By Kay Nolan
For WisBusiness.com
DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp touted improved communications, staff morale and “customer” goodwill in her agency, but declined to offer opinions on controversial issues such as proposed legislation involving lake dredging, piers, phosphorus control and mining permits.
“It doesn’t matter what my opinion is — my job is just to make sure we do the job when we’re asked to,” Stepp said Thursday as she faced a panel of journalists at an event sponsored by the Milwaukee Press Club.
Stepp focused on strides she says she has made in customer service, along with boosting staff morale and streamlining the department, which, she said, has seen “tremendous cuts made within the last eight to 10 years.”
“One of the exciting opportunities I have been able to pursue is to go out and do the best I can to meet face-to-face with every single person who works for DNR,” she said, calling them “a most gifted workforce.” Although she said mid-level supervisory positions have shrunk, “that means more eyes and ears are on the ground” to provide better outreach to the public, she said.
Asked by outdoor sports writer Paul Smith of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel if the DNR planned to promptly fill nearly 500 funded, yet vacant positions in the agency, Stepp said, “We’re actively filling positions now. We have a commitment to fill them, but it takes longer in state government.” She added, however: “We have engaged staff to look at what are the critical vacancies.”
Stepp, a former Republican state senator, told WisPolitics the prospect of a gubernatorial recall hasn’t cast any pall on the department’s activities. “‘We’re plowing ahead with the same enthusiasm and the same focus and goals,” she insisted. “Politics will have to play itself out on the side.”
When he appointed her, Walker cited Stepp’s stint on the Natural Resources Board from 1998 to 2001. The DNR’s website touts Stepp as “a former homebuilder who became aware of Wisconsin’s regulatory climate and how it affected small business owners.”
Stepp, a former treasurer of the Republican Party of Wisconsin who now runs a truck and trailer dealership with her husband, agreed her goal is for the DNR to “sit at the same table” with business development.
“Instead of being an agency of ‘no, you can’t,’ we want to be an agency of ‘here’s how you can’ ” she said. “I never understood the us-against-them attitude between regulators and the regulated.”
But Stepp added that this doesn’t mean the DNR would change its standards or its long-time mission to protect the state’s natural resources.
Susan Bence, environmental reporter for WUWM radio, asked what provisions the DNR would recommend to protect the environment should a large mining initiative take place in the Penokee area in northern Wisconsin.
Stepp demurred, “Depending again on what it is, the legislation that comes out, I have no idea — I joke, but I’m half-serious that I long ago gave up predicting what legislators do when I was in the Legislature,” said Stepp, who represented the Racine area from 2003 to 2007.
“My responsibility is to make sure that when we’re asked by policy-makers, legislators, who are crafting bills, that we make sure we offer our technical expertise back, and we have done that,” she said.
Stepp answered a plea from Carl Glassford, a member of the audience representing the Rock Lake Improvement Association in Lake Mills, to support removing proposed language in AB 24 that would allow lake residents to dredge truckloads of vegetation and soil from lakes by saying simply that his concerns illustrated her goal to improve public education.
The DNR secretary also sidestepped questions on other issues, such as regulating use of phosphorus, a chemical used in lawn fertilizer that is blamed for adding to undesirable weed growth in lakes and what the agency plans to do to fight invasive species such as Asian carp.
She responded, “Our staff is determining the completeness of the application” when asked by BizTimes managing editor Andrew Weiland about the status of the city of Waukesha’s request for Lake Michigan water.
Panelists included Toni Herkert, who worked more than 10 years for the DNR as a shoreland management policy coordinator and is now policy director for Wisconsin Lakes, a non-profit group that works to restore and protect the state’s lakes; George Meyer, executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation and a former DNR secretary, and Scott Manley, director of energy and environmental policy for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.
The three applauded Stepp’s efforts to streamline decision-making within the DNR and avoided challenging her on issues, although Herkert cautioned Stepp that moving to hasten the air- and water-permit process could lead to unintended consequences that could harm Wisconsin lakes. Meyer said the state needs to eventually find an alternative to coal-fired power plants due to climate change concerns.
