Commission Mulls Big Changes Fish And Game Panel Considers ‘Pro-Active’ Focus On Wildlife

Plagued by severe financial problems for several years, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission is contemplating dramatic changes in the future of wildlife management in the state.

“It’s a choice between pro-active on one side and reactive on the other,” Commission Chairman John Burns said. “Does the public want a pro-active agency or do they want one that sets seasons and gives out tickets?”

A team of six top department officials is framing the debate around three options, but Burns and others caution that the focus could change significantly after commissioners assess those options at a special meeting in July.

“We’re laying out possibilities and some very tentative scenarios that may be taken to the public later,” Burns said. “When I say the public, I’m talking about the Legislature, the governor’s office, local governments and the organizations with an interest in wildlife.

“That whole spectrum of public is going to need to interact,” he said. “Different segments have different objectives for the department. All need to be considered.”

Several years of stagnant revenue and rising costs ruptured last year into a staggering 10 percent budget cut to cover $3 million in red ink followed by another 4.3 percent reduction for the spending year that begins July 1.

It has left the commission faced with deciding whether to contract department operations to fit existing revenues or find more cash to either effectively maintain existing programs or return to the expanded operations of the years before money problems.

The implications of any of the options are staggering.

Holding the line on money could mean staff reductions on top of those jobs already left vacant in the deficit-eliminating budget cuts or major reductions in programs like the resident fish hatcheries.

Department officials say maintaining existing programs and services would require another $2.5 million a year - cash that would have to be raised by higher license fees or some kind of general tax support. Returning to the operational level before the budget crisis would require $7 million more a year, they say.

Getting general tax support is unlikely considering how tight those revenues have been the past several years, and sportsmen would probably not want it anyway because it would give the Legislature more say in department policy.

“There is fear that making wildlife policy would be dramatically changed to the point where it would be completely political,” says Kent Marlor, chairman of the Region 6 Wildlife Council.

That leaves a special new tax as an alternative to higher license fees. It was an option taken in Missouri and Arkansas by citizen initiative, and initiative would likely be the way it would have to occur in Idaho since state lawmakers seem adamantly against raising taxes to expand government.

The department might have one window of opportunity in 1999 if state budget demands - especially for juvenile and adult prisons - continue to outstrip tax collections and force lawmakers to consider a major tax increase after the 1998 election.

The likely focus of that debate would be the sales tax exemptions, and it would offer the department the chance to have a tenth of a cent of the sales tax - about $12 million - specially earmarked for its operations.

But Burns said all those decisions depend on where the department is headed.

“Once the public picks what type of department they want, we can readily calculate the costs of doing it and figure how to meet those costs,” he said.