Although 600 bills have been introduced into the Wisconsin Legislature, by far the majority of the attention is focused on just one bill – the state budget, Senate Bill 40.

Introduced in mid February, this bill is huge (1,757 pages) and has direct impacts on every state program. For solid waste issues, the focus is both on landfills – related to state tipping fees – and on funding for recycling and Clean Sweep programs.

Up until last week, the center of activity for the state budget bill was the Joint Finance Committee. Composed of 16 members, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, Senators and Representatives, the Committee has held numerous hearings throughout the state, followed by detailed meetings on hundreds of issues. This committee finished its work on June 8 and the bill will now go the Senate for its action and then to the Assembly for its deliberations. It is expected that the two houses will have many amendments, resulting in significant differences, and that a conference committee will be set up to resolve the differences. After the conference committee is finished with its work, the resulting bill will then go back to the two houses for a final vote, with no amendments allowed. This process is expected to last until the end of summer at a minimum and perhaps into early fall.

At least four solid waste issues were taken up by Joint Finance, with two receiving unanimous support and two having votes split into 8-8 ties and therefore likely candidates for further action by a conference committee.

The two issues that received unanimous support relate to funding for Clean Sweep and funding for the Waste Reduction and Recovery demonstration grants.

For Clean Sweep, the budget would increase the amount of state money for cost-sharing to a base of $1 million a year and allow monies to be used for pharmaceutical collections. For the Waste Reduction and Recovery demonstration grants, the state will have $2 million available to contract with non-profit organizations for providing services to promote and assist waste reduction and recovery programs.

The two issues that the Joint Finance Committee deadlocked on are the proposed increase and use of landfill tonnage fees for recycling and environmental programs.

On the first issue, the budget proposes to increase the recycling fee by $3 a ton to a total of $6 a ton, and to use the increased revenues in part to fund alternative energy programs. There was considerable debate on the use of these funds, with the debate centering on how much cost-sharing the state should provide to the RUs versus state support for developing alternative sources of energy. The deadlock means that the proposed increase in tipping fees stays in the budget, but the proposal to use monies to fund alternative energy programs does not stay in the budget.

The second deadlocked issue was the proposal to increase the environmental fees from the current level of 79.7˘ a ton for municipal waste to $1.897 a ton. This increase involves a new fee of 75˘ a ton for non-point pollution, and an increase of 35˘ a ton for environmental repair. The tie vote means that these changes are retained in the budget bill.

Other solid waste legislation

Besides the budget bill, there are seven other bills that pertain to solid waste issues. However, only two – AB 266 and SB 122 – have received any action.

AB 266 allows landfill owners to invest in the obligations of federal agencies for their financial responsibilities. A hearing was held on April 25th in the Committee on Natural Resources, an amendment was offered, and the committee took executive action on May 30. However, the web page does not show what that action was.

SB 122 is designed to change the current situation of some paper recycling mills obtaining exemptions from property taxes because they are “treating waste” by recycling scrap paper. A substitute amendment was offered and favorably recommended by a unanimous vote of the Committee on Commerce, Utilities and Rails. It has gone to the Joint Committee on Finance, which received a report from the Joint Survey Committee on Tax Exemptions on June 5.

Upcoming Legislation

Two bills that are said to be in development are proposals for electronics recycling and bans on their landfilling, as well as a bill on mercury-containing products. However, given the attention that is focused on the budget bill, it is unlikely that either of these bills will come forward until this fall at the earliest.

State legislation and its status can be found on the Internet at http://www.legis.state.wi.us/.

For questions regarding legislation, please contact John Reindl at Reindl@co.dane.wi.us

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