Wisconsin lawmakers will investigate claims Attorney General Josh Kaul is pursuing an anti-oil agenda with the help of an assistant paid for by an advocacy group.
The arrangement is at the center of a lawsuit filed by Wisconsin dairy-farming groups who call the relationship “repugnant.” Like other AGs around the country, Kaul, a Democrat, has taken in a special assistant to focus on climate-change litigation whose salary is paid by a Bloomberg Philanthropies-funded program at the NYU School of Law.
The Wisconsin Senate Committee on Organization announced a Special Committee on Oversight of the Department of Justice. Its job is to perform an investigation into “external influences affecting the Wisconsin Department of Justice.’
A final report will be in by April 14.
“The people of Wisconsin deserve transparency and accountability from every corner of their government,” Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said.
“This special committee will ensure that the Department of Justice, an agency created and funded by the Legislature, is operating within its statutory authority and serving the public interest – not the agenda of third parties or outside organizations.”
Dozens of climate lawsuits have been pushed by state, city and county officials who hired private lawyers working on contingency fees. President Donald Trump has forbidden any more lawsuits against the oil industry in an executive order.
The state of Wisconsin has not filed one, though it remains active in climate matters. In September, it joined a coalition of states opposing the rollback of EPA emissions standards.
Challenges to the Bloomberg-funded prosecutors in other states focused on communications between AG offices and the NYU School of Law State Energy and Environmental Impact Center. Last year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Kaul hired Karen Heinemen with an annual salary of $90,000 to be paid by the NYU program.
Complaining of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “far-left” agenda, the dairy groups said in their Calumet County lawsuit, which is still pending, that, “such an arrangement between a special interest group and a Republican attorney general would be just as outrageous and unlawful.”
“It is not difficult to imagine how a ‘Second Amendment Fellow’ deputized as a (special assistant attorney general) by the Gun Owners of America would be received,” the complaint adds. “Or an ‘Anti-Abortion Fellow’ empowered to act on behalf of the State while being paid by the National Right to Life.”
Republican members of Congress earlier this year announced an investigation into the NYU program, with Kentucky’s James Comer, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, questioning the motives.
Environmental litigation can take many forms, but the biggest target is currently Big Oil, which has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put an end to the approximately 40 cases it faces nationwide.
Judges in South Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Pennsylvania have found the cases involve questions of international emissions standards better left to the federal government.
Dozens of lawsuits remain pending. Colorado’s and Hawaii’s supreme courts refused to grant motions to dismiss cases there, and the Colorado case is the one that will possibly be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lawyers crafted their complaints to keep them out of federal courts, where companies like Exxon and Chevron had stronger defenses. The lawsuits allege violations of state laws of consumer protection and public nuisance and allege the public wouldn’t have used as many fossil fuels as it did had the industry been more honest about their effect on the environment.
Bucks County, Pa., judge Stephen Corr noted that the county’s complaint used the word “emissions” more than 100 times, while “deceptive” and “deception” were used only 39 times combined. He threw out the case as an attempt to regulate the international emissions market masked in consumer protection.
Judge Videtta Brown, in Baltimore’s case, said the litigation goes beyond the limits of Maryland law, or whatever states other cases are filed in.
“This Court holds that the U.S. Constitution’s federal structure does not allow the application of state court claims like those presented in the instant cases,” Judge Steven Platt wrote in tossing Annapolis’ case.
“The States such as Plaintiffs here… can participate in the efforts to limit emissions collaboratively, but not in the form of litigation… If states and municipalities [or] even private parties are dissatisfied with the federal rulemaking or the outcome of cases, they may seek federal court review.”
