Wisconsin Republicans are investigating the use of external environmental lawyers in the state attorney general’s office, escalating a challenge to a Bloomberg Philanthropies-backed program that has sparked conservative backlash in several states.
State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R) this week announced a Senate Special Committee on Oversight of the Department of Justice to probe “outside influence” in the office of Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D).
The focus of the investigation will be Kaul’s use of an attorney whose salary is paid by the New York University School of Law State Energy & Environmental Impact Center. The center provides environmental lawyers to the offices of several state attorneys general, including a number who are engaged in climate lawsuits against the oil and gas industry.
The legislative probe comes as dairy groups in the state are suing Kaul for employing an external attorney to work on environmental cases, saying it harms them because farmers face “enforcement actions funded and fueled by third-party special interest groups.”
LeMahieu in a statement said the committee will ensure the department “is operating within its statutory authority and serving the public interest — not the agenda of third parties or outside organizations.”
The people of Wisconsin, he said, “deserve transparency and accountability from every corner of their government.”
The committee is charged with issuing a final report and recommendations by next April.
Kaul denounced the investigation as a political stunt, telling local TV stations it was “disappointing” that lawmakers were focusing on his office, rather than addressing more pressing issues, including rising health care costs.
Kaul has previously defended the use of outside counsel, noting that “with the harm that pollution causes in many communities across the state, better resourcing the enforcement of our environmental laws shouldn’t be controversial.”
Wisconsin Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R), who will chair the committee, said “outside influence from highly self-interested sources is unacceptable.”
The effort is “not about politics,” she said. “It’s about transparency and good governance.”
Four Republicans were appointed to the committee. Two more members will be selected by state Senate Democratic Leader Dianne Hesselbein, who called the committee a “crystal-clear example of the totally misplaced priorities of Republicans in the state Senate.”
Hesselbein said that as Wisconsin faces rising costs, Republicans are focused “on an unnecessary and partisan witch hunt that will not do a single thing to improve the lives of the people we serve.”
The establishment of the committee marks the latest spat over an arrangement that has sparked controversy in several states. Opponents of climate lawsuits targeting the fossil fuel industry have criticized the hiring of outside lawyers into state attorneys general offices, and several states have sought to outlaw the practice.
Virginia, for example, in 2019 became the first state to pass a measure requiring lawyers in its attorney general’s office to be state or federal employees paid with public funds.
The top Republican on the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in July announced an investigation into ties between former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYU center. The center was launched in 2017 with a $6 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable foundation led by the billionaire climate activist.
The center did not immediately return a request for comment but has said its work is nonpartisan and its fellows’ “sole duty of loyalty” is to the attorneys general in whose offices they work.
Conservative groups have raised legal questions about the fellowship program since its inception and have argued that no fellows have worked with Republican states.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in February that Wisconsin Republicans had introduced legislation to prevent Kaul from hiring additional staff with funding from outside sources. It noted the bill came after the newspaper reported that Kaul last year hired a new special assistant attorney general on environmental litigation whose $90,000 salary was paid for by the NYU center.
Wisconsin Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R) introduced federal legislation last year to prevent private interest funding to any attorney general. He said the measure would “keep out-of-state billionaires in check and out of our state attorney general’s office, which should work only for the people of Wisconsin, not outside climate activists.”
A fight over the program surfaced in the 2022 Minnesota attorney general race, when the three Republicans running for their party’s nomination agreed at a debate that they would scrap the program if elected.
Republicans in Minnesota also tried to pass legislation that year to bar then-Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) from hiring outside counsel. Ellison, who had defended the use of outside attorneys, was reelected, and the legislation failed.
