We've heard a lot lately about fake news.
In Wisconsin, the real news is about fake hearings.
I'd recently written that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources had dismissively lowered the public policy and citizen input bar flat to the ground by scheduling five Kewaunee County water-related permit hearings assembly-line style on the same day, thereby giving opponents exactly one-minute-per-permit to address a county-wide Big Ag polluting reality which weak, pro-industry permitting processes helped create:
fill wetlands and disrupt wildlife to construct a controversial Lake Michigan shoreline golf course.
So conditional approval before the hearing, while withholding key components of the approval.
And the DNR's oversight body, the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, will no doubt soon follow suit and give away some state parkland adjoining the golf course site so the developers can build an entrance, road, parking lot and maintenance equipment building - - on public land.
What kind of a process is that in a democracy?
Why waste people's time at a hearing, other than to establish a record which some may some day convince a fair-minded court that takes its public responsibilities more seriously than does DNR management.
In Wisconsin, the real news is about fake hearings.
I'd recently written that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources had dismissively lowered the public policy and citizen input bar flat to the ground by scheduling five Kewaunee County water-related permit hearings assembly-line style on the same day, thereby giving opponents exactly one-minute-per-permit to address a county-wide Big Ag polluting reality which weak, pro-industry permitting processes helped create:
How low has the bar been dragged for the democratic process in Wisconsin?
How dismissive of the general public has the DNR become?
How beholden is DNR management to big corporations which the agency barely regulates in Scott Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' government?
The answers:
The bar is on the ground. The public can't be more definitively dissed. And DNR management could not more clearly display how deeply in thrall it is to Walker's donors and corporate supporters.Boy, I was wrong, as the DNR just broke the bar into pieces Thursday and threw then into Lake Michigan by disclosing agency preliminary approval before Thursday evening's long-anticipated public hearing to allow a Walker donor to tear up a nature preserve
fill wetlands and disrupt wildlife to construct a controversial Lake Michigan shoreline golf course.
So conditional approval before the hearing, while withholding key components of the approval.
And the DNR's oversight body, the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, will no doubt soon follow suit and give away some state parkland adjoining the golf course site so the developers can build an entrance, road, parking lot and maintenance equipment building - - on public land.
What kind of a process is that in a democracy?
Why waste people's time at a hearing, other than to establish a record which some may some day convince a fair-minded court that takes its public responsibilities more seriously than does DNR management.