Budget panel rejects fish and game cuts

AUGUSTA – Zeroing in on a $10.1 million savings target in a series of conditional votes, legislative budget writers Thursday rejected a suggested scaling back of media activities by Maine’s fish and game agency.

Estimated at a little more than $50,000 for the first year, the initiative on managing the public information activities of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife would involve producing a departmental magazine in an online format instead of in hard copy and eliminating a contract with an outside vendor to survey consumers.

It would also eliminate departmental sponsorships of broadcasts.

The proposal had drawn unfavorable reaction from the Legislature’s Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee.

“Our committee voted unanimously to reject this initiative because we feel educational outreach about the department’s activities is extremely important and that user groups are already paying for this service with revenues raised through wildlife-related licenses, fees and regulations,” the DIF&W panel’s chairmen, Sen. Bruce Bryant, D-Dixfield, and Rep. Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, wrote in a letter to the Appropriations Committee earlier this week.

Discussion over the item, which was overwhelmingly turned down on a tentative Appropriations panel vote, provided an example of how relatively small financial items have engaged lawmakers in tight detail.

The discussion also highlighted the frequently close relationship between a legislative committee and an agency it oversees.

Bryant and Jackson wrote to the budget panel that the DIF&W committee “is disappointed with the methodology your committee used to calculate Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s … share of the $10.1 million in savings target for state agencies. … As you know, the department’s budget is unique among all the state’s agencies in that it is funded almost entirely on revenues raised by its user groups through various wildlife-related fees.”

The chairmen continued: “Because of this unique arrangement we strongly feel that this revenue should be viewed somewhat differently in this case from the General Fund revenues appropriated to other agencies.”

Beyond offering an $11.3 million package of proposed spending cuts as a way to meet a target set in the new $6.3 billion biennial state budget, the Baldacci administration has put forth nearly two dozen other suggestions for legislative consideration.

With those in mind, the Appropriations Committee went back to work Thursday for the second day this week.

The committee again took a look at streamlining proposals with an immediate goal of agreeing on $10.1 million in cost reductions.

Looking longer term, the panel would like to learn more about additional savings initiatives.

The Appropriations Committee is due to put a recommendation before the full Legislature after the House and Senate reconvene in January.