A couple of months ago Wisconsin's Board of Commissioners of Public Lands
voted 2-1 to ban working on climate change issues while on the job. Even at the time most people saw this as part of a conservative power play to do what Republicans do best—represent really wealthy businesses.
Mr. La Follette said the ban was part of Mr. Adamczyk’s continuing efforts to remove Tia Nelson, the board’s executive secretary and the daughter of Gaylord Nelson, who founded Earth Day. Mr. Adamczyk has said it was inappropriate for Ms. Nelson to serve on a global warming task force in 2007 and 2008, which she did at the request of the governor. Mr. Adamczyk has tried to fire Ms. Nelson but has so far been unsuccessful. Ms. Nelson declined to comment on Thursday.
Last week Mr. Adamczyk got some of his wish as Tia Nelson, the 12-year veteran executive secretary of the board,
resigned. While Tia Nelson says the edict didn't influence her decision to resign, she is both proud of her time on the Board and critical of the new "leadership."
The agency oversees 77,000 public acres and invests the money that past land sales have generated. Nelson says assets have soared by more than 80 percent under her leadership.
“This year generated $35.5 million in school aid. These go to the public school library systems. That’s enough money to put a book in the hand of every child in Wisconsin,” she says.
I'll put down a lot of money that Mr. Adamczyk will be able to undo all of that good will in no time at all.
“Here’s a guy who’s first official act as an elected official was to seek to remove my name from agency stationary, order me to unsubscribe from the New York Times and prohibit me and BPCL staff from saying the words climate change. So, draw your own conclusions,” she says.
It's unfortunate to lose someone so much more competent than her replacement, but being out of the "apolitical" agency does allow her to advocate more openly for children and the environment and those are good things.
Nelson won’t have to tread carefully in her new job with a family foundation based in Madison. Climate change issues will be front and center.
“The Outrider Foundation is setting out to create a new project focused on providing science-based research and education to inform education on serious challenges that face our people and our planet as we seek to try to build something from the ground up,” she says.
She can also speak more openly now on the anti-science and
anti-education legislation coming out of Wisconsin the past few years. So there
is a silver lining.
“The biggest impact is I probably wouldn’t have had this job opportunity had it not been for this controversy about what was going on at the agency. That offered a great new job as a consequence of the attention this controversy brought to the issue and to me," Nelson says.