Bill to change FWP enforcement funding

[JLS]

Surprised this hasn't been posted on here yet. I don't see this as a good thing, as it handicaps enforcement personnel by the amount of time they can allocate to enforcement work. IMO, this is poorly thought out, and could carry some bad unintended consequences down the road.

Also, with all due respect, Representative Ankney's comment about AR 15s is plain stupid. If he wants a reprioritization of duties, that's fine. To insinuate a law enforcement officer, in this day and age, should not have an adequate patrol rifle (i.e. an M4) is moronic.


http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyl...cle_cb7809ae-3cb7-516b-aea5-8c30f4fad712.html

FWP wardens will focus less on enforcement if current funding bill passes

BRETT FRENCH [email protected]

Apr 5, 2017

Sen. Mike Phillips

Changes coming

File photo


Fish, Wildlife and Park's new enforcement chief Dave Loewen, shown in this 2001 file photo, said that if an amended budget for his division passes the Legislature wardens will face changes in how they perform their duties.

Wardens for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks will have their jobs restructured to emphasize less enforcement if the bill designating their funding for the next two years is passed as amended.

“It will change things, no doubt about it,” said Dave Loewen, FWP law enforcement chief. “We’ll have to shift some priorities for sure.”

The Montana Senate revised FWP’s budget to cut controversial federal funding for wardens by half of what the House had proposed, dropping the federal dollars from more than $5 million to $2.4 million for the next two years. That still means that 25 percent of the wardens’ budget comes from federal dollars.

FWP receives no general fund money, instead generating its budget from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and federal tax dollars levied on hunters and anglers, which requires a 25 percent match. So using federal funds for enforcement does not save the state any money.

Last year Montana FWP collected about $28 million in Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson funds along with state wildlife grants. That money went to fund FWP biologists, wildlife management and habitat acquisition. The amount that went to fund wardens was only $587,000.

HB2

House Bill 2 passed the Senate 29-20 in its third reading on Tuesday and will now go to a House-Senate conference committee. The House had proposed paying almost half of the wardens’ budget from federal excise taxes collected from the sale of ammunition and firearms, as well as fishing tackle and some boats. But the federal funds come with a requirement that they cannot be used for enforcement duties.

The House was OK with that modification, saying that wardens aren’t always in enforcement mode. The federal money can be used for some education, relations with landowners, and research, which do make up part of a warden’s duties.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks director Martha Williams fought the allocation, saying last week in a hearing before the Senate Finance and Claims Committee that it was “impractical and would result in serious consequences to the enforcement division.” The governor’s original budget had used only 7 percent of the federal dollars in the warden budget.

In order to meet the requirements placed on the money by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees disbursement of the funds, the wardens division would be “hamstrung and have to drastically change the way it conducts its business,” Williams said.

If the funding allocation were to stay the same, she said the state would no longer have an effective enforcement program.

House proposal


Similar arguments to the House fell on deaf ears. Rep. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, said a USFWS individual had told them in an email it was an accepted use of the federal tax dollars. His proposal had allotted $5.1 million next year and $5.4 million in 2019 of the federal tax dollars toward the wardens’ total budget of about $11.6 million. Glimm argued that it was a money-saving measure meant to delay any future increases in fishing and hunting licenses.

Although Sen. Mike Phillips, D-Bozeman, tried to revert the wardens’ funding back to the governor’s original proposal — with only 7 percent federal funding — his attempt was shot down 18-31 on the Senate floor on Monday.

If Sen. Duane Ankney, R-Colstrip, is any indication, Republicans may see FWP as too militarized and want wardens spending less time on enforcement. In response to one of Phillips' amendments that was voted down Ankney said, “Part of the question is how many AR-15s do we need out there looking at our fish and game activities."

What next?

The ramifications of the budget decision are yet to be hashed out, just one of several FWP will deal with after this legislative session.

Dustin Temple, FWP chief of Administration, said the agency is expecting the modified bill to make it through the conference committee, meaning changes are coming for the embattled enforcement division that has taken some hard knocks in the past 10 years.

“This is a significant increase in federal funding over what has been utilized in that division before,” Temple said. “Those jobs will have to be looked at.”

If passed, wardens will need to do more administrative tracking of how they spend their time to ensure that if the USFWS audits the division it will be able to show that the $2.4 million did not go to enforcement, warden chief Loewen said.

“One of my biggest concerns is something comes off the other end of the plate,” Loewen said. “We’ll see what gets sacrificed.”

That could be a lessened warden presence during the hunting season or at invasive species check stations.

“That (funding requirement) translates to about four months of a warden’s work,” Loewen added. “That’s a pretty big chunk of time.”

 

[Z Barebow]

I am sorry, I won't offer due respect when someone utters inferences about game wardens/LE being too militarized. RE: Game Wardens- Their job requires them to work with citizens who carry firearms as part of the activity that the warden oversees. Many times are solo.

If 999 out of 1000 hunters checked are good people, great! But if that thousandth person wants to do the officer harm, this isn't about a "fair fight". LE needs to have the advantage. As with any weapon, just the visibility many times is enough of a deterrent. But knowingly cutting funding with the objective of "Under equipping" LE, well you are a dumb@ss.

 

[katqanna]

I feel this is yet another way to cut FWP off at the knees, not just in funding, but in their time in the field.

Mike Korn, retired FWP Enforcement was in town this evening for the PLWA Ales For Access. I got a call from a guy about this very article before the event, Korn was eager to explain to the caller why they bought the guns when they did. Some of the guys had been using their own guns, some were using models that were so old they had difficulty getting parts to repair them. That is not adequate for enforcement to properly execute their jobs. Even with the guns purchased, our enforcement officers and departments are not nearly as well equipped as the violators.

As to the field time. I had a hunter/angler conservation friend surprise the hell out of me. He asked why I was wasting my time researching all these game warden citations (nearly 25,000 from 2010-2015). He said they were just a bunch of citation happy writing police wannabes. That got me to thinking about their contact to citation ratio? So I put in an addition information request for all their monthly reports for each region for those years. Since the wardens had quite a number of vacancies over a month, through the last 3 years, I decided to use 2010, which had the least amount of vacancies, for my analysis.

I only used contacts that were in the field and could result in a citation. For example, I did not count sportsmens presentations or user group contacts.
Region 1 - 28,298 contacts resulting in 521 citations = 1.84%
Region 2 - 34,483 contacts resulting in 754 citations = 2.18%
Region 3 - 48,139 contacts resulting in 952 citations = 1.97%
Region 4 - 23,739 contacts resulting in 693 citations = 2.91%
Region 5 - 22,673 contacts resulting in 514 citations = 2.26%
Region 6 - 9,469 contacts resulting in 347 citations = 3.66%
Region 7 - 13,821 contacts resulting in 586 citations = 4.23%

This data shows the light touch our FWP Enforcement has, not this "military" bs being promoted. When you consider what they are tasked with doing, they are basically trying to prevent a tragedy of the commons while certain legislators are trying to privatize the commons. Well one way they appear to be attempting this is to make frickin' crossing guards out of Enforcement by cutting their budget.