Latest news with #HenryRedman
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Wisconsin Supreme Court rules spills law applies to PFAS
The seven members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court hear oral arguments. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner) In a 5-2 ruling on Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the Department of Natural Resources' (DNR) authority to regulate polluters of hazardous substances such as PFAS through the state's toxic spills law. The court's ruling reverses the decisions of the circuit and appeals courts that could have threatened the DNR's ability to force polluters to pay for the environmental damage they cause. For more than 40 years, the spills law has allowed the DNR to bring civil charges and enforce remediation measures against parties responsible for spills of 'harmful substances.' The lawsuit was brought by an Oconomowoc dry cleaner and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), the state's largest business lobby, after the owner of the dry cleaner, Leather Rich Inc., found PFAS on her property. In preparation to sell the business, Leather Rich had been participating in a voluntary DNR program to remediate contamination on its property in exchange for a certificate of liability protection from the department. During that process, the DNR determined that PFAS should be considered a 'hazardous substance' under the spills law and communicated that on its website. If PFAS were present on a site, the DNR stated, participants in the voluntary program would only be eligible for partial liability protection. While conducting a site investigation through the program, Leather Rich determined three of four wells on the property exceeded Department of Health Services standards for PFAS concentration in surface or drinking water. The DNR requested that future reports from Leather Rich to the department include the amount of PFAS found on the property. Leather Rich responded by withdrawing from the program and filing suit. At the circuit and appeals courts, Leather Rich was successful, with judges at each level finding that the decision by the DNR to start considering PFAS a 'hazardous substance' under the spills law constituted an 'unpromulgated rule' and therefore was against the law. That interpretation would have required the DNR to undergo the complicated and often yearslong process of creating an administrative rule each time it determines that a substance is harmful to people or the environment. SpillsLawDecision In the majority opinion, authored by Justice Janet Protasiewicz and joined by the Court's three other liberal leaning justices and conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Court found that the DNR spent nearly 50 years administering the spills law responding 'to about 1,000 spills each year, without promulgating rules listing substances, quantities, and concentrations that it deems 'hazardous substances.'' Protasiewicz wrote that when the Legislature wrote the spills law, it left the definition of 'hazardous substance' intentionally open-ended but required a potentially harmful substance to meet certain criteria if it would apply under the law. 'The definition of 'hazardous substance' is broad and open-ended in that it potentially applies to 'any substance or combination of substances,'' Protasiewicz wrote. 'But the definition is limited in that the substance or combination of substances must satisfy one of two fact-specific criteria.' She wrote that the law considers 'a substance or combination of substances is 'hazardous' if,' its quantity, concentration or characteristics may cause or contribute to an increase in mortality or serious illness or may pose a potential hazard to human health or the environment Leather Rich and WMC had argued that the Legislature's failure to include chemical thresholds in the statutory text left while including the use of terms like 'significantly,' 'serious,' and 'substantial,' meant that the law was ambiguous and therefore any DNR determinations of what counts as hazardous must be delineated in an administrative rule. They argued that under this interpretation of statute, spilling milk or beer on the ground could constitute a toxic spill. Protasiewicz wrote if that were the case, 'then scores of Wisconsin statutes on a wide range of subjects would be called into doubt,' and that their hypotheticals are undermined by the text of the statute. 'It is possible for an everyday substance like milk or beer to qualify as a 'hazardous substance,' but only if it first satisfies [the statute's] fact specific criteria,' she wrote. 'A mug of beer or a gallon of milk spilled into Lake Michigan may not 'pose a substantial present or potential hazard to human health or the environment,' but a 500-gallon tank of beer or milk discharged into a trout stream might well pose a substantial present hazard to the stream's fish and environment.' The majority opinion also found that communications the DNR made on its website and in letters to Leather Rich counted as 'guidance documents' not as rules. Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley, who once gave a speech to WMC in which she declared to the business lobby that 'I am your public servant,' wrote in a dissent joined by Chief Justice Annette Ziegler that the majority's interpretation of the spills law left the state vulnerable to a 'tyrannical' government that could both create the rules and enforce them. 