CONCORD, N.H. — Nine business days into her tenure as the executive director of Fish and Game, Stephanie Simek was called last week to present the department’s vision for the next state budget.
Complicating her early-tenure task: At a time when agencies are preparing for a tighter budget ahead, Fish and Game faces significant, long-standing financial challenges, those within the department have said and a bipartisan legislative study committee concluded in a November report.
“Testimony given throughout our study committee meetings indicated the Fish and Game Department is headed to a financial shortfall,” the report warned. “It needs either to increase General Fund funding, increase fees, find areas to cut spending, or look hard at reducing some of the services it offers.”
The report pointed to the fact that “Fish and Game is continually tasked with many additional and time-consuming activities beyond just game management,” and that it faces “a multitude of funding challenges across its divisions,” including “many responsibilities and expenses that don’t directly affect sportsmen and wildlife.”
Fish and Game has a wide range of tasks, such as managing hunting and fishing licensing and rules; executing search-and-rescue missions for hikers, children, Alzheimer’s patients, and those in mental health crises; helping homeowners with wildlife issues; and maintaining programs related to nongame and endangered species, among many others, the report said.
It gets only a tiny sliver of its budget from the general fund, while about a quarter each comes from license fees and federal funds, and nearly a quarter comes from off-highway recreational vehicle funds.
New Hampshire, like the rest of the globe, also faces mounting environmental problems that complicate the agency’s work. Simek pointed to stressors like “climate change, declining species populations, habitat changes,” and diseases.
About 70 percent of “dedicated revenue for fish and wildlife agencies in the Northeastern United States is generated through license sales and federal grants,” Simek said. “The remaining 30 percent is typically through general fund or special sources, such as permanent fees or specialty stamps or lotteries, depending on the state.”
In New Hampshire, she said, “my understanding is … about 3.5 percent of our budget is general fund.” Simek noted in her presentation, which came near the end of three-day budget hearings at the Legislative Office Building in Concord.
That Fish and Game’s budget proposal was crafted before her arrival at the department, but she was clear about the challenges the department faced. A lack of sustainable funding has been cast as a serious threat to the department’s survival by those close to it.
“I don’t know how much longer Fish and Game can go on unless we get sustainable funding,” Ray Green, chair of the Fish and Game Commission, told the study committee this summer.
He said the commission felt the department needed to get more of its budget – perhaps 15 to 20 percent – from the general fund to achieve that sustainability. The study committee report, citing its limited time and resources, said it could not recommend a specific sum of money that the department may need from the general fund.
Simek warned the budget panel about the impact cuts could have on the agency and the wildlife and public it is tasked with serving. By the time she made this case for support, Gov.-elect Kelly Ayotte was back in the hearing room. Ayotte will present a budget proposal early next year soon after she takes office.
“I am realistic that we are already operating on a very skeleton budget,” Simek said. “We’ve met the 4 percent decrease, but I’m not sure that we’re likely to fill the entire gap without legislative support. If there are financial cuts to our funding, we will need to likely cut services, and as a new director for an agency that’s mandated to serve the public and our natural resources, reducing services is very concerning to me and will result in collateral and direct negative impacts on our natural resources, our public, and our economy. I really don’t want to see that happening, so I’m hoping we’ll have your support.”
Kathy LaBonte, the department’s business division chief, said the department had 192 full-time employees. It has five unfunded positions, which remain unfunded in the new budget, she said.
“We did meet the governor’s targets for use of Fish and Game funds,” she said. “However, in order to do that and maintain all programs and services, we used up the entire balance in the Fish and Game Fund at the end of the biennium, leaving only approximately $100,000 in there.”
A sheet prepared by the department showed a growing projected gap in the coming years between the department’s unrestricted revenue and Fish and Game Fund expenses. By 2027, the department is budgeted to have nearly $5 million more in expenses than it does in revenue, the sheet projected.
It is not the first time Fish and Game has stared down this reality. Scott Mason, who until recently was the department’s executive director, cited two instances, in 1932 and 1957, where the head of the agency warned it lacked the funds it needed to run, according to October meeting minutes of the study committee. Services were cut and license fees raised in both instances, he said, according to the minutes.
“If the Legislature does not act to increase the amount of General Funds appropriated to the department,” said the summary of his remarks, “the following biennial budget will require dramatic cuts in personnel and services, an increase in license fees, more General Funds, or a combination of all three.”
Though the report didn’t make any specific funding change recommendations, it said the department should continue to assess whether additional general funds will be necessary to cover the costs of employee pay raises, retirement, and information and technology expenses. Sen. David Watters, a Dover Democrat who chaired the study committee, has filed a request for a bill that would require the general fund to cover the department’s “retirement contributions and technology services.”
The report also recommended that Fish and Game bill other departments that use its services. It should also review the fee for the Hike Safe Card Program, which goes toward the cost of search-and-rescue efforts, and speak with the state’s congressional delegation to see if the federal government could reimburse it for search-and-rescue missions done in the White Mountain National Forest, the report said.
New Hampshire Bulletin is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.