Spend Their Money - Not Mine!

I'll be straight forward and tell you that I don't support citizen sponsorship of additional taxes in the form of raising recreational user fees. This is happening in many states in both hunting and fishing arenas. Many first see this as a well intended effort to improve the future resources and expand responsible conservation, but personal experience has taught me to look more closely at the proposals.

In just about every case the fee increases being proposed are targeted to "non-residents". In other words - tax them, not us. Don't raise my hunting fees - raise 'their' hunting fees. Don't spend my money, spend theirs.

In addition, as a employee of the state for many years I have seen where these 'targeted funds' have been assimilated into a void of any measurable impact to the resources they were labeled to support. I know first hand how government works and how money is its drug and spending is it's addiction. These efforts do nothing more than pump up discretionary spending and operational perks that would have otherwise been unfunded. Sure you can point to checks being written that appear to be directly related to wildlife management and conservation - but where did the funding come from for those new trucks and utility quads, and what was wrong with the three year old ones?

Its not like any state has a natural resource zero budget. Significant funding is built in to each legislative budget session. The addiction to spending is the problem, not the lack of revenues.

More often leadership is confused with 'getting more money' and not responsible use of the existing funding.

If you havn't already figured it out I will spell it out for you. There is never going to be enough money to do all the 'right' things we can think up. The need is bottomless. The possibilities are endless. Doing enough with what we have should be the focus.

Comparisons of other states non-resident fees mean nothing. One state is not being cheated out of revenue by another. 'Seek first to understand' is a trait for success. You may find the funding for your neighbor states fees is offset by other higher fees. Each state needs to determine its own costs and expense and in my opinion that should be shared equally amongst the persons utilizing those resources.

Another viewpoint is the impact these increases have on the revenues generated by the towns and businesses that provide services and products to the hunters and fisherman. I can speak with first experience on how the ATV trail fees have substantially reduced tourism dollars coming into what were formerly abundant commerce in small towns. It was a bad idea to begin with and we all know how hard it is to get your money back from government. And who sponsored that tax? It wasn't the towns, or the ATV riders, or the businesses that were then booming and now closed. It was a group of citizens who thought ATV's should be paying more, because they could obviously afford it and it was the right thing to do.

I like to ask these tax and spend citizen sponsors to put their cards out on the table and when given a close look we can often see the real bases in raising revenues by spending 'those other peoples' money.

If citizens wanted to do make a difference and do the right thing for natural resources, they'd open their own wallets and share some equality with their neighbors.

Yesterday we had some whack-job shoot 20 people killing 6 and possibly more may die as a result of their wounds. I think what we need in this country is to stop treating everyone as 'them' and start living together as 'us'. Maybe then the jealousy, bitterness and hate will be reduced and we won't have the vicious political battles and misguided actions that come from it.