Point taken. I appreciate the thoughtful response. I looked back at more detailed WDFW budget info avail on line and it seems the "Wildlife and Conservation" budget line of $83M is pretty consistent and is up made up of basically license fees. I've posted the definition that I found below. So licensing fees acct for 11% seems legit. But I think to your point, that narrowly defines hunter contribution seeing as our broader contribution to the tax base is effectively mixed in with the general tax base. FWIW page 4 of the report indicates total fishing/hunting expenditures of $3.2B. So just spit balling here... if we deduct $100m from $3.2B as License fee contributions and tax the balance at 10% then our community adds another $310M to the tax base which represents 43% of the funding budget bring us to a total of 54% of the operating budget. Clearly significant. Seems reasonable to me. You? I'm hoping whomever argues on our behalf is making similar arguments.
Regarding the report, I just don't think it's intent was to address any one specific issue, I think it was prepared to justify the departments existence and secure funding. Simple annual budgetary prep material...nothing more
I get we all share WDFW PTSD, but our all to typical knee jerk reaction to lash out at everything does not help us. Just my $0.02.
I've said to much.
Cheers, all.
"Recreational fishing and hunting
licenses, and interest generate the
projected revenue for this portion
of the Wildlife Account.
Recreational license fee revenue
is used to provide support to
recreational angling and hunting
opportunities. Commercial
application fees support Licensing
Division work related to processing
commercial license applications."
Stop with the attitude that someone else is going fight this fight for you. It’s up to all of us to fight and push back on the anti hunters on the commission. Get involved and pay attention to what’s going on and voice your opinion. The anti hunters will pick and choose and manipulate data to try change the direction of their mandate. They are trying to chip away at our bear and cougar seasons now. Are you going to let them to continually take away more from us?
