The Wisconsin Senate is not wasting any time in looking into Wisconsin’s special environmental prosecutor.

The Senate’s new Committee on Oversight of the Department of Justice on Thursday voted to request documents from Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul about the communication between his office and the New York University State Impact Center and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Republican Senators believe that those outside groups, not Kaul himself, are driving the environmental policy in Kaul’s office.

“These positions are not authorized or funded by the Legislature, and are therefore unaccountable to the taxpayers of Wisconsin,” the Senate committee’s Republicans said in a statement. “Over the coming months, SCODOJ will be following Wisconsin law as it investigates the relationship between these outside groups and Attorney General Josh Kaul’s DOJ. All members of SCODOJ will have access to all documents provided by DOJ.”

Sen Mary Felzkowski, who is in charge of the committee, took it a step further.

“It is the Legislature’s duty to conduct oversight of executive agencies and ensure that DOJ is working on behalf of Wisconsinites, not outside groups,” she added. “I look forward to reviewing the documents that DOJ provides over the coming weeks and getting to the bottom of what is really happening. We must make sure that all actions undertaken by state government are in the interest of Wisconsinites.”

Kaul added the special environmental prosecutor to his staff in 2024, paid for in part by a $90,000 grant from the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at NYU. That is a group that is also funded by Michael Bloomberg. The prosecutor’s job is to focus on “matters relating to clean energy, climate change, and environmental matters of regional and national importance.”

Some of Wisconsin’s largest dairy groups are suing Kaul over the environmental prosecutor. They too say the job is unauthorized and unconstitutional.

This article was originally published with The Maciver Institute.