Jeremy Alford: Wildlife and Fisheries hunts for additional funding

Declining oil prices and a stagnant fee structure have prompted officials at the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to ask lawmakers for a $20 million emergency injection for the next fiscal year and an enhanced licensing structure that could generate as much as $30 million annually to salvage subsequent years.
Department officials are painting a bleak portrait of life without these bailouts — massive layoffs, a loss of federal funding due to a lack of matching funds, a smaller enforcement footprint, fewer biologists and weaker research that could in turn lead to shrinking limits on fish or even shorter seasons.
Over the last few decades the Legislature took steps to diversify the state’s fiscal picture to lessen its dependence on oil.
But somehow the department was left out of that transition. For the past 21 years the department’s sole source of cash has been the Conservation
Fund, into which oil royalties from state lands flow — and the flow is slower than ever on those royalties, from $73 million in 2014 to maybe $12 million this year.
“We've reached a point where the department simply won't be able to do what it’s doing unless we inject some dollars into that fund,” Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne told lawmakers during the most recent Joint Budget meeting.
“We hope that there’s some relief in sight. I’m not sure if there will be or not. This could start a responsibility of the state to inject dollars into a department that perviously ran solely on its Conservation Fund dollars.”
While the proposed fee increases will produce a hearty debate, the department’s predicament will also force the Legislature to make a fundamental policy decision.
Should general fund dollars be used to prop up the department? Lawmakers haven’t had to do that in 21 years, and there may be no turning back if the House and Senate start now.
As Dardenne has pointed out, “this is not something that happened overnight.”
The department has unsuccessfully sought fee increases over the past 10 years while also reducing staff positions by 13 percent and decreasing the field time for enforcement efforts by a combined 100,000 hours.
The Edwards Administration has proposed using what's referred to as the "funds bill" to deposit about $17 million into the Conservation Fund using excess revenue from the current fiscal year to take care of the department’s needs in the 2021-2022 fiscal year. But lawmakers still have to sign off on that proposal, which is just shy of the $20 million the department initially requested.
Lawmakers are also being asked to address the needs that will persist in subsequent years. There’s no author attached yet, but department officials are putting together a legislative package that would increase many recreational and commercial licenses in hopes of bringing home $30 million in new revenue each year.
Another fee bill, much smaller in scope, failed to pass the House in 2018.
At the time, many lawmakers expressed concerns about hiking the licenses of Louisiana sportsmen and a compromise could not be forged.
This go around, for the most part, lawmakers seem to understand there’s a real need for revenue at the department.
Still, there’s no overarching agreement yet on solutions.
Some lawmakers would rather increase out-of-state licenses only, a few want to see what becomes of future oil prices and others believe every stone has not yet been turned over in this debate.
“We need to look at the management structure,” said House Natural Resources Chairman Jean-Paul Coussan of Lafayette, echoing the sentiments of some committee members who want to hear more about the administrative-employee ratio during the regular session.
Secretary Jack Montoucet took over the department in 2017, inheriting an unsustainable financial structure that the Legislature had approved 17 years prior.
During an interview last week, he said department officials have brainstormed on funding ideas and are attempting to explore each and every one.
“We're looking at everything,” said Montoucet. “But the big point a lot of people miss the boat on is that it has been 20 years since the license fees have been addressed.”
Historically, the department has catered to a group of stakeholders who have shown a willingness to impose fees on themselves.
Commercial and recreational fishermen represented by task forces and associations have long come to the Capitol asking for fees to be imposed to underwrite the needs of their industries.
This latest across-the-board approach, however, is an outlier and there are no guarantees that department stakeholders or lawmakers will warm to the idea.
This could be a true fish-or-cut bait moment for the Legislature, which must now decide if the department should continue to be self-sustainable or transformed into an agency that’s kept afloat by whatever lawmakers can find in their tackle boxes.
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