MADISON – Senate leaders failed to take a vote on Wisconsin’s popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program Wednesday, instead choosing to send it back to committee as Republicans and Democrats continue to negotiate what the program’s future should look like.
The two bills were sent back to the Senate Committee on Organization, preventing a vote as the Legislature heads into its final weeks before the session is expected to end. Bill author Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point, said he is still optimistic that the bill can move forward with enough votes after more negotiation.
“This has been one of these bills that’s been very hard to thread the needle on,” he said following the Feb. 18 floor session. “I think some individuals want more resources going into things like land acquisition.”
Testin said that leadership will get together to work on getting the votes needed to preserve the program. If nothing is passed before the Senate ends its year, the program will end in June.
The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program — named for conservation-minded Wisconsin governors Warren Knowles and Gaylord Nelson — began in 1989 and has been renewed each decade. It uses borrowing to pay for purchases to conserve land, easements to protect land against development and projects such as ramps, trails and bridges that help the public access public lands.
Republican leadership refused the reauthorization of the program in the 2025-2027 budget in response to a state Supreme Court ruling that said the Joint Finance Committee of the Legislature could no longer use anonymous objections to halt or slow down stewardship purchases. The 6-1 ruling sided with Evers and will likely continue to have a far-reaching impact on legislative committees for years to come.
The new bill, which already passed in the Assembly, would establish a process for more oversight without the ability for legislators to stall projects anonymously.
If signed into law, the bill would reauthorize the program for two years and would lay the groundwork to continue the program and authorize funding that could be spent on upgrading public lands already purchased through the program, potentially adding amenities like boat launches, trails or campgrounds.
Under an amendment, it would also pause the purchasing of land for two years, and require the Department of Natural Resources to do a survey of all the land already owned by organizations that could access stewardship funding. That survey would require project boundaries, lay out priorities for the next several years, show what the land is used for, and look at how payments in lieu of taxes and managed forest land funding is being used.
A second “trailer” bill, meant to fund the program, was also sent back to committee. It would provide $28.5 million for each of the two years the bill would reauthorize while cutting funding for both the land acquisition and forestry programs.
A spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers said on Feb. 18 that he would not sign the bill as it is currently written.
In his State of the State speech on Feb. 17, Evers encouraged Republicans to work with Democrats to revise the bill so that the program would remain alive.
“Let’s get a bipartisan bill done to reauthorize the stewardship program that both supports land acquisition and management of Wisconsin’s valuable natural resources and public lands,” he said. “We have to.”
In his budget proposal last year, Evers proposed one of the largest reauthorizations of the stewardship program ever, at $1 billion over 10 years through bonding authority and general revenue. Democrats introduced their own bill, but it has not received a committee hearing.
In a media conference before the floor session, Democrats blasted the Republican-authored bill and said it would essentially kill off the program if passed. Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, said there have been negotiations over the bill for months, but this version of the bill does not meet Democrats in the middle.
“That’s not negotiation, that’s negation,” she said. “We cannot and will not support a bill this bad.”
When asked if the bill would be better than passing nothing and having the stewardship program die, Hesselbein said no.
“I don’t think this is even a step in the correct direction,” she said. “This is a step backward.”
Testin said he is aware that Democrats are unsatisfied with the bill, and hopes that negotiations will land the bill in a place all sides are comfortable with.
Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on X @SchulteLaura.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Senate stalls vote on Knowles-Nelson land program as talks continue
Reporting by Laura Schulte, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
