Thanks to Tommy Thompson's success nearly 20 years before in making the DNR secretary a gubernatorial appointment and Doyle's failure to overturn it, one of Walker's first acts was to make an outspoken critic of the DNR, former state Sen. Cathy Stepp, the department's new secretary. It's been downhill ever since. The department has been complicit in weakening permitting regulations. An audit has found it derelict in enforcing its own policies when dealing with polluters. Large animal-feeding operations, CAFOs, have gone virtually unchecked. The science services division was dismantled. Large cutbacks were made in the staffs that deal with hunting and fishing.