'This case is about whether the People are entitled to know what the law requires of them before the government can subject them to the regulatory wringer,' she wrote. 'The majority leaves the People at the mercy of unelected bureaucrats empowered not only to enforce the rules, but to make them. Americans have lived under this unconstitutional arrangement for decades, but now, the majority says, the bureaucrats can impose rules and penalties on the governed without advance notice, oversight, or deliberation. In doing so, the majority violates three first principles fundamental to preserving the rule of law — and liberty.' After the decision's release, Democrats and environmental groups celebrated its findings as an important step to protecting Wisconsin's residents from the harmful effects of pollution. 'This is a historic victory for the people of Wisconsin and my administration's fight against PFAS and other harmful contaminants that are affecting families and communities across our state,' Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement. 'The Supreme Court's decision today means that polluters will not have free rein to discharge harmful contaminants like PFAS into our land, water, and air without reporting it or taking responsibility for helping clean up those contaminants. It's a great day for Wisconsinites and the work to protect and preserve our state's valuable natural resources for future generations.' But WMC said the Court's interpretation leaves businesses guessing what substances count as hazardous under the law. 'The DNR refuses to tell the regulated community which substances must be reported under the Spills Law, yet threatens severe penalties for getting it wrong,' Scott Manley, WMC's Executive Vice President of Government Relations, said in a statement. 'Businesses and homeowners are left to guess what's hazardous, and if they're wrong, they face crushing fines and endless, costly litigation. This ruling blesses a regulatory approach that is fundamentally unfair, unworkable, and impossible to comply with.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Wildlife, land conservation groups push for tweaks to Republican stewardship grant bill
Rep. Tony Kurtz testifies on his proposed legislation to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner) Organizations representing wildlife, land conservation and local governments testified Wednesday at a public hearing to push for the passage of a Republican bill to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program while advocating for a number of amendments to the bill's text. The proposal's authors, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), say the current version of the bill is a starting point for negotiations. Without a deal, the 35-year-old program will lapse despite its popularity among voters. The challenge for legislators is that despite overwhelming public support for land conservation, a subset of the Republican members of the Legislature have grown opposed to the grant program. In their view, the grant program allows land to be taken off the local property tax roll and blocks commercial development. That opposition has grown stronger since the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision last year that the Legislature's Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee's authority to place anonymous holds on stewardship grant projects is unconstitutional. Kurtz has said that without returning some level of legislative oversight, the Republican opposition to the program won't get on board with reauthorizing it. But the bill also needs to be palatable to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers so that he will sign it and any Republican opposition to the bill could make the votes of Democratic legislators more important. In an effort to recruit Republican holdouts, the bill includes a provision that requires the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to submit a list to the Legislature each January of any major land acquisitions costing more than $1 million the department plans to purchase with stewardship funds that year. The Legislature would then need to approve each proposed project in a piece of legislation and provide the required appropriation. To gain the support of environmental groups, the bill allows stewardship dollars to be used for the first time to fund habitat restoration projects. Following a recent trend of Republican-authored legislation, the bill separates the policy changes to the program from the budget appropriation to fund it in an attempt to sidestep Evers' partial veto pen. Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at non-profit land trust organization Gathering Waters, said in his testimony at the hearing Wednesday that the bill's authors had to 'try and thread a challenging political path towards reauthorization.' At the hearing, testifying members of the public mainly highlighted two areas for improvement on the bill — clarifying how the DNR should prioritize habitat restoration, facility upkeep and land acquisition in award grants and more clearly laying out how the legislative approval process for major land acquisitions will work. As currently written, the bill would require the DNR to prioritize property development over land acquisition projects. Brian Vigue, freshwater policy director for Audubon Great Lakes, said those types of grants are so different that they should be considered separately. 