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Since launching their campaigns for Wisconsin governor, both Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley have touted the concept of local control.
Each argues that communities deserve “a seat at the table” in matters of commercial and industrial land use, but their records as public servants illustrate contrasts about when competing local and state interests should carry the day.
The issue is worth considering in this year’s midterm election as Wisconsinites face mounting energy costs and a queue of construction proposals for new transmission lines, power plants and data centers.
“I want to get Madison out of the way where it makes sense,” Tiffany told attendees of the annual Wisconsin Counties Association conference in September. “Local officials understand their communities, and state government should be working with them rather than creating additional obstacles.”
Yet Tiffany is an architect of some of the most consequential environmental regulatory rewriting of the past 15 years, stripping municipalities of several powers to regulate shoreland development and mining in their own backyards.
Crowley has worked with the state to address Milwaukee County’s budget issues. Just a few years ago, Milwaukee County was heading for a “fiscal cliff,” the culmination of a decades-long pension scandal.
Without state intervention and the “tools to raise additional revenue and fund local priorities,” the county would face “tough decisions,” Crowley wrote in 2022. The following year, the Legislature authorized Milwaukee County to increase its local sales tax rate by almost half a percentage point.
Neither candidate has offered many specifics in their campaign pitches, and neither campaign responded to requests for comment.
But their policymaking records offer some clues.
During Tiffany’s time in the Wisconsin Legislature and Congress, he has conveyed a general desire to get the state and federal government “out of the way” of local decision-making. Crowley’s time as a county executive and state Assembly member highlights his support for public spending on property development and the creation of minimum environmental standards to protect public health.
Local control and mining operations
Crowley has argued for “a case-by-case” treatment of mining projects without staking a claim over the industry’s merits.
Still, he continues to push for amassing consensus and would not rule out allowing new mining permits before consulting with local communities.
In January, when a PBS reporter asked him to explain how he would respond to new mining permit requests, Crowley said he would convene a work group of experts to obtain the best information possible.
“It’s about working with the local municipalities, working with the groups and the stakeholders that are on the ground,” he said.
Comparatively, Tiffany’s time in the Wisconsin Senate from 2013 through 2020 saw him take up the mantle of getting the miner, emblazoned on the Great Seal of the State of Wisconsin, back to work. He ushered in several bills intended to loosen restrictions that businesses said stymied economic growth.
The first of several successful proposals started with the 2013 reworking of the state’s iron mining law, which instructed regulators to start the mining permitting process on the presumption that some environmental damage to wetlands is a necessary operating condition of the industry.
Supporters maintained the reforms assured developers they could expect regulatory certainty and expeditious review of new projects.
A few years later, prompted by a bill Tiffany co-authored, the Legislature lifted the state’s moratorium on sulfide mining, which can release toxins, and stopped requiring companies to prove they could successfully operate and close sulfide mines elsewhere in the United States or Canada without polluting the environment.
Tiffany also sought to curb local authority too when regulations posed risks to obstructing economic development.
Two 2013 bills proposed restricting local governments’ ability to regulate nonmetallic mining, including frac sand operations, and would have prohibited them from creating water quality and air quality standards, permits, restrictions and monitoring requirements.
Tiffany told Wisconsin Watch at the time that some local units of government are “trying to establish mini-DNRs,” by conducting their own air and water testing. “That’s the purview of the state,” he said.
The contentious proposal didn’t make it to the chamber floor for a vote.
Local control and land acquisition
In 2015, Tiffany co-sponsored legislation that took the opposite view on local control in the context of land acquisition.
Republicans and Democrats have long clashed on how to finance the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program. The fund enables the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to purchase private land and easements for habitat preservation and recreation or issue grants to organizations or municipalities to do the same.
Both Tiffany and Crowley say they support allocating money for the program, but Tiffany has long expressed reservations about its focus on purchasing new property.
In 2015, Tiffany sought to curb state authority by requiring the Wisconsin DNR to obtain approval from every municipality and the county in which the property is located before acquiring new properties. The bill didn’t advance to a vote. Tiffany now says he would fund the program so long as the dollars maintain existing public lands.
Crowley has said repeatedly he supports strengthening the program, drawing parallels to his support for county lands.
In the last five Milwaukee County budget cycles, he recommended county leaders spend tens of millions of dollars on parks and trails, drainage infrastructure and waterfront protection.
In other environmental areas, Crowley also has reined in local control by creating baseline standards. As a state legislator, he backed bills that would have imposed statewide requirements for mandatory lead testing and inspections and restricted the ability of municipalities to privatize their public water or sewer utilities.
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Wisconsin governor candidates talk about supporting local control, but their records are mixed depending on the issue is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
