteachersville who committed this legislative breaking-and-entering wouldn't want to be named come election time for first-in-line position at the the far right's ideological ATM.
This in-the-dark budget writing orchestrated by anonymous donors or lobbyists distorts public policy by manipulating taxpayer spending to reward clandestine special interest.
It's wrong, immoral and anti-democratic, but if legislative leaders in our degraded, one-party GOP-led state are going to tolerate and benefit from it - - and, for all we know, stage-manage it as you'd expect leaders to do to earn their their privileges, titles, super offices and salary bumps - - then it's the people who are being held hostage by what I said yesterday was Soviet style governance.
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin is rightly outraged that one of these freshly-discovered, sponsor-free, anonymous budget amendments - - and wouldn't you know it's yet another attack on local decision-making - - discourages and could prevent municipalities from building or finishing valuable bike trails and sidewalks.
So GOP budget-writing legislators - - elected officials - - want kids to walk to school in the street, and also hope to set up more bike-motorist conflict in traffic lanes?
That's partisan stupidity gone mad - - so of course this would be handled anonymously by author and leader with no legislator saying, 'Hey, put my name on that.'
This same contemptible and corrupting no-name, no-hearing, no-explanation legislating is also the way someone slipped right past Joint Finance Committee co-chair and cheerleader for fake transparency Alberta Darling an amendment to devalue existing teaching training and certification by allowing an online alternative.
Though I'm surprised that whichever GOP State Rep. or Senator from Bashteachersville who committed this legislative breaking-and-entering wouldn't want to be named come election time for first-in-line position at the the far right's ideological ATM.
This in-the-dark budget writing orchestrated by anonymous donors or lobbyists distorts public policy by manipulating taxpayer spending to reward clandestine special interest.
It's wrong, immoral and anti-democratic, but if legislative leaders in our degraded, one-party GOP-led state are going to tolerate and benefit from it - - and, for all we know, stage-manage it as you'd expect leaders to do to earn their their privileges, titles, super offices and salary bumps - - then it's the people who are being held hostage by what I said yesterday was Soviet style governance.
http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2017/related/proposals/sb177
ReplyDeleteSB 177 at the very end says:
"Under current law, DNR must issue wetland general permits for discharges of
dredged or fill material into certain wetlands and may require a person to apply for
and obtain a wetland individual permit if DNR determines that conditions specific
to the site require additional restrictions on the discharge in order to provide
reasonable assurance that no significant adverse impacts to wetland functional
values will occur. Under current law, a wetland general or individual permit issued
by DNR also constitutes a state water quality certification, which is required under
the federal Clean Water Act in order for a person to obtain a federal permit for such
a discharge into federal wetlands. Under the federal Clean Water Act, a state may
also waive the requirement for certification.
This bill creates an exemption to wetland permitting requirements for any
discharge that is the result of activity undertaken by a drainage district to maintain
drainage district drains in accordance with plans and specifications approved by the
Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, and requires DNR to
waive any state water quality certification requested under the federal Clean Water
Act for such a discharge."