'Because habitat management projects are so different from land acquisition projects, it really will make it difficult for the DNR to determine which of the two types of grant applications would have priority over the other,' he said. 'It's kind of an apples to oranges comparison to make so I think a practical solution to this challenge is to create a separate appropriation for wildlife habitat grants.' A number of organizations testifying called for more direct language outlining how the legislative oversight process will work, such as binding timelines for when the Legislature must consider the projects on the DNR list, clear guidelines for how projects will be evaluated and quickly held votes on project approval. Representatives of organizations that work to purchase private land and conserve it through conservation easements or deals with the state said that the opportunities to purchase a piece of land and save it for future enjoyment by the broader public come rarely and that those real estate transactions can often be complicated and take a long time. If a deal is largely in place except for the required legislative approval — which could potentially take years or never even come up for a vote — landowners might be unwilling to participate in the process. 'Opportunities to provide such access sometimes only come once in a generation,' said Tony Abate, conservation director at Groundswell Conservancy, a non-profit aimed at conserving land in south central Wisconsin. 'We are concerned with the funding threshold and the logistics of the proposed major land acquisition program. Real estate near population centers is expensive, and we often compete with non-conservation buyers to secure farmland or recreational lands.' Abate said that of the conservancy's 16 current projects, four would surpass the $1 million threshold and require legislative approval. He suggested raising the threshold to $5 million. Carlin, with Gathering Waters, said the provision as currently written could indefinitely delay projects. 'We appreciate legislators' concerns with oversight, and we welcome discussion about how to provide effective and efficient oversight,' he said. 'Unfortunately, the current proposal lacks defined timelines, transparent evaluation processes or mechanisms to require timely votes. Without these elements, worthy conservation projects could languish indefinitely. So we would ask that any review process include binding timelines, transparent project evaluation and timely votes to ensure strong oversight while maintaining predictability for applicants.' At the hearing, members of the committee asked few questions of the testifying groups and members of the public. Democrats on the committee pushed more than once to make sure they see the partner bill providing the money for the program before voting on the policy changes. All of the testimony at the hearing Wednesday was either to provide information only to the legislators or in favor of the bill. The committee received one written comment against the bill's passage, from the Wisconsin Bear Hunters' Association. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Evers raises Pride flag over Wisconsin State Capitol
The Progress Pride Flag flies over the Wisconsin Capitol. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner) For the seventh time, Gov. Tony Evers ordered the Progress Pride Flag to fly over the Wisconsin State Capitol for LGBTQ Pride Month. This year, Pride Month begins on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which gave same-sex couples the right to get married in 2015. But Evers' celebration of LGBTQ pride is occuring as the administration of President Donald Trump attacks the rights of transgender people and a recent Gallup poll found that Republican acceptance of same-sex marriage has fallen to its lowest level in nine years. 'When the Pride Flag flies above the People's House, it sends a clear and unequivocal message that Wisconsin recognizes and celebrates LGBTQ Wisconsinites and Americans,' Evers said in a statement. 'Every day, but especially today and this month, we reaffirm our commitment to striving to be a place where every LGBTQ kid, person, and family can be bold in their truth and be safe, treated with dignity and respect, and welcomed without fear of persecution, judgment, or discrimination. I promised long ago that, as governor, I would always fight to protect LGBTQ Wisconsinites with every tool and every power that I have. I will never stop keeping that promise.' In the executive order Evers signed Friday, he notes that the LGBTQ has been under attack in recent years, including in Wisconsin where Republicans have tried more than once to pass legislation attacking transgender children. 'Despite historic victories, in the last several years, there has been a significant increase in anti-LGBTQ legislation introduced in state Legislatures across the country, including in Wisconsin, that have targeted LGBTQ kids and people and increased dangerous anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, as well as efforts on a state and national level to erase LGBTQ history and stories.' The Progress Pride Flag flying above the Capitol includes the recognizable LGBTQ rainbow colors and a chevron of additional stripes that represent LGBTQ people of color, the transgender community and people with HIV/AIDS. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Wisconsin Examiner wins 7 Milwaukee Press Club awards
