Gastro Gnome - Eat Better Wherever

Utah expo tag decision: December 18th at 10 am, link to live feed

If RMEF doesn't get the bid after all the BS that was pulled after the bidding closed, IMHO it will definitely show who owns the Utah Legislature, the Wildlife Board, and DWR and what their purpose is. By that I mean lining pockets, rather than having wildlife as their primary purpose.
 
Just a question for Big Fin. I thought there was discussion that there was a conflict of interest by 4 members?
 
Well,

I would like to see the actual proposals to see why they graded each the way they did.

It does look like the RFP process catered to SFW......
 
I'm pretty amazed, and I just don't get how "the chosen proposal was FAR superior to the other" Even with the questions tailored to SFW I don't see how RMEF wouldn't score higher on almost everything.
 
BigFin, I don't know how much you can say, but my god what is your feeling on this outcome and the scores? I'm just kind of in disbelief at this point.
 
I am a lurker and not much of a poster on this site, but this is really sad.

We need to band together and boycott the Expo and let our representatives know that we are not okay with the corruption in the Division of Wildlife.
 
Thanks Randy. That entire process has just shed more light on the Utah system and I am glad to be done with that State. I wonder if it will ever be revealed who submitted the "white paper" for the new process. Any guesses? It was sure funny watching them squirm when the process was expossed. They went out of their way to try and expain that it was fair and was not even their choice. To me, as a criminal investigator, the questions are: when did the new process really start; who wrote the "white paper"; what was SFWs first proposal under the old system or did they not sub,it one because they had heads up on the new one? How did SFWs bid (if a previous one existed) change following the first submittal; and finally why was the 4th SFW member allowed to vote?

The quick question to all of these is simply....its Utah and SFW. Look at the wolf money and sage grouse money and its all explained.
 
Evidently SFW put together one heck of a proposal that will be a big benefit to UT wildlife, hunters, and access. Now that the decision is made, I provide a few highlights of the RMEF response to the RFP that raise the bar pretty high. The recommending committee, finds the SFW bid to exceed the RMEF bid on these points.

- 100% of the proceeds from the 200 Expo permits would be returned to Utah for habitat, access, and conservation.

- Since this would have been RMEF's national convention, RMEF would have followed its written policy on auction tags sold at the national convention, where 100% of the proceeds from any national convention auction tags would be returned to the state agency. Currently, auction tags at this event only require 30% go directly to the state, with 10% to the selling organization, and the selling organization keeping the other 60% for conservation they complete within the state of UT.

- RMEF offered to give UT DWR 50% of the total net income from the national convention that would be moved to SLC. Given the level of sponsors RMEF attacts to its national convention, the fact RMEF has 205,000+ members, and RMEF has a media platform that reaches millions, the size of this event would have grown far from what it currently is and would have grown far beyond what RMEF currently has as its national convention in Las Vegas. To provide 50% of that larger number is not insignificant.

- RMEF voluntarily committed to provide an annual independent audit of the expo/convention and make the results of such available to the public. After all, these tags around which this event seems to be focused are a public asset. RMEF believes it is only reasonable to give the public assurance of what is done with those monies generated by the public asset of tags,

Plenty of other points in the RFP, but these are the points it seems a selection committee would focus on when ranking the criteria of how much benefit would be provided to Utah.

Congrats to SFW. Their pitch convinced this newly formed RFP committee that they have a better deal for Utah hunters and Utah wildlife. The entire reason RMEF invested significant time and money into this effort was to increase the amount of benefit the public receives from their public resource; in this case, 200 tags.
 
It will be very interesting when the bids are made public to see how the "impartial" committee was able to vote for SFW in a "landslide' according to the final scores!
 
Randy, can I cut and paste what you listed as RMEF's response on to the Utah wildlife network forum(not mm)? It would be good for a lot of guys there to see what RMEF offered. Most guys there are pretty disappointed albeit not surprised by this result.
 
This result is really disappointing. I can't believe that due process has been followed. I agree with posts above it seems like a decision was made before they even started. How does the expo SFW puts on even come close to the RMEF National meeting?

SD
 
Back
Top