You lose the earmarked funding for Block Management, Habitat Montana and other programs (depending on where else legislation goes). The NR Combination licenses are grandfathered in from the USFWS as far as dedicated funding for conservation and access. If you start to mess with that code, you lose those dedicated funds. Right now, there is some political insulation from stealing that money because the legislature would create massive issues with the hunting community for stealing their money, and the tie in with Pittman/Robertson - Dingle/Johnson means the state loses the federal match, which would create an even larger loss of funding (about 40% of the overall FWP budget.)
FWP funding has been the most stable of any agency that I've seen due to the HB 140 task force from around 2015 that did some amazing work relative to FWP's revenue stream. After a decade, FWP is finally starting to see a downward trend in revenue that normally happened every 4-5 years (which was the traditional timeline for adjusting license fees). Currently, the NR combos are tied to the Consumer Price Index, and their cost fluctuates with inflation and deflation.
So, you're looking at a very large and complex bill to totally rewrite how NR liscencing occurs and adding a large increase to residents who will still be upset over property taxes, heading in to a legislative session where resident tax relief is going to be one of the larger conversations.
