LARSON Weekly Report - February 17, 2012 (Continued . . .)

State Senator Chris Larson - 7th District

Today is Thursday, February 23, 2012

On a party-line vote, the Senate passed Senate Bill 368 this past Tuesday. This legislation significantly diminishes environmental protections that keeps our water safe for drinking and recreation, protects our valuable wetland resources, and reduces flooding.


Wetlands are critical in protecting the health of our community. They purify runoff from cities, farms, and construction sites, reducing our water treatment costs and ensuring we have cleaner water for drinking and recreation. Furthermore, wetlands are able to store large quantities of water to help prevent devastating shore erosion and flooding in our neighborhoods. The protection provided by wetlands is crucial in the Milwaukee area, which was devastated by flooding in June 2008 and 2009, and July 2010.

Wetlands also play a prominent role in Wisconsin's environment and tourism industry. According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, nearly 40% of Wisconsin's 370 species of birds live in or use our wetlands as well as many mammals, fish, amphibians, and reptiles, such as white-tailed deer, waterfowl, and walleye. Additionally, Wisconsin's wetlands are home to one-third of the plants and animals on our state's endangered and threatened species list. The nature and wildlife featured in Wisconsin's wetlands provides the perfect setting for recreational wildlife watchers, anglers, hunters and boaters.

Senate Bill 368 became a clear choice of priorities with legislators opting to stand with hunting and fishing groups along with environmental scientists or aligning themselves with special interests seeking easier profits. I attempted to improve the bill by introducing two amendments.

My first amendment, the Sportsman's Amendment, offered a constructive and reasonable alternative to support economic development and ensure our wetlands remain available to Wisconsin's hunters, bird watchers, and anglers by:

** Clarifying and streamlining the permit application process without gutting our commitment of first protecting our wetlands

** Making our laws more consistent with federal law and bringing stability for business by saving costs, reducing confusion, and streamlining paperwork through one joint application process

** Establishing a common sense approach to the review of alternatives without throwing out the requirement to try to avoid wetland destruction

** Making sure mitigation benefits are only considered when the restoration occurs in the same watershed as the wetlands destruction, as this is especially important to flood control

** Rewarding businesses that commit to restoring wetlands within the same watershed as their development project

** Requiring the Department of Natural Resources to report the facts about the process of our wetland and habitat loss under this new law and the success of mitigation to the Legislature

My second amendment, the Flooding Prevention Amendment, would have ensured that the profits of special interests would not be placed above the needs of our homeowners, renters, and landowners. This amendment required the DNR to make sure that filling in a wetland would have minimal impact on flood prevention and habitat loss within the watershed that a project is planned.

Tragically, both of these common sense improvements were rejected in a cynically partisan effort to rush through legislation before the current legislative session ends next month.

Click here to view a copy of the amendments I authored or Senate Bill 368.
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Mining Bill Introduced
This past Wednesday, Senate Republicans decided to eliminate the Senate Select Committee on Mining created to serve as an open forum to debate legislation related to allowing additional mining in Wisconsin. Almost simultaneously Senator Galloway introduced a Senate bill identical to Assembly Bill 426, which was immediately forwarded to the Joint Committee on Finance.

The decision to abruptly disband this committee, aimed at ensuring a transparent process, signals that some Senate Republicans may not be open to changing the existing bill. It is my hope that we can craft a bill that strikes a balance between job creation and environmental protections by establishing a mining regulatory process that is fair, flexible, and streamlines the bureaucratic process, while avoiding the weakening of environmental standards.

Another unfortunate side-effect of dissolving this committee, is that it will disenfranchise hundreds of citizens living in the affected area. Many of these Wisconsinites are eager to have a say in what happens in their community and had intended on testifying at hearings scheduled to take place in Platteville and Ashland. The Joint Committee on Finance will now be taking over all public hearings on the bill and have cancelled the Platteville and Ashland hearings to instead hold a hearing for Friday, February 17 at 10 a.m. As a result, most of the individuals living near the proposed mining locations will be unable to attend the public hearing as they received only 36-hours notice and reside approximately seven hours away from the hearing location.

Despite these recent changes, I remain hopeful that we can reach a bipartisan compromise that can secure economic opportunity while safeguarding environmental quality.

Click here to view a copy of this legislation.
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Lead Acid Battery Bill Receives Public Hearing
This past week, Representative Mark Honadel and I had the opportunity to testify on Assembly Bill 266, bipartisan legislation we authored that updates Wisconsin law regarding battery deposits.

Current law requires anyone selling a lead acid battery to a consumer to accept the consumer’s used battery and cannot charge the consumer a deposit that is more than $5. However, the mandated cap no longer reflects the prevailing market value of used lead acid batteries. For this reason, large corporations have been ignoring the $5 limit for years opting to instead follow the market rate. In addition to losing out compared to bigger businesses, our small businesses have also been losing money when depositing old lead acid batteries to the nearby recycling center as most of these facilities charge the market rate, which is usually greater than $5.

Assembly Bill 266 will update this outdated law by requiring a deposit no less than $5 for all businesses, allowing the market to set the core charge amount. This legislative change will help to ensure that our small businesses are no longer at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to the cost of recycling lead-acid based batteries.

