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Legislation introduced to halt Wisconsin animal fee increases

Wisconsin lawmakers have introduced legislation that would take away the ag department’s ability to raise fees on animal markets, animal dealers, animal truckers, and animal transport vehicles.

Farmer and State Representative Travis Tranel tells Brownfield the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection’s proposed fees go up as much as 17-hundred percent, which is unreasonable and unsustainable. “The feedback has been loud and overwhelming that obviously, people are smart enough to know that all of those fees are going to get passed on to producers.”

Tranel says he and Senator Romaine Quinn had the idea to put the current fees into the state statutes so unelected bureaucrats could not raise fees using administrative rules.  He says the State Supreme Court recently took away the Legislature’s power to oversee agency rules. “But, we can have people in the Legislature take a vote and say whether or not they think this is an appropriate time to increase fees by this astronomical amount, and obviously, we don’t think that it is.”

Tranel says farmers are already struggling and can’t afford these fees. “With President Trump opening his mouth about the possibility of importing beef from Argentina, which again, I’m not exactly sure why it’s not okay for farmers to make money ever, it seems like. That bred more uncertainty into the market and then just adding these outrageous fees, it’s bad timing all the way around.”

Tranel says he’s had discussions with Ag Secretary Randy Romanski, and he’s hopeful a more reasonable solution can be reached.  Wisconsin Farm Bureau and livestock marketers also oppose the fee changes in rules ATCP 10 and ATCP 12.

Identical bills, LRB 4708/1 and LRB-5209/1, were introduced Tuesday by Romaine Quinn and Howard Marklein in the State Senate, and Clint Moses and Travis Tranel in the Assembly.  As of publication time, the bills have not been assigned Senate and Assembly bill numbers.  They are being circulated for cosponsorship through October 29^th.

AUDIO: State Representative and farmer Travis Tranel discusses the new legislation that would block administrative rule fee increases with Brownfield’s Larry Lee