Ousted Wausau mayor among the hires
The Wisconsin Department of Administration has spent nearly $2 million operating two state offices that have since 2019 been denied funding by the Legislature.
Gov. Tony Evers created the Office of Environmental Justice and the Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy with two executive orders, funding them with money earmarked for other purposes within the DOA, according to documents obtained by the Badger Institute.
DOA officials failed to notify the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance of funding for the offices, as required when such funding shifts exceed $2,000, according to state statutes.
The Department of Administration has been open about the operation and mission of the office of Sustainability and Clean Energy, which can be found on its website. The Badger Institute has written about its goal of 100 percent carbon free energy use by 2050 in Wisconsin.
The Office of Environmental Justice, however, in its operation and funding, has operated in the shadows. The office has no website. DOA made no public announcement that it had hired former Wausau Mayor Katie Rosenberg to run the office.
Rep. Mark Born, co-chair of the Finance Committee, told the Badger Institute the committee was unaware the offices were funded through existing budget sources. A subsequent investigation by the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau uncovered the funding methods used to support them.
“This looks like an attempt to skirt the normal budget process by moving positions around instead of being transparent about staffing levels,” Born said. “The reality is, this agency (DOA) already has a large number of positions and, before shifting more we need a clear justification and accountability to taxpayers.”
When the Badger Institute first contacted Rosenberg directly, she said she believed she could provide answers to some of our questions. She then failed to respond to follow-up calls trying to get those answers in the weeks after the Badger Institute obtained the LFB analysis.
The DOA did not respond to emails asking about the office and Rosenberg.
The DOA defended its decisions to an analyst for the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau investigating the behind-the-scenes funding of state offices. Officials took the route they did “due to constraints on expenditure authority” during the regular and public budget process, according to a memo from the LFB analyst shared with the Finance Committee.
The DOA said it did not exceed any of the appropriation amounts culled from other budgets to fund the offices. And because the offices provide services to other state agencies, the DOA said it did not believe it was required to report the funding changes to the Finance Committee, the LFB analyst said.
The DOA hired Rosenberg, a Democrat, to run the Office of Environmental Justice in the spring of 2024, sometime after she lost her bid for reelection as mayor of Wausau. She is being paid $102,461 annually, although the state payroll system says the position is funded at $108,900. according to an analysis of the offices done by the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Evers created the office by Executive Order 161 in 2022 to address what he said was the disproportionate impact of environmental pollution and climate change on black, Native American and impoverished communities. The order does not explain why those impacts are disproportionate.
Rosenberg, according to the order, is also expected to advise Maria Redmond, who is earning $108,900 a year as director of the Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy, the other of the two offices.
That office is a clearinghouse for programs and policies to address the impacts of climate change, according to its website.
Despite no authorization from elected officials, the two offices have through Feb. 1 spent $1,838,800 on salaries and operations, with $1,597,100 or 86.9 percent of it coming from federal aid and $241,700 diverted from two state appropriations, according to the LFB.
While the LFB report doesn’t specify which federal funding is being used, the Badger Institute has tracked the state’s COVID-19 spending, and as of December 2025 the state is still sitting on $260.7 million in federal funds.
The state has until the end of 2026 to spend all of it or risk having to return it. The DOA told the LFB analyst the positions in both offices would be eliminated at the end of 2026, perhaps for lack of federal funding.
However, in October 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wisconsin would be receiving $1.5 million from the trillion-dollar Inflation Reduction Act for programs that “advance environmental justice.”
The Legislature has repeatedly rebuffed Evers’ attempts to grow environmental and DEI programs within his Department of Administration.
After lawmakers rejected his budget request to create and fund the Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy, Evers created the unfunded office by Executive Order 38 in August 2019. The goal of the office was to create a plan to make Wisconsin carbon neutral by 2050.
The office has since produced three clean energy progress reports.
Evers’ DOA created an unclassified division administrator position paid with money that it cobbled from other appropriations, according to the LFB. Federal funding later supplanted most of that funding.
The Legislature rejected all of Evers’ environmental office funding requests for the 2021-23 budget, including a one-time $4 million for clean energy production research grants.
When Evers announced his executive order creating the Office of Environmental Justice, it got little media attention because the Legislature refused to fund it. More than a year later, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel pronounced the office a “mystery.”
The governor’s office and DOA officials refused to discuss anything about the office with the reporter in 2023, including more than $386,000 in grants given to the state for “a climate and clean energy fellow position” in the office from 2020 to 2025, the newspaper reported. That money came from the U.S. Climate Alliance, a group of 23 states opposed to U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords.
Staff for the U.S. Climate Alliance failed to respond to two email inquiries to determine whether the Alliance continued funding any work for or in the Office of Environmental Justice.
In an internet search, a Climate Change Preparedness Conference announced Rosenberg as a speaker at its upcoming conference May 20-22 in Las Vegas.
The announcement said Evers appointed Rosenberg in June 2024, “to facilitate collaboration across state agencies and engage with environmental justice advocates, communities of color, Tribal Nations, and low-income populations.”
“This kind of maneuvering is unacceptable, and it’s exactly why we took action to remove these positions and funding from this agency,” Born said. “If they can’t be transparent and accountable with the resources they already have, taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to support more positions or expanded bureaucracy.”
Mark Lisheron is a contributing editor at the Badger Institute.
Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute marketing director Matt Erdman at matt@badgerinstitute.org
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