This legislative idea was brought to my attention by a small business owner in Oak Creek at my very first "Coffee with Chris." Since that time, I have received support from other local businesses in our community. Rep. Honadel and I jumped at the opportunity to work with our local companies to draft a bill that would solve a problem plaguing our small, neighborhood businesses.

Click here to view my testimony from this public hearing.

Click here to view a copy of this legislation.
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Assembly Still Refuses to Keep Voucher Loophole Promise
This past Monday, a bipartisan letter that I authored and 25 other senators and representatives signed on in support of was submitted to Republican leaders encouraging them to uphold their promise to close the voucher loophole. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Assembly met this week for session, they have yet to take up this corrective legislation.

The voucher loophole was created when Republicans inserted a provision into the budget that establishes four criteria for a school district that, if met, would allow private and religious schools to take up to $6,500 in tax dollars per student away from our public schools. Republican legislators indicated that their intention with this budget provision was to simply expand the voucher program to Racine alone. However, hasty action on the budget and failure to acknowledge concerns addressing this potential issue led to unintended consequences, such as creating a voucher loophole.

At the time the budget was passed only Racine met the aforementioned criteria and qualified for expansion of the voucher program, but other communities could also qualify in future years if the law stays as it is in the current budget, forcing other cities to implement their own voucher program. There are currently two districts that are on the verge of becoming “choice eligible”--Green Bay and Menasha--both of whom meet three of four criteria.

During and after the budget debate, Senate and Assembly Republican leaders promised to pass additional legislation to close the voucher loophole created by the budget. In August, Senator Mike Ellis and Representative Robin Vos introduced Senate Bill 174. This bill closes the voucher loophole by amending the state budget to say that only school districts that have already qualified as an eligible school district may qualify as an eligible school district once Senate Bill 174 is in effect. Senate Bill 174 received a public hearing in the Senate and Assembly Education Committees this past October. This bipartisan bill has since passed unanimously in the Senate and has simply been waiting for several months to be scheduled for a vote in the Assembly before it can be signed into law.

We are fast approaching the end of the current legislative session and are quickly running out of time to pass Senate Bill 174. If Republicans are unwilling to honor their commitments and Senate Bill 174 is not voted on before the end of session, it will have to be reintroduced when the next legislative session begins in January 2013. Also, if this legislation fails to pass before the end of session it may be too late for our northern neighbors in Green Bay.

Click here to view a copy of the bipartisan letter that was submitted.

Click here to view a copy of Senate Bill 174.
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Health Literacy Act Introduced
This past Monday, Representative Sandy Pasch and I introduced the Health Literacy Act, legislation that will help our neighbors fully understand their health care policies by making the language more readable. If passed, this legislation will also help our neighbors protect themselves against unnecessary health care costs.

Currently in Wisconsin, a significant amount of health consumers struggle to understand and actively use information they need to make important health care decisions. This is often due to the fact that language used in health insurance policies is frequently unclear and overly complex. According to the Institute of Medicine, nearly 90 million Americans, or almost half of the population of the United States, have difficulty understanding and properly utilizing health information. This statistic is especially concerning given that numerous studies have shown that individuals with low health literacy rates are subject to higher rates of illness and mortality.

Health literacy – known as the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services needed to make appropriate decisions regarding their health – plays an extremely important role in empowering health consumers, improving quality of health care, and reducing costs associated with unnecessary or untreated care.

In order for our family, friends, and neighbors to make the best possible health care choices, it is necessary for existing insurance policy language to be simplified so they are easy to read and understand. This legislation takes a positive step forward by helping Wisconsinites to become more proactive regarding their health care decisions.

The Office of the Commissioner of Insurance was on the path to facilitating the creation of easy-to-read insurance policies in late 2010, when they promulgated a rule that stemmed from well-thought recommendations of their nonpartisan advisory council charged with developing standards for readability of consumer insurance policies. Generally speaking, the rule would ensure that most insurance policies would be understood by someone with only some high school education. The rule was created by a wide variety of stakeholders across the state, including: consumers, advocates, business leaders, and insurance industry stakeholders.

Unfortunately, under new leadership in February 2011, the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance repealed this important rule, which is why we have introduced Senate Bill 469. We are hoping that this legislation will once again receive endorsement on a bipartisan level, and look forward to our family, friends, and neighbors having the opportunity to become more proactive with their health.

Click here to read a copy of Senate Bill 469.
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Update on Airport Fuel Spill
Late last month, there was a jet fuel leak at Mitchell International Airport, which has been an issue of concern for area residents. The spill, estimated to have begun on January 25, was first detected on January 30. Shell Oil, the owner of the damaged pipe, shut off the flow of fuel to the leaking pipeline on January 31 and began excavation procedures to remove 300 feet of pipe from under the airport last week.

Before it was shut down, the pipeline was estimated to have leaked 9,000 gallons of jet fuel that flowed down the storm sewer at the airport and into Wilson Creek and the Kinnickinnic River. Shell clean-up crews placed floating booms on the waterways to contain the fuel spread and used vacuum trucks to skim the water’s surface. According to a Shell representative, the booms stopped the fuel from reaching Lake Michigan. As of last week, Shell has recovered around two-thirds of the leaked jet fuel.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources are continuing to monitor the cleanup process.
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2012 Award
State Senator Chris Larson was one of Milwaukee Professionals Association selection for the 2012 "Drum Major for Justice" Award.

He was selected for his "hit-the-floor-running" and "hands-on" attention to the People's business.