Cathy Stepp leaving Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources post for Trump administration
MADISON - Natural Resources Secretary Cathy Stepp is leaving her post at the conservation agency after six years of cuts to staffing and sharp debate about her emphasis on helping businesses over enforcing environmental regulations.
Stepp, a 54-year-old former Republican state senator, is leaving to take an appointment in President Donald Trump's administration with the Environmental Protection Agency as the deputy administrator for Region 7.
“Cathy is a strong, trusted reformer who will serve the country well at the EPA. As DNR secretary since 2011, she has led an outstanding workforce committed to preserving and promoting our natural resources while placing a strong focus on customer service and common sense," Gov. Scott Walker said in a statement.
Walker named Deputy Secretary Kurt Thiede as interim secretary of the agency. Thiede is a longtime employee of the DNR who was appointed to a top management position during Walker's term.
The EPA’s region 7 doesn't cover Wisconsin but it does include Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri, where Stepp has a home in Branson.
A former homebuilder from Sturtevant who was a critic of the DNR during her time in the Senate, Stepp eventually came to lead the agency, where she sought to make it more responsive to businesses and hold down costs for taxpayers.
She often faced criticism, both from northern Wisconsin conservatives who wanted even more constraints on the DNR and from environmentalists and some sporting groups who saw the agency as turning away from its core responsibilities.
Stepp presided over a decrease in environmental enforcement actions, cuts to the DNR's science and research bureau, and increases in fees for state parks and campsites. Her tenure also included what some saw as a less aggressive approach to fighting chronic wasting disease among white-tailed deer and a slowdown in new land purchases for hikers and hunters through the state's stewardship program.
Her departure also comes as the DNR is taking on the oversight of a proposed $10 billion flat screen plant proposed for southeastern Wisconsin by Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese company that has already won exemptions from environmental rules from the Walker administration.
In an email to staff Tuesday, Stepp wrote that the White House presented her "with an opportunity that I couldn't ignore." She said that she leaves a DNR that now works to ensure the plans of businesses aren't "delayed by bureaucracy."
"More people see us now as an agency that makes decisions using sound science, the law and common sense," she wrote.
The Walker administration had been critical of the Obama administration's climate rules, which it said would penalize Wisconsin's energy-intensive manufacturing sector.
In turn, climate change has been a virtual non-issue for the DNR since 2011. In some instances, the DNR has removed passages attributing the role of climate change to human activities and replaced it with language saying the issue remains a matter of scientific debate.
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Under Stepp, the DNR enforcement of environmental cases has fallen sharply.
One measure — the number of notices of violations — has dropped from an average of 488 in the final four years of Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s term to an average of 281 under Stepp during Walker’s first term, according to DNR records.
In 2015, the number of notices of violations hit 266. It rose to 335 in 2016, according to agency records.
Business groups have lauded Stepp's administration of the agency and said the DNR has become more flexible.
"Secretary Stepp used her significant private sector experience to improve the department and make it more accountable, all while ensuring it continued to serve its vital mission to the people of Wisconsin," Scott Manley, senior vice president of government relations for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, said in a statement.
WMC is the state's largest business group.
Environmentalists, however, have been critical of the DNR under Walker, especially in its approach to emerging issues such as management of groundwater and the growth in large scale farms and construction of sand mines.
George Meyer, a former DNR secretary who now heads the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, said Stepp put "more weight on economic development than on protecting natural resources." Meyer said Stepp was carrying out Walker's directives but had also shown a similar philosophy of her own going back to her time in the Senate.
"I believe Stepp probably had the weakest environmental protection record of any of the seven DNR secretaries that I have known," Meyer said.
In 2016, the agency was subject to a critical legislative audit of its wastewater program that showed large backlogs and few enforcement actions.
In 2014, six environmental groups petitioned the EPA to exercise emergency powers to investigate groundwater contamination in cattle-intensive Kewaunee County in northeastern Wisconsin, contending the DNR was not doing enough.
Stepp and her agency responded by holding numerous public meetings and this summer proposed first-ever rules to limit animal waste on vulnerable soils in eastern Wisconsin.
In 2016, the DNR began taking a less rigorous approach to applications for new high-capacity wells after getting an attorney general's advisory opinion that said the agency was exceeding its authority.
Scientists have argued the abundance of irrigation wells in central Wisconsin is harming streams and lakes.
There had been widespread speculation about Stepp's future at the DNR. She had campaigned for Trump last year and DNR staff members said privately that her appearances in the office had become less frequent.
Stepp tried to remain above the fray by saying her approach was to ensure environmental laws were followed.
Yet in 2012, she criticized two Democratic senators and one Republican senator who voted against an iron-mining bill, written largely by attorneys for Gogebic Taconite, which wanted to invest more than $1 billion to build an iron mine in northern Wisconsin.
The legislative changes emerged as one of the biggest environment debates in the state in at least a decade.
"This is just another political piñata with some senators clearly displaying that politics is more important than getting things done for Wisconsin citizens," Stepp said at the time.
On Foxconn, Stepp lauded the project and an agreement by state officials to exempt the high-tech manufacturer from wetlands regulations and other state environmental rules.
"We want to hit the ground running and make sure that the regulatory processes and bureaucracy are not in the way of job creation in Wisconsin," Stepp said earlier this month.
When she arrived at the DNR, Stepp tried to reach out to agency staff who had been stung by her previous comments. On a conservative blog in 2009, for instance, Stepp derided DNR employees as tending to be "anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies etc ..."
"Since they're un-elected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with," Stepp said then.
In an interview in 2014, Stepp said she had "painted the agency with a very broad brush, based on my myopic view with my DNR, which was southeastern Wisconsin, and my constituents' relationship with my DNR."
Patrick Marley and Jason Stein reported for this story in Madison with Lee Bergquist in Milwaukee.