MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Republican-controlled budget committee of the Wisconsin Legislature cannot legally block conservation projects initiated by the Democratic governor. Tony Evers‘, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The decision marks a victory for Evers, whose relationship with Republican lawmakers has deteriorated since he took office in 2019, and for environmentalists across the state.
The court ruled 6-1 that provisions requiring the Joint Finance Committee to unilaterally block projects and land acquisitions financed with money from the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program violate the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.
The Legislature gave the executive branch the power to allocate money for stewardship when it created the program, Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in the majority opinion. Once that power was granted, lawmakers had no authority to override decisions about how to spend the money except by rewriting the spending laws, she wrote.
The parliament’s lawyer, Misha Tseytlin, did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press on Friday morning.
The Legislature created the stewardship program in 1989. The state Department of Natural Resources uses money from the program to fund grants to local governments and nongovernmental organizations for environmental projects. The governor’s office also uses money from the program to acquire land for conservation and public use. The Legislature currently authorizes the agency to spend up to $33.2 million in each fiscal year through 2025-26 for land acquisition, according to court documents.
Republicans have long criticized the program, saying it prevents land from being developed and takes parcels off local tax rolls. The Finance Committee in April 2023 blocked the DNR’s plan to spend $15.5 million from the program to acquire a conservation lease for 56,000 acres (22,662 hectares) of forest, which would have been the largest land conservation effort in Wisconsin history. Evers bypassed the committee last January by securing federal money for the purchase.
The governor filed a lawsuit in October, alleging that legislative committees controlled by a handful of Republicans overstepped their constitutional authority.
He argued that the commissions improperly blocked pre-approved raises for University of Wisconsin employees, blocked updates to commercial construction and ethics standards, and blocked funding for stewardship programs. The raises eventually passed, but the governor maintained that Republicans were essentially trying to change state law without passing a bill and sending it to him for approval or veto.
Evers asked the liberal-leaning court to hear the case directly without waiting for lower court rulings. The justices agreed in February, but said they would consider only whether the Finance Commission improperly blocked stewardship efforts.
Chief Justice Annette Ziegler was the lone justice to dissent, writing that the justices should have let the case proceed to lower courts. She also said the court’s liberal majority had “handpicked” the stewardship issue.
“What’s the rush?” Ziegler wrote. “There is absolutely no good reason to manually select this case and this one problem, in front of all the other cases, take it out of the queue and put it at the front of the queue.”