Examiner staff members Baylor Spears, Henry Redman, Erik Gunn, Ruth Conniff and Criminal Justice Fellow Andrew Kennard with Milwaukee Press Club awards on May 9, 2025 | Wisconsin Examiner photo Wisconsin Examiner staff members were recognized for investigative reporting, public service reporting, explanatory reporting, and in several feature-writing categories in the Milwaukee Press Club annual Excellence in Journalism contest for work published in 2024. Henry Redman received the Bronze award for online investigative reporting for a series of stories that uncovered the influence of an out-of-state right-wing pro-development group on land use planning in Oneida County. Editor Ruth Conniff was recognized in the public service reporting category for a special report on human trafficking in Wisconsin agriculture. For the third year in a row, Conniff also received an award for the best online column for a selection of her work. Criminal Justice Project Fellow Andrew Kennard received a bronze award for explanatory reporting online for a story about problems with access to telephone communication for incarcerated people in Wisconsin prisons. Baylor Spears was honored with a bronze award for hard news feature writing for her story on how Democratic Party candidates were campaigning in parts of the state that they have been shut out from in the past by gerrymandering. Deputy Editor Erik Gunn was the recipient of a silver award for feature writing for his story on a project in La Crosse by college students and neighborhood activists to eliminate the use of mulched rubber as a playground surface. Gunn also received a bronze award for personal profile writing for his story on a mother who has campaigned for years to have meningitis vaccines required in Wisconsin after her son died of the illness in college. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Small businesses are the backbone of America — but right now, tariffs are breaking their backs
Main Street in the Wisconsin community of Cambridge. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner) As a former small business owner for 27 years and a longtime board member of the Monroe Street Merchants Association in Madison, I've spent decades working to strengthen the small businesses and Main Streets that make our communities thrive. Today, I'm deeply concerned — because Main Streets across America are under threat like never before. The sweeping tariffs imposed by the current administration are already fueling inflation, disrupting supply chains, and pushing small businesses to the brink. Local retailers, independent producers and small manufacturers — the very backbone of our neighborhoods — are being hit hardest. Carol 'Orange' Schroeder, our board chair at the Monroe Street Merchants Association and owner of Orange Tree Imports, a favorite Madison store, understands this better than most. This year, Orange is celebrating 50 years in business — an incredible milestone. Over the decades, she's helped independent retailers nationwide weather many challenges, including fierce online competition. But as she recently wrote, not even the pandemic has matched the level of economic turmoil small businesses are facing today. The problem is clear and devastating: suppliers can't get the goods they need, vendors are questioning whether they can stay afloat and customers — grappling with rising prices and financial anxiety — are pulling back from shopping locally. Sales reps are going unpaid as orders are canceled, and stores of all sizes are bracing for empty shelves. In short, the social fabric that binds our communities is beginning to fray under the weight of uncertainty. The National Retail Federation recently warned that these tariffs threaten the American dream — and they're right. Small businesses aren't just part of our economy; they're central to our national identity, job creation, innovation and the strength of our local communities. Now more than ever, Congress must step up and act. Policymakers have a critical opportunity to end these harmful tariffs, restore stability, and reassert balance in our trade policies. Just as importantly, Congress must reassert its constitutional authority over the power of the purse — a responsibility that rests with the legislative branch, not the executive alone. The stakes couldn't be clearer. Without immediate action, we face shuttered storefronts, lost jobs and an avoidable recession. According to Gallup, Americans' economic outlook is now worse than at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic or the global financial crisis — a sobering indicator of just how fragile the moment is. This is not a partisan issue. It's a matter of economic survival, community resilience and protecting the American dream for generations to come. Congress must act now. Small businesses, workers, and families across the country are counting on bold leadership. It's time to end the tariff chaos, restore stability, and ensure Main Street can keep doing what it does best: creating jobs, driving innovation and strengthening the communities we all call home. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
