WI State Senator Confirms He Requested DNR Cuts From Walker: "Too Much" Climate Work
State Sen. Tom Tiffany has owned up to asking for job cuts to DNR scientists, who he has said focus too much on climate change. On Friday’s Devil’s Advocate radio show, the Hazelhurst Republican said he asked Gov. Scott Walker and his staff to include a provision in the state budget axing approximately 17 positions from the Department of Natural Resources’ Science Services Bureau. “Yes,” he said in responding to a question asking him if he requested the cuts.
Some observers believed Tiffany was behind the cuts, which are in Walker’s budget. The measure prompted layoff notices for 27 staffers in the science bureau, as well as 30 others in the DNR's communications and education section. Tiffany didn’t respond to phone and email messages for a Capital Times story last week on his involvement in the job cuts.
But he told the Devil’s Advocate’s Mike Crute and Dominic Salvia that his concerns about the scientists’ handling of deer management and policies regarding predators such as bobcats, as well as work on climate change, prompted his request.
EDIT
NR scientists have studied the effects of rising temperatures on issues like trout management, tree cover and pest infiltration. Scientists maintain that management of such resources has to take climate change into account. But Tiffany said there’s no scientific reason to set policy based on climate changes. “It happens,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that man is causing global warming, and it doesn’t mean that we should have these significant shifts in public policy without having proof that we are causing this.” Tiffany has also taken aim at the scientists for their work pointing out environmental issues with the Gogebic iron mine in the Penokee Hills in Iron County, a now-abandoned project that Tiffany backed. And he’s blamed scientists for unnecessarily low bobcat quotas and deer management practices that he said have decimated the deer herd in northern Wisconsin.
EDIT
http://host.madison.com/news/local/writers/steven_elbow/sen-tom-tiffany-says-he-asked-governor-for-dnr-job/article_76022960-2817-5e55-b769-c8476cfb95a9.html
