DNR Letterhead

BILL ANALYSIS

BILL NUMBER: Senate Bill 952, as introduced

TOPIC: License Year Change

SPONSOR: Senator Van Woerkom

CO-SPONSORS: Senators Kuipers, and Barcia

COMMITTEE: Committee on Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs

Analysis Done: February 24, 2004

POSITION

The Department opposes this legislation.

PROBLEM/BACKGROUND

This bill would allow annual DNR licenses to be valid for one year from the current date.

DESCRIPTION OF BILL

The bill would change the expiration date of annual licenses from March 31 of each year to 1 year from the date of purchase.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENTS

Pro

People purchasing their annual license later in the license year (March 1 through March 31 of the following year) would be able to receive a full 12 months of use for their license fee.

Con

The Department is opposed to this bill because of the high cost of implementation, administrative difficulties in distribution of licenses, complications with this issuance of Orders for managing fish and game, customer service and law enforcement complications.

This bill would cause a significant change in the methods the DNR uses to manage fish and game. The State currently employs an automated license system to sell licenses through an agent network including 1700 sites throughout the state as well as an Internet-based E-License system. The cost to upgrade the point-of-sale software alone is estimated at between $165,000 to $300,000. This cost does not include the additional agent training that would be needed to implement such a change.

In addition to the financial impacts, this bill would have significant impact to the law enforcement efforts, regulation development and customer service. Currently, fishing regulations are established in the fall of each year through Director’s Order. These regulations are published each year to coincide with the start of the new license year and are distributed by the license agents. Under this bill, if an angler purchased their license in January 2004 and it was valid until January 2005, the angler would have a license that would be valid across two license years. If regulations change for the new license year, the angler would be responsible for obtaining the new regulations and adhering to them. It would have a negative impact in our efforts to communicate regulation changes since licenses would not expire at a consistent time each year.

The color of the license stock also changes for each license year. This is to allow DNR Conservation Officers to quickly ascertain that the hunter or angler has the appropriate license. In many cases, the sportsman or woman needs to only flash the license for the officer to see that it is the appropriate color for the given year. Under this bill, the Conservation Officer will have to stop and read each license to determine that it is for the appropriate year. This would turn a two minute stop into a ten minute stop, taking recreation time away from the hunter/angler and taking additional time away from the CO’s law enforcement duties.

FISCAL/ECONOMIC IMPACT

Are there revenue or budgetary implications in the bill to the --

(a) Department

Budgetary:

Unknown.

Revenue:

Unknown.

Comments:

The budgetary and revenue impacts are not clear at this time. There may be an impact to the Department’s federal aid, since we need to provide the Fish and Wildlife Service our annual count of license holders. This count is done at the end of the license year and captures all of the sales during that period. Moving to a license that was not directly related to a license year may cause that annual count to be lower and therefore lower the amount of federal aid that is received.

(b) State

Budgetary:

Unknown.

Revenue:

Unknown.

Comments:

None.

(c) Local Government

Comments:

None.

OTHER STATE DEPARTMENTS

None.

ANY OTHER PERTINENT INFORMATION

None.

ADMINISTRATIVE RULES IMPACT

None.

_______________________________

K. L. Cool

Director

_______________________________

Date

GCCS