We Just Sued the Oneida County Board of Adjustment

We're once again trying to legally open our flagship taproom for the summer tourism season.

Hello friends,

This is Kirk Bangstad, owner of the Minocqua Brewing Company, and I’ve decided to write twice this weekend because there’s so much happening.

Today, I’m going to update you on our continued war with Oneida County and the Town of Minocqua to simply exist in the town that bears our name.

Tomorrow, I’m going to recap our Super PAC’s efforts to keep the extremist group “Moms for Liberty” off of Wisconsin's school boards, give you the latest on our efforts to shine a light on Wisconsin's county sheriffs who are all-too-willingly working with ICE, and also foreshadow my worries about what will happen in Wisconsin if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act on April 20th.

Yesterday, the Minocqua Brewing Company sued Oneida County’s Board of Adjustment for violation of due process after they refused to let me present our appeal to reinstate my company’s permit to do business.

For those of you just tuning in now, our fight with Oneida County goes back to 2020, when I hung a huge Biden sign on the side of our old building to protest Trump’s handling of Covid and the damage he caused to the hospitality industry in Wisconsin.

The county told me I had to take the sign down, and they were humiliated when we publicly reminded them that the 2015 SCOTUS case Reed v Town of Gilbert made it illegal for municipal governments to regulate the size of political signs.

Ever since that humiliation, both the Town of Minocqua and Oneida County have tried to destroy my business by selectively enforcing zoning regulations that aren’t enforced against any other businesses in the area, and creating zoning obstacles for my company that have no basis in public safety, environmental protection, or aesthetics. Their efforts have been aided by Gregg Walker, publisher of the right-wing local newspaper, who has bombarded my company with endless lawsuits and bogus defamation complaints, as well as by local law enforcement working in “goose step” with him. They’ve perpetually drained my company’s profits in endless legal fees and even colluded to put me in the Oneida County jail.

The common goal of the town, the county board, the newspaper, and the sheriff?

To bankrupt the Minocqua Brewing Company and silence our loud, progressive voice that keeps shining a light on their rancid “Good Ole’ Boy” corruption that permeates every level of municipal government in this beautiful Northwoods vacation destination.

In response to our company’s many supporters who have suggested that I simply move out of the area and live a more peaceful existence in progressive Madison, Wisconsin, I perpetually respond that I am simply not built that way. I will fight for justice until I can no longer fight--whether it be against bogus zoning violations brought on by corrupt provincial know-nothings or Fascist Presidents hellbent on destroying our country.

And I will keep fighting until I win or until the rule of law is completely snuffed out in Wisconsin and America—which unfortunately is looking more likely than ever.

Here’s the latest on how we’re attempting to once again open our business for the summer tourism season on May 1.

Last July, the Oneida County Zoning committee revoked our permit to do business based on frivolous zoning violations—including building a wooden fence in our beer garden vs. a metal one, laying landscaping rocks as opposed to permeable pavers, and not paving our driveway (many other driveways aren’t paved all around us).

Shutting my company down for these violations in the middle of the summer tourism season was an egregious act of political harassment meant to hurt our sales, but we expected it. The county did the same thing to us the previous summer, and we deposed a witness who overheard County Board Chairman Scott Holewinski suggest that by shutting us down in the summer, they'd inflict maximal pain.

After the County revoked our business permit, we immediately sued them in circuit court and Judge Bloom “stayed” their decision which allowed us to stay open for the rest of the summer. A week before that same judge retired, he lifted the "stay" and allowed our permit to be revoked, so we appealed the zoning committee’s decision to the County’s Board of Adjustment (BOA)—which was the next legal step we had to take in order to get our permit back.

We filed our appeal to the BOA on October 23, a few weeks after we closed for the season. The BOA didn’t actually hold the hearing for our appeal until February 20^th--four months later.

This delay followed a pattern:

For the last three years, the Town and County have slow-walked every proceeding during the winter offseason that has had anything to do with me legally running my businesses, and these delays always put me in a bind come summer when I run out of time to legally open for the tourism season.

Although my lawyer Fred and I expected that the Board of Adjustment would rubber stamp the county’s zoning decision to pull my permit, I still prepared a lengthy appeal that cited numerous violations of due process, selective enforcement, and political harassment at the hands of the Town and County—if nothing else than to get it into the official record.

The board refused to even hear our appeal, and I was forcibly removed from the meeting when I insisted that they must hear it because of my right to due process. Note this is the third time in two years that I’ve not been allowed to speak at a county board hearing, and have been forcibly removed from those hearings for insisting that I had every right to defend my business and livelihood.

So what happens next?

We just sued every member of the Board of Adjustment and asked a circuit court judge to overturn their decision to shut down the Minocqua Brewing Company.

Unfortunately we are forced to sue in Oneida County, where the judges have proven to be corrupt (Judge Bloom allowed the county to shut us down right before he retired, and Judge Shiek placed a gag order on me after I was illegally jailed for criminal defamation) so we don’t expect relief with this lawsuit. We expect that a local judge won’t even hear our case before the beginning of the summer tourism season on May 1^st, so we’ll have to file an emergency restraining order against the county in federal court, which is is Wisconsin’s Western District (Madison).

While we’re waiting for our legal defense to work its way through the courts, we also submitted an application for another Conditional Use Permit to do business. Oneida County Zoning official Karl Jennrich confirmed our application was completes a week ago, which , given that absolutely nothing has changed and that we’ve gone above and beyond the requirements that any other business needs in order to conduct business, should be immediately approved before May 1^st, the official start of the summer tourism season.

I’m updating our supporters today about this ongoing battle because I suspect that:

1. Oneida County zoning will slow-walk our CUP application and start fining us when we open for business on May 1.

2. The Oneida County circuit court won’t act on our lawsuit against the board of adjustment before May 1^st, thus forcing us to file an emergency restraining order against the County in Federal Court.

As has been the case in April in each of the last three years, Oneida county’s zoning officials and circuit courts have purposefully left us no time to open legally after slow-walking our applications and lawsuits all winter long.

And what will again happen when we do open this year? They will accuse of breaking the law—a game of cat and mouse that will hopefully finally end when a federal judge says “enough is enough.”

Regardless of what the Town and County try to do to us before May 1, come hell or high water we plan to open as usual for business, and we hope you come visit us.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.

We're never going to give up on the rule of law and hope you don't either.

Kirk Bangstad,
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC