Two public opinion polls released Monday show differing results on Wisconsin residents’ attitudes about the state’s environmental responsibility.

Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, an economic development advocacy group, said in a statement it hired survey research center Public Opinion Strategies to conduct a poll to gauge citizens’ position on whether environmental legislation is the responsibility of the state.

WMC Environmental Policy Director Scott Manley said the poll was commissioned as a result of recommendations made by Gov. Jim Doyle’s Global Warming Task Force last June. According to the poll, 62 percent of Wisconsin voters oppose costly, state-based global warming legislation.

However, the results of WMC’s statewide poll were in opposition with the results of a Forest County Potawatomi Community’s survey, conducted by the Mellman Group, a political and private interest research center which has been conducting polls for 20 years. Their poll indicated that 70 percent of Wisconsin voters support state action to reduce carbon emissions.

In response to conflicting results of the polls, Natural Resources Committee Chair Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, argued the WMC poll does not accurately represent public opinion on environmental responsibility.

“WMC lobby poll is phony — the company is very hard partisan; it represents big energy companies such as Exxon,” Black said. “[The] result is very different from other polls we did over the years.”

He said the questions used in the poll are completely slanted and a false premise demonstrates the inaccurate represent-ation of public opinion.

Black also said creating clean energy has an immediate impact on the Wisconsin economy and he plans to present the Clean Energy Jobs Act next month to promote renewable energy and to create more jobs in Wisconsin.

Mellman Group Vice President Nathan Henry said the Potawatomi survey accurately addresses both sides of the arguments, sampling 600 likely voters at a 95 percent confidence level. However, Manley said the WMC polling results were no surprise.

“The result was what we expected it to be,” Manley said. “Voters do have overall response to global warming issues, but once you talk about the price, it’s a different matter.”

University of Wisconsin political science professor Charles Franklin agreed the opposing results are due to different emphases on the questionnaire, but said he did not think the polls were biased.

“If you ask a question from one perspective, whether it’s cost or environmental quality, you will get a one-sided response. You cannot argue one is more correct than the other,” Franklin said.

He also said the conflicting results are a good illustration of public opinion because it reflects a dilemma for the environmental forces.

“Environmental issues have no direct impact for us now,” Franklin said. “Paying for the future benefit is hard to fathom for public, especially when you are concerned with your own pocketbook.”