Marketplace of Ideas Blog

One of the less noticed features of our state government is its propensity to buy up real estate wherever it can, putting it in government control and away from its ability to generate tax revenue.

Richard Moore of the Lakeland Times, the author of How the DNR Stole Wisconsin, is one of the few in the media who have noticed. Moore notices something about how the DNR’s statewide land grab is affecting state finances, beginning with the 2005 purchase of 64,000 acres of land in Florence County and Marinette County owned by International Paper:

The Stewardship land acquisition program is authorized to spend a certain amount of money each year. This year and until 2020, for instance, the land acquisition program is authorized at $62 million per year.

That wasn't the case in 2005, however. Back then, DNR direct land acquisition authorizations under Stewardship totaled only $31.75 million, and the $33 million price tag did not include other Stewardship land acquisitions for the fiscal year.

The agency needed money — $16.5 million, to be exact — and it was able to get it by using one of two little known statutory provisions allowing the DNR to “borrow ahead” from funds authorized to be spent in future years.

Critics of “borrow ahead” practices say it is bad and perhaps unconstitutional fiscal policy, a practice that not only encourages overspending but secrecy. It is not transparent to allocate $31.75 million for land acquisition, these critics say, and then allow the agency to spend nearly $50 million and effectively steal a future year’s allocation. …

In addition, critics say, borrowing ahead encourages the state to make imprudent decisions. Because the DNR can tap dollars not budgeted in the present, it is not forced to pick carefully among available, affordable parcels, or to decide, based on limited funds, what land is truly necessary to preserve and what is not.

Instead, it can just keep buying what’s available, critics says.

Given the fact that the Knowles–Nelson Stewardship Program is a legislative creation, it could also be ended by a future Legislature. But, says Moore: “But what if the money for 2013 or some other year is already spent because of the borrow-ahead provisions? In that case, one Legislature would be making budget decisions for future years that future lawmakers could not rescind.”

That is the most recent outrage in a program that, whatever its original merits, is something the state cannot afford in times of $2 billion structural deficits and GAAP deficits approaching $3 billion. Assuming the right party wins November’s state elections, the Legislature needs to put a stop to the land-grab program, for both fiscal reasons and good-government reasons.