What we're now seeing is a conservative government of personalized legislation, churning out volumes of new regulation written specifically for individual Republican club members to change or exempt them from the rules everyone else has to live by.
Rep. Joel Kleefisch twice wrote child support legislation for just one millionaire deadbeat dad. Now we have a developer who wants to build a house on a parcel of wetland that would exempt that single lot from DNR oversight. Really. Who would have the balls to do this? Outgoing Republican Rep. Garey Bies:
WSJ: Cliff Tebon has been waiting a long time to build a house on a small corner lot in Purves Lagoon, a subdivision he helped develop on the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal leading to Lake Michigan.
Special Interest Legislation Exhibit A
The neighborhood is “a little piece of utopia,” Tebon said. But since 1995, the state Department of Natural Resources has blocked construction on Tebon’s lot, saying development could, among other things, endanger water quality in nearby Sturgeon Bay.
A bill (written by Rep. Garey Bies) before the state Legislature would reverse that and give Tebon permission to fill in the wetland and build the house, which he plans to sell. Assembly Bill 602 would allow whoever builds a house on that lot — and only that lot — to do so without permission from the DNR.
Who can argue with "logic" like this:
“I can’t see how this little postage-stamp piece of property is going to ruin the whole world,” said Bies, R-Sister Bay. “Right now, it’s an eyesore in a very nice residential area.”
Hey, it's not about the environment, it's about entitlement:
Tebon and Bies said the bill is about fairness.
The Slippery Slope: Tony Depies, Sturgeon Bay city engineer, said he worries about the precedent the bill would set. “I’m very concerned about it, because are you going to start to apply exceptions for even larger wetlands?” Depies said. “It could be a very slippery slope.”
