Yeah that line of reasoning wouldn’t resonate coming from my father either!
Orrrrrr…. you could read it more sensibly and intended as that a resident elk tag costs 57 bucks. A nonresident tag costs 700. So cut my tag and give it to a Res. Charge them 3x what they paid before. Still pretty short. Not geometric growth. Just total (x) tags moved from NR to R x 3.
Hey I am a NR and I agree with you. But try convincing your politicians and state agencies to voluntarily slit their throat though. Have you met many State employees? They rather enjoy keeping their jobs and pensions - efficient, needed, or not.
Wyoming functions much the same. Elk, Deer, Antelope are over funded from license, PP, etc revenue. Sheep and moose are typically under funded from this revenue. The big drains on funding are fishing, pheasant farms and sheep. Fishing is by far the biggest drain. Insanely cheap resident fishing and pen raised pheasants are subsidized by NR E/D/A PP's.
In Colorado is the "Parks" part of "Parks and Wildlife" self suffiecient and a separtae budget or are hunters paying for the state parks to operate?
They have to be kept separate otherwise they would lose all the federal funding from Pittman-Roberts and Dingell-Johnson, if I understand correctly.
Correct, there is a specific Wildlife fund.
I've never actually understood this "issue", folks want government to run more like business and this is exactly what businesses do.
@TOGIE I ran the math out a while back... would have to dig it all up, but if you actually capped CO at 35% NR. Like made it a quota, no buying leftovers beyond the quota, but like 35% of CO elk tags to NR. Then to be revenue neutral you would need to make a Resident Elk + small game tag like $175.
I have no problem with G&F being run like this. The only time it becomes an issue is when misdirection comes into play. Like say someone says we cant reduce the number of NR elk licenses issued in Wyo because we will have a funding issue. Plenty of other levers could be pulled to make funding work. Like raise the price of a fishing, small game or sheep tag.
If parks and wildlife sections both have their seperate budgets and are able to financially operate on their own, I have no "issue". If parks is subsidized by hunting license revenue to keep it afloat then I have a big "issue" with that.
Important takeaway.. when someone says they would “gladly pay more” what they are really saying is they would gladly have EVERYONE pay more, even if most people are currently happy with the way it is. In a world of limited tags, the costs are then borne by many, the benefits go to only a few, and not even necessarily the original people who offered willingness to pay more!
Great point.
I honestly haven't picked apart the budget trying to figure out exactly how it's all cut up... but my guess would be that it is or it isn't "subsidized" depending on how you look at it.
One problem with combining parks and wildlife is the makeup of the commission which are appointees of the governor. They have people on the board of commisioners that don't the difference between an elk and an antelope and they are making critical wildlife managment decisions for our state. Everytime I watch a commission meeting it makes my madder than heck.
