Evers removes county from matching grant burden for UW campus

MARINETTE — Gov. Tony Evers partially vetoed Senate Bill 518 for two-year colleges on Friday so that the county would no longer need to match a large sum of money to redevelop the defunct University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Marinette Campus.

The bill would have required Marinette County to match 20% to receive a grant, which Marinette City Alderperson Doug Oitzinger said wasn’t necessary.

He recently wrote a letter to Evers asking him to veto the bill partially.

“In the case of the Marinette campus, Marinette County has repeatedly invested millions of dollars in expanding the facilities and in refurbishing them over decades,” Oitzinger said.

“Marinette County taxpayers have fulfilled their ‘obligations’ in every sense of the word. The University System has not. UW-Marinette has gone from one of 13 two-year colleges with its own academic and administrative staff to a branch campus that can best be characterized as a poor stepchild. And now it is to be an abandoned stepchild altogether.”

“Marinette County has invested millions of dollars in its partnership with the state that is being dissolved solely at the state’s discretion. To receive any compensation whatsoever for our lost investment, we are now being asked to invest $400,000 more. It certainly feels like ‘salt in the wound.’”

At the last county board meeting, Marinette County Administrator John Lefebvre said he wanted to transfer ownership of the UW-Green Bay, Marinette Campus to the City of Marinette.

The issue will be raised in a committee meeting in April, with the hope that the committee will send it to the county board for formal discussion and decision-making in the coming months.

Some supervisors said the county should look for other buyers. They want to see the county make some money from selling the property.

“This has been my position for a while,” he said in a recent EagleHerald article. “The reason it’s my position is there are financial consequences to the county if we continue to own and maintain that facility. I just want it to be out there because it hasn’t been discussed in any great deal or voted on.”

Whether or not the buildings transfer to the city, Evers said the 20% matching requirement was too restrictive.

“I trust local partners to know what is best needed to support economic development in their own communities and they should have as much flexibility as possible to make the decision necessary,” Evers said in his letter explaining the partial veto.

He acknowledged that cities and counties didn’t need further setbacks to redevelop these locations.

“I support the efforts by the Legislature and stakeholders to provide these critical investments to local communities being adversely affected by branch campus closures,” Evers said.

The bill creates a program administered by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation to award up to $2 million to a city, village, town or county to assist in redeveloping the closing UW campuses.

Oitzinger said the redevelopment would be challenging and would require state help.

“Our county government doesn’t have an extra $400,000 lying around in loose change, nor are we pleased to be losing the payroll and purchases in our county that will disappear with the closure of the campus,” Oitzinger said. “Most importantly, no matter how it is spun, we are losing opportunities for our residents to get a higher education in their home community and county.”