Patrick Durkin: Petty politicians still bickering as Wisconsin DNR secretary post remains vacant after a year

The captain’s chair at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) sits empty a year after former DNR Secretary Adam Payne gave 10 days’ notice before retiring Nov. 1, 2023.

Payne served only 10 months after accepting Gov. Tony Evers’ appointment on Dec. 27, 2022. His Oct. 20, 2023, resignation letter cited neither job dissatisfaction nor age or health concerns. He was 55 when accepting the job.

Payne’s letter simply said the DNR’s top job helped him realize he should spend more time with his aging parents and help his wife with their care. He also said he wanted to spend more time with his four young grandchildren, and focus more on his own health.

Evers, meanwhile, has said little about this cabinet vacancy, even though the DNR is Wisconsin’s most visible and publicly engaged agency. Whether you hunt, fish, trap, camp, canoe, breathe air, drink water, love wolves or spread manure, you’ll pay fees, gripe about DNR data, and try to honor or dodge myriad rules and regulations.

When asked about the cabinet vacancy in April, Evers blamed the state Senate’s GOP majority. He basically said it’s hard to fill such jobs when Republican senators ignore his nominees for months, even years, and – after exhausting all rational delaying tactics — reject them out of spite.

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When asked again in late May if he were any closer to naming a new DNR chief, Evers said he “wished it would happen this moment.” When the moment passed, he said he’d be happy if it got done “in the next couple of weeks.”

That was five months ago.

Apparently, Evers just had “concepts” of a nominee.

Given the state’s tiresome partisan atmosphere, prudent folks give Evers slack. After all, three days before Payne resigned, the state Senate took the unprecedented action of rejecting four Evers appointments to the Natural Resources Board (NRB).

Let’s explain “unprecedented.” In 1967, Republican Gov. Warren Knowles directed a group called the Kellett Commission to craft a system to set natural-resource policy for Wisconsin. The commissioners created the Department of Natural Resources from the old Wisconsin Conservation Department, and established an unpaid seven-citizen board to set policy for the new DNR agency.

It gave the governor the authority to appoint NRB members to serve six-year staggered terms. But the NRB, not the governor, hired and fired the DNR secretary.

In the 56 years after the NRB’s creation, the Senate rejected only one of at least 60 appointees made by governors from both parties. Another withdrew under pressure before the Senate could end his misery. In other words, the Senate in one action last October quadrupled the NRB rejections of the previous six decades.

Once the governor appoints them, NRB members typically start their terms while awaiting Senate review and confirmation. Of the seven NRB members in place when Payne was secretary, the Senate had confirmed only its chair, Bill Smith, in 2019, Vice-Chair Marcy West in 2020, and Paul Buhr in October 2023. (Buhr resigned without explanation the week of Oct. 14 and Evers appointed New London farmer Rachel Bouressa to replace him on Friday, Oct. 18. Buhr served roughly one year).

Of the four Evers’ appointees rejected by the Senate committee on Oct. 17, 2023, Sharon Adams, had already served 2.5 years without a Senate confirmation hearing. Another, Sandra Dee Naas, had served nearly a year without a hearing after her predecessor, Fred Prehn, refused – legally so – to surrender his expired seat for 19 months because his replacement had not been confirmed by the Senate. The other two rejections, Dylan Jennings and Jim Vanden Brook, served just more than five months without hearings after their May 9, 2023, nominations.

Evers must have anticipated those four rejections by the Senate, and replaced them the same day with Todd Ambs, Robin Schmidt, Patty Schachtner and Douglas Cox. Four months later, the Senate rejected Ambs, but OK’d Cox, Schmidt, and Schachtner. Evers immediately appointed Deb Dassow to replace Ambs. Three weeks later, the Legislature recessed and won’t convene until Jan. 6, 2025, and so Dassow is serving while awaiting a hearing – as is the newly appointed Bouressa.

Although Evers thwarted the Senate’s rejections with five instant NRB replacements this past year, he hasn’t shown equal urgency replacing Payne, who never received a Senate confirmation hearing. Former NRB members and retired DNR administrators speculated privately that Evers would wait until the Legislature recessed in March this year to name a new secretary, knowing the Senate could do nothing until January.

So much for that idea. Seven months have passed since the Senate last worked. When asked last week about Evers’ plans to fill the post, his communications director, Britt Cudaback, emailed a reply:

“Gov. Evers works diligently to find the very best candidates to fill every role … and continues to work in earnest to recruit and interview a new (DNR) secretary.”

Cudaback blamed the Senate for complicating the task, writing: “Finding the right talented and well-qualified person who’s willing to leave their current employment for a full-time position in public service is difficult as it is, but finding someone willing take on a new position in which they may do their job exceptionally and still be abruptly fired for no reason other than petty, partisan politics continues to make this search particularly challenging.”

All true, but also obvious and perfunctory. Are we to believe the governor can’t find a former DNR secretary, or former NRB member, or high-ranking retired DNR deputy director or lawmaker with environmental credentials to fill the void, however temporary?

At worse, a succession of sacrificial DNR secretaries would remind our petty, partisan and pouty senators that Evers can summon the talent to plug any leak, stuff any hole, or fill any void they punch in his hull.

Evers’ inaction confirms the folly of Gov. Tommy Thompson’s 1995 state budget. That’s when Thompson made the DNR secretary part of the governor’s cabinet, stripping the NRB of its power to hire and fire the secretary. Those moves spit on the historical lessons the Kellett Commission addressed in 1967 when it set up the DNR and its citizen-run governing board to insulate the agency from politics.

Thompson’s error could have been corrected by any governor who has served since. Former Gov. Jim Doyle promised – twice – to switch the responsibility of hiring the DNR secretary back to the NRB, yet never followed through on that promise. Heck, even Evers could have made that move. Instead we’ve have no one running the agency since Payne resigned.

Political hazards were well known 60 years ago, but they’re worse now after 12 years of computer-aided gerrymandered elections bred toxic partisanship that gridlocked the Legislature and governor.

With PFAS contamination, deteriorating state parks, manure-tainted drinking water, ever-spreading chronic wasting disease and a rapidly growing funding crisis as hunting, fishing and trapping participation falls, we need more action and fewer excuses from the governor.

Contact Patrick Durkin at patrickdurkin56@gmail.