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But as a member of the common council and county board, she’s found herself chairing the new Joint Oversight Committee on Sustainability, charged with helping local government get greener.
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Jai Johnson has been on the La Crosse City Council for over two years and the La Crosse COunty Board for over one year.
PETER THOMSON photo |
And in this case, the political is personal for Johnson.
“What am I doing? I was one of the first people in the area to drive a hybrid car,” said Johnson, who bought a used Honda Insight in 2002. “But my lifestyle is far from sustainable. I’m trying, mainly to just consume less — less gasoline, water, electricity, plastic bags, anything — and it’s difficult.”
Johnson’s colleagues say it’s her leadership and approach that landed her in that position, not her gas-sipping car.
“Unlike a lot of politicians, even at the local level, Jai is very normal. She has a regular job. She does regular things,” said La Crosse County Board Chair Steve Doyle. “But yet she’s got these great leadership qualities that finally came to the surface a couple years ago when she decided to get involved and try to carry out some of the things she believed in.”
Johnson’s approach is not to preach, “like we’re all bad and we’re all doing these terrible things,” said Dorothy Lenard, who serves with her on the Common Council and partnered with her in efforts to bring sustainability to local government.
“It’s just that we’ve been doing these things and maybe we need to take a different approach,” Lenard said. “I like that about working with her, that she’s not so much of a purist. I think it will be more successful because we’ll work with people instead of at people.”
Johnson took an unlikely route into local politics.
“I was fortunate to grow up on a farm tucked in the back of a magnificent coulee just outside La Crosse County,” Johnson said. “I learned an appreciation and reverence for the land that really shaped my values and thinking.”
After she graduated from UW-La Crosse in 1983, there weren’t many jobs available for English majors, so she shoveled sidewalks and cut firewood to make ends meet before she got a job in security for Bethany Lutheran Homes Inc. in 1984. She worked her way up to director of environmental services for the corporation, a job she’s held the last 10 years.
Johnson said she was very active politically in her 20s, even managing a congressional campaign. “But, like a lot of boomers, I got busy making a living and drifted away from politics,” she said.
“Then one day I realized I just couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore. I couldn’t continue to complain about the way things are and wait around for someone else to change it,” she said.
In April 2005, Johnson challenged and defeated common council incumbent Todd Olson in District 4, which includes much of the marsh and the lower North Side.
Some political observers thought backers of mayoral candidate Deak Swanson swept out Olson as part of an anti-City Hall movement. Others saw the election of Johnson and Lenard as part of a local progressive movement.
“A lot of people think ... that we knew each other beforehand, and had some kind of agenda,” Lenard said. But that’s not the case. “I didn’t know what she looked like until the night we were sworn in.”
In 2006, Johnson ran unopposed for the vacant District 4 seat on the county board.
Last fall, Johnson and Lenard attended a workshop on sustainability at a Wisconsin League of Municipalities conference.
“I’ve been concerned about the environment for long time, but sitting in that conference ... it just resonated,” Johnson said.
The presenters talked about the “Natural Step,” a Swedish system for reducing dependence on nonrenewable resources, synthetic chemicals and other substances nature can’t break down, along with activities that harm ecosystems.
She sees the Natural Step as a “big tent” that everyone can get under to work on sustainability.
“The Natural Step can be applied to mass transit, buying local, renewable energy, green building, soil conservation, reducing waste, a whole host of human activities, because virtually everything we do can be done in a more eco-friendly way,” Johnson said.
Johnson and Lenard convinced the common council to declare La Crosse an eco-municipality, and Johnson then brought it to the county board.
“Jai is one of those rare people who actually practices what she preaches, and as a result on the board she’s both well-liked and well-respected,” Doyle said. “One of the things that made it so successful in selling it to the county board was to show that it’s not just a liberal concept. It makes good financial sense.”
It might be that even though Johnson is an environmentalist, she doesn’t come off like one. She even smokes.
“We have those four-hour council meetings, and she’s about ready to get out of her skin,” Lenard said, laughing. “Every once and a while she disappears and I know it’s gotten the better of her. We’re all human.”
“I’ve tried over and over again to quit,” Johnson said. “I think everybody’s at a different place in their journey, and it’s really important we not judge each other. Sustainability has the potential to really unite people at a time when a lot of issues are dividing us. We have to be accepting of each other, not such elitists or purists that certain people get kicked out of the club because they’re not sustainable enough.”
Reid Magney can be reached at (608) 791-8211 or rmagney@lacrossetribune.com.
