The ongoing efforts to “re-invent” conservation priorities within the Department of Environmental Conservation will no doubt prove to be an uphill battle due to the huge deficit New York is facing. As reported last week, the decline in conservation quality and services negatively impacts all stakeholders, regardless of their interests or need to purchase a yearly license.
I suspect the State will use the deficit to continue shearing conservation programs across the board and also as a crutch to implement higher license fees for next year. Already DEC has said it will need to close several state camping facilities due to the red ink. The biggest issue is how valuable are the state’s natural resources as they relate to generating income, whether for the Conservation Fund or the General Fund? Certainly reductions in these programs will take their toll on tourism and the many NY businesses that depend on them for survival. Accepted estimates of what the state’s natural resources activities generate in cold hard cash is roughly $60B annually, and in some areas represents their biggest business income each year.
During a February 11 stakeholders meeting with DEC in Albany, Commissioner Grannis was asked about funding as it related to how much income it generated for the state. His answer was, “All areas in government are being cut despite what (money) they create.” Yikes! Wouldn’t I love having this man run a business for me – let’s cut the ones that are making us money. Boy, does that ever make a lot of business sense.
I suspect that because so few of our elected and appointed officials are experienced in sound natural resource management or running a business, they don’t have a clue of the tremendous fiscal value they represent to the state’s economy. Just consider the personnel in charge of running the DEC, Both its commissioner Pete Grannis and his eco-dedicated sidekick, Judith Enck are basically urbanites with no natural resource background skills or training, nor any particular interest in anything beyond the environmental and money applications of the department.
Take for example, what state forestlands could be worth in tourism dollars in counties like Chenango IF they were managed properly with that in mind. Whether the activities involved hiking, nature watching, hunting and fishing, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, photography, or whatever, all that publicly owned acreage could potentially generate major income … to the immediate area as well as to the State coffers. So what’s Albany’s answer? Cut the state tax rate paid to the towns involved while basically doing little or nothing to manage or improve these valuable resources. The economic tax impact this will have on local towns such as Pharsalia, McDonough, German, Smithville and Brookfield could be devastating.
Trying to decipher the Conservation Fund fiscal report that the state supplies is frustrating to say the least, impossible to say the most. After viewing the reports filed on behalf of the Pennsylvania Game Commission and its sister agency, The Fish Commission, many of us just can’t comprehend why NY’s is so complicated, or needs to be. Alas, we are usually told that it’s necessary because of all the “responsibilities” that the DEC must assume.
I know that many of us had our doubts in 1971 about the state creating such a huge agency as the DEC and axing what was a relatively clean and specific one as the old Conservation Department. Now I feel we’re just beginning to see the true intent behind the move – create such a complex bureaucracy that makes understanding its fiscal responsibility and accounting methods almost impossible while allowing more leeway in how funds and programs are implemented.
A perfect example was the information fed us regarding the closing of the pheasant program. The State claimed by doing so it would save $750K. closer investigation proved the program actually cost the State (via the CF) a net figure of $320K while generating total stakeholder spending of $M annually and was making the State a net profit of over $300K. Also, the cost of rearing 25K birds figured out to $30 per bird and was far greater than what private bird rearers charged. One pheasant rearer advised me that for the cost of what the state spent for 25K birds, he could raise 60K birds that would be more resistant to predation and winterkill than the ringnecks the DEC raised. So, even with transportation costs figured in, it would represent a huge gain to all stakeholders who enjoy the pheasant resources in New York.
Both the NYS Conservation Council and the Conservation Fund Advisory Board have met with DEC officials in an attempt to clarify the many program issues, both fiscal and physical, being bandied about in Albany, including the proposed fee increases. Ironically one, the Council, favors the fee increases, while the Board wants a more detailed explanation of the CF’s very complex and often confusing 2007-08 fiscal report before it would approve any fee increases. Do you think that will happen? This writer doesn’t. By its very nature, the DEC is so huge and mismanaged now, primarily by appointees, that complexity is its primary shield.
An audit of the DEC fishing and wildlife federal grant funding done by the Department of the Interior in the 2006-07 fiscal year reported, and I quote: “We found that the Division complied in general, with grant accounting and regulatory requirements. However, we questioned costs totaling $32,506 for excess reimbursements. We also identified unreported program income and significant weaknesses in internal controls over grant reporting and equipment management. Additionally, we found that Division land records had not been reconciled with FWS land records. Finally, we identified certain indirect costs that were incorrectly claimed.”
The part of “significant weaknesses in internal controls” kind of jumped out at me. Ironically, the first analogy that came to mind was all the mega corporations who’d grown so huge that their executives and creative bookkeepers could so easily manipulate fiscal accounting to their own best interests and agendas. And look where that kind of smoke-and-mirrors activity has landed us.