After hours of debate Thursday, the Wisconsin Assembly passed a controversial mining bill, which supporters say will create more jobs in Wisconsin, but which opponents argue will create more secrecy in the permit process.
According to the Wisconsin Legislature’s website, the bill, which passed along party lines in a 59-36 vote, would decrease current Department of Natural Resource regulations for ferrous minerals like iron and streamline the permitting and public hearing process for proposed mining projects.
The analysis also said current law requires DNR to hold at least one informational meeting on an environmental impact report for a mining project and the new bill would not require such an informational meeting. The bill will now go to the Senate for a vote.
Most of the debate between legislators revolved around the bill’s impact on job creation and the potential misleading effects the bill would have on the public hearing process and the communities surrounding potential mining projects.
Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, argued if Democrats did not get behind the bill that would create the most jobs of this legislative session, they were not serious about job creation.
Assembly Majority Leader Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, called the bill the most important jobs bill the Legislature has passed in decades.
“By moving this legislation forward, we have paved the way for thousands of good-paying, family supporting jobs that will last for generations of Wisconsin workers,” Suder said.
He said the bill would create a more prosperous Wisconsin.
Rep. Janet Bewley, D-Ashland, whose district would be affected by a proposed iron mine, said the current bill on the floor was misleading.
“All we have in the bill before us are ways to provide clarity and revenue for one out-of-state mining company,” Bawley said. “Not only is the presence of northern Wisconsin not in the bill, they were not in the process.”
The mining company Bawley referred to is Gogebic Taconite, a development-stage iron ore mining company in northern Wisconsin. According to the group’s website, GTAC is currently working to assemble the required information to begin the permitting process.
GTAC has spent $114,883 since July of last year lobbying state officials in support of its proposal to open the mine, according to a filing with the Government Accountability Board.
Rep. Louis Molepske, Jr., D-Stevens Point, supported Bawley’s statement and agreed the bill was misleading. He also said he supported mining but not the bill.
Molepske added the Legislature should not be bending over to cater to one company and argued the Legislature only gets one chance at this, so its members should start over and do it right.
Following Molepske’s comments, Rep. Jeff Stone, R-Greendale, said the bill was not misleading and challenged he has never seen a piece of legislation that has received this amount of committee work and the amount of public hearings in his 14 years in the Legislature.
Only minutes into the debate on the floor, several members of the balcony opposed to the mining bill were coughing loudly and shouting obscenities during Republican testimony. Police did not remove the gallery viewers until later, which was brought on by further disruptions.
