David Michael Miller
For those who like black comedy, it’s hard to beat the decision in August by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce to give its “Friend of the Environment” award to Menard’s, the home improvement chain. The group released a statement praising Menard’s for efforts “to eliminate wasted energy, increase recycling rates and improve efficiency.”
Perhaps, but Menard’s also happens to have had more environmental violations than any company in the state. Owner John Menard and his company were fined $1.7 million for 21 violations, and have been cited for disposing hazardous waste, manufacturing and selling arsenic-tainted mulch, using a floor drain to dump chemicals into a tributary of the Chippewa River, and dumping a pallet of herbicide on a parking island.
The award was a smelly bouquet to Menard, who serves on the WMC’s board of directors and was a major donor of dark money to Gov. Scott Walker, but also a testament to how ideologically extreme the WMC has become.
That’s quite a change for an organization whose modern history goes back to 1970 and for decades “was largely seen as a quiet, pro-business group,” as Erik Gunn wrote in a 2008 cover story for Isthmus. “It advocated lower taxes and less regulation, but largely steered clear of the political fray. It had cordial relations with...labor leaders.”
But since the 1990s, WMC has become increasingly strident, all the more so since its frequent opponent, the state teachers union, saw its power decline due to Act 10.
Now the state’s top lobbying group, WMC spent millions to help elect candidates like Annette Ziegler, Michael Gableman and David Prosser, all accused of ethical violations, to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This helped give the court a conservative majority, even as its reputation in legal circles has declined nationally.
WMC later convinced the court to adopt a rule allowing justices not to recuse no matter how large a campaign contribution they received from parties to the case. The rule is nationally notable for its lax standards, and opened the door to the court’s conservative majority refusing to recuse and then rule in favor of killing a John Doe probe of illegal campaign coordination by WMC and other defendants.
WMC also pushed for Act 21, the 2011 law limiting the power of state agencies to make any rules not approved by the state Legislature. This has greatly reduced the state Department of Natural Resources’ ability to regulate high-capacity wells, which has led to dried-up streams and lakes in Wisconsin.
And not long after former WMC lobbyist Andrew Cook became deputy secretary of the state Department of Justice, Attorney General Brad Schimel ruled the DNR has no legal authority to put conditions on high-capacity-well applications that would take into account their cumulative effects on streams, rivers and lakes.
Another sign of how ideological WMC has become is its lobbyist Lucas Vebber, hired after nearly three years as an aide to Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. Vebber recently blasted Dane County Circuit Court Judge John W. Markson for making a ruling favored by the environmental group Clean Wisconsin, that the DNR must impose conditions on the expansion of Kinnard Farms (which is adding more than 2,000 cattle at its farm in Kewaunee County) to safeguard water resources. Vebber, noting the judge had donated $50 to Clean Wisconsin, assailed him for refusing to recuse himself and for helping fund a “radical environmental organization that had a case before him,” arguing it “raised significant questions about the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
The idea that a $50 charitable donation had compromised the integrity of our judiciary is laughable by itself, but all the more blackly comic given WMC’s success getting the Supreme Court to ignore millions of dollars in campaign contributions in order to rule in the group’s favor.
As for the claim that Clean Wisconsin is a “radical” group, that’s a far better description of Vebber and the WMC. They have adamantly opposed the federal EPA rule that requires reductions in emissions by electric utilities. But as a Wall Street Journal poll found, two-thirds of Americans support the rule.
WMC has issued exaggerated statements on the potential economic impact, such as Vebber’s claim that it would be an “economic and jobs disaster for Wisconsin.” But as Urban Milwaukee has reported, the impact on jobs amounts to 0.3 percent of the economy. The EPA rule is arguably an opportunity for the state to embrace home-grown alternative energy production of wind and solar and grow jobs here, rather than exporting them to states that sell coal and natural gas. That seems like a pro-Wisconsin business position, while WMC’s stance favoring out-of-state coal companies could hardly be more extreme.
Bruce Murphy is the editor of UrbanMilwaukee.com.
