Call governor to urge line item vetoes
Seeing as Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle hasn’t yet signed off on the state budget passed by the Legislature Tuesday and he retains line-item veto authority, I called his office at 608/266-1212.
I urged the governor to remove the following spending items from the budget:
1) $1.7 million for building ATV trails in the Northwoods, including in the Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest.
There are some 8,000 miles of ATV trails in this state already and, according to a recent survey of Wisconsin ATV owners, fewer than 6 percent of the state’s adult population actually ride ATVs on public land, and of those that do, less than 20 percent complain that the trails available to them are too few or too crowded.
The ATV fund has a running surplus – the clubs left $1 million unspent this year and previous years – so to grant them another $1.7 million is gratuitous and far exceeds the demand for ATV trails. Such spending is even more maddening when you consider the underfunding of nonmotorized trails. Eighty-five percent of outdoor recreationists in this state prefer nonmotorized acitivities, according to the DNR, yet scores of bike trail development projects go unfunded year after year.
And don’t get me started on the fact that the Natural Resources Board has yet to take up the issue of 60 miles of ATV trails proposed for the NH-AL. We don’t yet know if ATV trails will be approved, yet here we have $1.7 million being waved under the noses of the NRB and DNR.
2) Incentive grants of $25, $50 and $100 per mile of trail available to private land owners to allow ATVs to cross their property. This is nowhere near enough money to cover the damage ATVs do and therefore will not help shift ATV riding opportunities away from public parks and trails.
$25 to $100 per mile won’t cover the cost of fixing ATV damage like this.
My suspicison is that this incentive grant scheme is meant to be a replacement – and a sad one at that – for an ATV damage mitigation fund (as exists in Minnesota). The Special Legislative Committee on State Trails Policy recommended a modest $30,000 per year for this purpose taken from the ample funds available in the state ATV fund, but the draft legislation went nowhere. (I smell WATVA’s influence wafting from under the door of the backroom where this deal was made.)
If you have a spare minute to call the governor’s office at 608/266-1212, don’t hesitate to do so. To butter up the staff person you talk to, thank the governor for his leadership getting the Warren-Knowles Stewardship Fund reauthorized at a higher annual funding level.
– Joel Patenaude