Reprinted from Morgantown Dominion Post column, Febr. 2009
Years ago, when West Virginia had major budget problems, the legislature under the Governor Arch Moore administration, started the process of passing a bill that would have taken hunter and fisher license money and use it to cover government shortfalls. In fact that happened several times in those days, but West Virginia sportsmen and women came to the rescue by pointing out that there is federal legislation that prevents such abusive uses of hunter and fisher license revenues.
The federal legislation is Pittman Robertson and Dingell Johnson (now Wallop Breaux). Under that legislation, the feds collect 11 percent excise taxes on hunting and fishing equipment, and it is then apportioned to states at a 3 to 1 matching basis. The states must use their license monies as their part of the match and they must spend the match they receive on fish and wildlife management. Within limits, a state gets $3 million in federal excise taxes paid by sportsmen and women when they buy equipment, for every $1 million they provide in license money. It is a great system and it literally keeps every state fish and wildlife agency running.
But there is a catch relative to getting those federal tax dollars. If a state uses their hunting and fishing license monies for any other purpose, they lose the federal matching money, and they lose it forever, or until the state repays what they "stole" from hunters and fishers. Pretty slick.
That brings us to today where many states are having major budget shortfalls. It seems that some politicians don’t know, or don’t want to know, about the restrictions states have on using license revenues. Take South Dakota for example. South Dakota House Bill 1002 wants to tax hunters and fishers by taking $1 from every license sold and use it for county road repair. (Is the logic here that hunters and fishers are tearing up the roads, so let’s make them pay for it? Hunters and fishers already pay a gasoline tax that goes to fix roads, as do all citizens. So, would this be double-dipping?)
Of course the South Dakota game and fish agency is opposed to this bill because they understand the repercussions, and sportsmen there are being asked to contact their legislators and get this stupid bill put out of it’s misery. Why? Because wildlife and fishery management will lose the $3 to $1 matching money they now get from federal excise taxes. Forever. It’s the law. And South Dakota fish and game gets $10 million every year from federal excise taxes. So, let’s create an example from this situation and do the math. Let’s suppose that the state takes $1 million of these license monies to repair roads, and in exchange they will lose $3 million to run their fish and wildlife management programs. There goes management of endangered species, non game species, game species, hunter education, wildlife and fish research, etc. And, the next year, they will lose all $10 million of those federal excise taxes. And the next year too . . . and on and on.
What is it that South Dakota politicians don’t understand?
You’ve all heard about the political problems they are having in Illinois. One governor impeached and the previous governor in jail for corruption. Well, there’s more. Illinois is another state trying to balance their state budget on the shoulders of sportsmen and women. It seems that in the fall of 2008, a great deal of money was taken from various state funds to cover budget shortfalls. One of those funds was hunting and fishing license money for the year. Now Illinois gets about $16 million a year in federal excise taxes as part of their 3 to 1 match. Governor Blagojevich (excuse me, ex-Governor, but Governor in December when this money was "taken") signed the bill into law that took this money, even though the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service had reminded him that doing so would mean a loss of federal excise tax money.
In question was $9.25 million taken from hunting and fishing license money. The money the ex-Governor took was to be used for a good purpose, to keep some state parks from being closed, but that is not the intended use of those funds. The deadline for return of this money was February 2nd, (and I am writing this on Febr. 2nd), so the future of fish and wildlife management is now in the hands of the state legislature. It will be interesting if they chose not to return that money to the appropriate license fund. I guess one has to be an Illinois politician to understand.
Then there are the problems in California. Governor Schwarzenegger wants to "borrow" $30 million from hunting and fishing license money and pay it back with interest by 2013. Yea, right? Politicians always pay back borrowed money. Just ask our teachers in West Virginia, who had their retirement funds raided for years by previous administrations. Finally, they are seeing some of that returned. California has a budget shortfall of around $40 billion. Could it be that they are over spending? No matter, we’ll just ask the sportsman to help cover our poor fiscal policy. I guess one has to be a California politician to understand.
In Michigan there is a Natural Resources Trust Fund created in 1976 that comes from royalties on the sale and lease of mineral rights on public land. The proceeds are to be used to improve the states natural resources. But now the state wants to use some of this money for road projects. I’m a bit puzzled how transportation projects will help the state’s fish, wildlife, forests, and waters. I guess one has to be a Michigan politician to understand.
Budget shortfalls are a sign of the times. But, expecting hunters and fishers to cover these losses, simply because there are license monies available, is not the answer. Especially when in most of those situations, the state will lose $3 for every $1 they take. I guess one has to be a politician to understand.
Fortunately, in recent years we don’t have such short-sided thinking going on in West Virginia, but if it ever does pop up again, you can be sure that the sportsmen and women will remind our legislators that federal law prevents using license money for anything except fish and wildlife management.
