News Article

Date: April 14, 2007
By JOHN TORINUS

Confusion killed land measure

The recent vote in Washington County not to proceed with farmland preservation reflects a great deal of confusion about the future of agribusiness in the region and even the state.

By a 2-to-1 margin, voters in the county sent a negative message about the virtue of investing in prime farmland. A similar proposal in the Town of Mukwonago was defeated by a similar margin.

There are a lot of ways to slice and dice the outcome in Washington County, the first countywide vote in the state on the use of purchase of development rights, or PDRs, for saving prime farms.

But the overriding conclusion is this: The electorate and political leaders lack strategic clarity about which way to go on agriculture as part of the economy.

Consider:

• Washington County in the 1990s spent $19 million, with debt service of more than a $1 million a year, for a new fairground to serve as a centerpiece for the agricultural economy.

This time around, some of the same county leaders worked hard to defeat spending $800,000 a year to preserve the key agricultural asset - prime soils. How does anyone make sense of those contrasting decisions?

• The Washington County Board, in the name of economic development, dumped $4.5 million in subsidies into a new Cabela's in the southern part of the county. This subsidy for a retail business, a first, was deemed necessary for the creation of 200-plus low paying jobs. Taxpayers will own the stuffed animal display.

In contrast, argi-business supports 5,000 jobs in the county and receives little if any county subsidy.

• Wisconsin Realtors presented a puzzling position on the referendum on PDRs. The local chapter, claiming insufficient information, convinced its state organization to oppose the program. Its automated call and advertising campaign played a large role in creating questions. That uncertainty caused many voters to default to a negative vote.

First off, there were two public educational forums held on the proposed PDR program, based on a thorough report by a county task force.

There had also been two prior high profile votes by the County Board - one in favor, one against - accompanied by lots of public debate. Information was everywhere.

The Realtors had already signed off on a statewide PDR program as part of the work of the Working Lands Initiative in 2006. They repeatedly stated that farmland preservation was good policy, if done in accord with local land use plans.

That is exactly what the Washington County task force endorsed. All preservation was to be done outside urban growth areas.

• At the state level, the pro-PDR recommendation of the Working Lands Task Force, endorsed by the secretary of agriculture, was not put into Gov. Doyle's budget, again reflecting ambivalence about saving prime farms.

• The opponents almost all said they favored farmland preservation, just not a locally funded PDR program.

• The local chapter of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau backed the proposal, but its parent organization equivocated.

Against that confused policy and leadership backdrop, Wisconsin is losing more farmland every year than any other Midwestern state. Washington County, by example, loses about two square miles a year. In another 10 years, the farming issue will be largely moot.

Other issues weighed in the Washington County outcome. Proponents, like me, wanted to use the mushrooming local sales tax for funding PDRs. County leaders added the property tax to the ballot question, knowing that a property tax hike would be a kiss of death.

There was resentment toward the perception of "rich farmers," who were perceived as already overly subsidized by state and federal government.

And there was the complexity of using the purchase of an easement as the legal tool for preservation.

In the end, though, the lack of clarity, of strategic leadership, for agriculture in the region brought about the defeat of the PDR proposal.

Proponents are now asking the opponents, who say they favor preservation, to come up with a solution.