Wisconsin's Republican-controlled Legislative Budget Committee has OK'd a $125 million plan to try to reduce pollution from chemical compounds known as PFAS.
The GOP proposal surfaced Thursday evening a few months after Gov. Tony Evers (D) recommended a smaller dollar amount to battle the contamination.
The Joint Finance Committee (JFC) was supposed to take up the proposed Department of Natural Resources (DNR) budget at 11 a.m. Thursday. But the meeting time kept being pushed back. Finally at 6:30 p.m., committee co-chair Mark Born held a news conference to explain at least part of the delay.
He and other Republican lawmakers unveiled a plan for a $125 million trust fund to help communities clean up the so-called forever chemicals that can move through soil, contaminate drinking water and harm fish and wildlife.
Scientists already know human-made PFAS are found in lots of things like non-stick cookware, firefighting foam and many plastics. But Born said there's still much to learn about getting rid of the compounds.
"There's still a lot of work being done to get the right fixes, to get the right information. Our priority is to make sure there's funding available to work on these things," Born told the news media.
He says $110 million will come from general state tax revenue. The rest from a special environmental clean-up account largely funded by landfill dumping fees. The Republican plan is about $18 million larger than a PFAS plan Evers offered when announcing his two-year state budget proposal in February.
During Thursday night's Finance Committee meeting, Born confirmed the larger number with the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, and remarked:
"Hmm. I wonder who's leading who now? Interesting," he said.
But Democrats on the committee said the GOP plan falls short of the Governor's proposal in other ways. Milwaukee State Sen. LaTonya Johnson said Republicans have left out a statewide testing program for PFAS and money for eleven DNR staffers that Evers wanted to work on the problem.
"I don't understand how you eliminate these positions. To me, this is equivalent of funding the military, but removing all the troops. It just don't make a bit of damn sense," Johnson told Born.
If the trust fund stays in the proposed state budget, lawmakers would have to pass other legislation allowing the funds to be handed out.
Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said Republican legislators sometimes refuse to get money to communities.
"I hope that's not going to be the case here. But the problem with what has been proposed by the majority party is the money is basically locked up in this sealed glass cage that can only be touched if the legislature blesses that specific thing. We have seen time and again how that doesn't work. You know, it sits there in an account. JFC doesn't act. Or, we say no. Or we say, 'Maybe we'll give you 50% of what you wanted or 25% of what you wanted,'" Roys said.
Eventually Born responded to the Democrats:
"You just want it your way. But, this is something we've made clear for weeks, months, years now. This is not a policy document and when it come to this historic funding for PFAS. We want to work with other people," he said.
With that, the PFAS trust fund passed on a party line vote of 11- 4.
An environmental group, Wisconsin Conservation Voters, is steering away from the partisan fight. The group said it's grateful to both members of the Joint Finance Committee and Gov. Evers for making progress on PFAS.
A portion of the audio is from WisconsinEye.
