Friday, October 22, 2021

WI judge: flawed DNR rule-making dating to Stepp era bars WI wolf hunt

It is exceedingly ironic and downright karmic that the Dane County judge who blocked the DNR-approved wolf hunt set to begin in two weeks based his ruling on the agency's reliance for wolf hunting planning and implementation - 

Wisconsin is killing its wolves 

- on an outdated emergency rule in force for nine years - though that emergency (read: temporary) rule was created and used when Walker appointee Cathy Stepp ran the agency after having publicly blasted emergency rule-making in a blog posting she wrote not long before her appointment by Scott Walker. 

Her posting is no longer online, but....

I'd cited it several times because it showed her unapologetic and sneering contempt for the very agency she would run.

And note that the same rule-making procedure Stepp had objected to on partisan grounds - yet was fine with when the DNR needed a sharp tool to craft and run wolf hunts with quota-busting overkills between 2012 - 2014, and repeated last year in 2020 after she had retired, too - was at the center of DNR policies which a judge said Friday rendered wolf hunting - for now - an unconstitutional Wisconsin activity.

I'd copied out Stepp's blog item several times. Here's one example, with her item reproduced, verbatim:

JUNE 26, 2009

And Another "Do As I Say" Moment...

Those of you that haven't had the pleasure of peeking behind the scenes of our state agencies like DNR, Health and Family Services, etc...need to know how some of the most far-reaching policies come down on our heads.

The most crushing/controversial rules that businesses have to follow in our state are--most times--done through the "rule making process" of our state agencies. Without bogging everyone down with some really boring procedure talk, suffice it to say that many of these great ideas (sarcasm) come from deep inside the agencies and tend to be reflections of that agency's culture.

For example, people who go to work for the DNR's land, waste, and water bureaus tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc...This is in their nature; their make-up and DNA. So, since they're unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.

I could go on and on with examples of some of the most ridiculous stuff I've seen come down the pike, (no pun intended), but for the purposes of this post, I am going to pull out a quote from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau's summary report on the outcome of the "budget negotiations" that legislative democrats had with each other. (Note: I said with "each other." There were no republican ideas or motions accepted AT ALL during the Conference Committee process. No surprise there.)

When an agency sees an urgent need--example would be Chronic Wasting Disease management plans--they're allowed to implement an Emergency Rule. Understandable, since these ideas get an urgent run through the Joint Committee to Review Administrative Rules (affectionately known as JCRAR) without much public notice or scrutiny. The process is there to address emergencies ONLY. 

Well, sometimes agencies try to use this process as an end-around the legislative process to implement Rules, which end up having the same affect as Laws. (Those of you who have piers in lakes or culverts at the end of your driveways have probaby experienced these Rules.)

O'k, I went waaay wordier than I intended, but here's some language that was inserted into this BudgetPig that should scare everyone--regarding one of our agencies, the Department of Commerce: "it may promulgate the initial rules as emergency rules without the finding of emergency."

Why should this scare you? When (not if, I said WHEN) they give this authority to the DNR there will be more of a whooshing sound as businesses run for the borders. 

It's always the fine print in these things that have the heaviest hit. 

Just another example of the democrats game plan: Change the Rules to Fit the Players.

Shout it with me, now: HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS DEMOCRAT.



2 comments:

Katrina said...

The rule-making process became a 31-step process during Walker's lame duck session. The new process gives the legislature the ability to kill any rules it doesn't like. It doesn't give them a short-cut to rule writing if they want something. Even if Evers and DNR support rule-making for a a wolf hunt, it takes 30 months to get rules through the process. Obviously the WI GOP knows this or they wouldn't have have tried to use an expired emergency rule. Any new emergency rule would have to come through DNR. The WI GOP and Scott Walker are completely to blame if there is no wolf hunt.

Wisconsinwolfwatcher said...

In addition act 169 clearly states one hunt per year if not on the ESL. NOT 2 hunts per year. If there was a hunt in Nov. that would be the second fiasco. NRB at first suggested a quota of 500.....the first hunt killed 218 wolves (blew past the quota of 119 by almost 100) add that to the 500 plus the 60 something that were "problem wolves" and you have 3/4 of the entire poplulation. So the goal had they not succeeded in tempering it down to 300 would have looked a lot like EXTINCTION. Even with the DRN reducing the quota to 130 and tribal allocations it is still a second hunt and another 74 dead wolves for sure, and god knows how far past it they would go because they kept the 24 hours to report a kill, NO ZONE SPECIFIC, and basically business as usual. The only chance is back on the ESL... There should be NO further hunts till there is a SCIENCE based permanent plan in place. Leaving squatting dentists out of the equation.