Syracuse.com - State advisory board prez: It's time outdoorsmen across the state saw their hunting, fishing and trapping fees reduced

[HuntingNY-News]

“What essentially is happening is that sportsmen in this state are paying for more of the DEC’s fish and wildlife program and receiving less support than they every have in the past,” Jason Kemper said.

Is it time to consider a decrease in the state’s hunting, fishing and trapping license fees?

Jason Kemper, chairman of the state’s Conservation Fund Advisory Board, said so in testimony earlier this month before a joint legislative session of the state Assembly and Senate in Albany on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed 2012-13 budget.

This week, the Advisory Board unanimously approved a resolution to “seek legislative relief” to return all non-lifetime sporting licenses to the 2008 level, according to Lance Robson, of Sennett, who serves on the board. The board is composed of 11 voting members, one from each of the nine state Department of Environmental Conservation regions, one from the New York Conservation Council and one representative from the state Fish and Wildlife Management Board.

In his testimony before state lawmakers, Kemper essentially said the license fees the state has collected from the sporting community following across-the-board increases in 2009 “is not being used in the manner it was intended to when the license fee increase was initiated.”

He said Cuomo (and his predecessor, David Paterson ) have used the state’s Conservation Fund as a sort of piggy bank to pick up expenses from the state’s general fund. Meanwhile, staff, programs and services in the Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources, which the Conservation Fund is supposed to pay for, have been cut. As a result, he notes that “reduced fees seem to be completely in order.”

His comments were a reaction to Cuomo’s recent proposal to transfer coverage of 65 environmental conservation officers to the Conservation Fund. Their salaries and benefits are currently being paid for out of the state’s general fund.

Kemper pointed out the Conservation Fund Advisory Board was established to advise the DEC. It serves as a watchdog to make sure that money collected from sportsmen’s fees — an estimated $47 million per year, which leverages roughly an additional $20 million annually in federal aid — is spent in accordance with the law creating the fund.

He noted the legislation creating the fund specifies the money be spent “for the care, management, protection and enhancement of the fish and game resources of the state and the promotion of hunting, fishing and trapping and that these funds be used in accordance with state finance law.”

Kemper said that when the license fee increases were originally pitched back in 2009, sportsmen were told to either pony up or “see a diminished level of services over what they had received in the past.”

At that time, he said, there were 412 staff members assigned to the state’s Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources. Since the license fee increases, though, that division has seen a total of 63 staff positions cut and the fund is paying for more than 90 additional DEC staffers than in 2009. That doesn’t count the 65 conservation officers that Cuomo proposes to add.

“What essentially is happening is that sportsmen in this state are paying for more of the DEC’s fish and wildlife program and receiving less support than they every have in the past,” Kemper said.

Robson noted that the license fee increase in 2009 was instituted to cover an $8 million budget shortfall. However, the subsequent DEC personnel and service cuts resulted in an annual $9 million increase to the fund — money which continues to be siphoned out of the fund by the governor’s office for other uses in the DEC.

“Sportsmen paid up front for the services they wanted. We’ve been talking about this on and off for a year, and we’re nowhere and we have a statutory obligation to recommend license fee decreases when appropriate,” Robson said.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog