Well, What about the new DNR changes in licensing?

[Dan]

Here is an update I also received today.

[djkimmel]

What about them? That was a post about the gear RESTRICTIONS on the Clinton River Cutoff at Lake St. Clair (I'm going to start highlighting every time more restrictions are put in place regardless of the reason - I have my reasons for doing that).

I think I will keep reminding the MDNR, particularly Fisheries Division, that the Michigan B.A.S.S. Nation supported them in this process of restructuring the license fees. I was glad to see veterans get free licenses while seniors kept their discount - the one thing MBN asked for in exception to the first proposal.

Note: the Legislature / Governor are supposed to refund the discount to the MDNR from the General Fund BUT have never done that in all the years since the original agreement was made that I'm aware of (I keep asking). The MDNR gets 0.3% of the General Fund budget despite the critically important part our natural resources play in Michigan's economy.

[djkimmel]

I keep telling the MDNR that we'll (meaning all of you) support getting them more General Fund dollars but we want more OPPORTUNITY in exchange. I hope to be highlighting that word more in the future than the 'R' word above.

Attended an interesting meeting today with multiple parties about more opportunity on the Lake St. Clair - Detroit River system. Just a start so far. But that is how all good things begin. We pretty much only talked about OPPORTUNITY.

[djkimmel]

PS - I want to thank the Michigan United Conservation Clubs for today. Particularly Executive Director Erin McDonough.

If you aren't a member of the MUCC you should be.

[bigjc]

And they will be charging us an extra 5 bucks to boot!!!

[Waterfoul]

Change the drop shot law while your at it DJ.   

[motocross269]

In Reference to Dan's attachment:


If you ever get a chance take some time and walk the public access areas on the Clinton River on a weekend....I will just put it this way...Some anglers are slobs and ruin if for those that want to enjoy the resource....
I am sure the private land owners through those areas are raising some heck also....
JMHO....

Not picking on Fisherman it is the same way with my other hobby..Off Road motorcycle riding.....Guys that have nothing vested come in and make it hard for those that spend countless hours working to maintain the resource...

It is up to us to police are own....and that isn't easy..

[dartag]

Have not had an all species in years.   Guess I will have to dust off the steelhead rods.  Will they do away with the trout stamp??.

[motocross269]

Have not had an all species in years.   Guess I will have to dust off the steelhead rods.  Will they do away with the trout stamp??.

I haven't gone Steelheading in years either...I used to love to go in the Fall when everyone else was out hunting....I had the rivers pretty much to myself..

[karol]

 Louie Stout just posted on facebook about non resident being charged 75.00 for fishing tags man, that is really sucky news. i guess the only time i'll come up is on free fishing weekends.

[djkimmel]

In Reference to Dan's attachment:

If you ever get a chance take some time and walk the public access areas on the Clinton River on a weekend....I will just put it this way...Some anglers are slobs and ruin if for those that want to enjoy the resource....
I am sure the private land owners through those areas are raising some heck also....
JMHO....

Not picking on Fisherman it is the same way with my other hobby..Off Road motorcycle riding.....Guys that have nothing vested come in and make it hard for those that spend countless hours working to maintain the resource...

It is up to us to police are own....and that isn't easy..

It can be frustrating at times. I try to remind myself to pick up some of the trash as I walk by. I don't always remember to do it.

Peer pressure works some. I think setting examples works some too. Not with everyone maybe but doing something is better than doing nothing. I remind myself we can't fix the whole world but the more of us who fix a little part the better.

[djkimmel]

Have not had an all species in years.   Guess I will have to dust off the steelhead rods.  Will they do away with the trout stamp??.

Trout stamp has been gone awhile. I've bought the all species fishing license the past few seasons since I like catching whatever happens to be biting. I've been branching out

No trout stamp. I forgot they even had one. They're collectors items but no longer available though I can't remember the last year?

The good news is the all species fishing license was costing me $28 and now it will be $26 so I save $2. And $1 goes for public education about what hunters and anglers do for our natural resources.

[djkimmel]

Have not had an all species in years.   Guess I will have to dust off the steelhead rods.  Will they do away with the trout stamp??.

I haven't gone Steelheading in years either...I used to love to go in the Fall when everyone else was out hunting....I had the rivers pretty much to myself..

I like pretty much all fall fishing. Including rivers.

[djkimmel]

Louie Stout just posted on facebook about non resident being charged 75.00 for fishing tags man, that is really sucky news. i guess the only time i'll come up is on free fishing weekends.

It is actually $76 with the $1 education surcharge added to some of the key licenses.

The other options you have are if you only come here to fish once or twice for short periods you can buy a 24 hour all species for $10 or a 72 hour all species for $30. Only helps you for those short periods but it will probably work for some visitors.

[Kal-Kevin]

I wonder if the raise in cost of out of state licenses will cut down on the guys coming up here to fish our lakes? We have had a few lakes this year where we where fishing a tournament on and a group from south of the boarder showed up. We got a long okay and everyone had a great day fishing but still the added cost might take out a few of the group coming up. 

[djkimmel]

I don't consider causing anglers to not come here and add to our natural resource economy a good thing. They have factored in a 7% purchase decline due to the increase in costs or change for some anglers and hunters. That is based on past experience and usually expected to change each year based on many factors.

The full price sheet (PDF) is available here from MUCC with additional information on juniors, non-residents and other special licenses.

I've been trying to be consistent at all the meetings I've attended at having discussions about various ramifications of each change that is made or proposed change brought up to try to make sure it is a key part of every decision. I have always thought we spend too much time on restrictive thinking in Michigan and am trying to make us more opportunistic. It appears more people than ever feel the same way so things are improving but a lot still needs to happen.

It is clear the MDNR needed better funding and going 17 years without a raise is not a good thing particularly when it is more difficult to keep more people hunting and fishing. Considering all the parties involved in this license fee process I think it turned out about as good as it could. Just that it got passed at all is quite a feat. I like the addition of free licenses for various active duty and disabled vets too.

What really needs to happen is to get more General Fund money for the MDNR but that will be very tough. I would like to at least get the legislature to refund the senior discount money back as they were suppose to be doing all this time.

On the other hand, having over 90% of the protection and support for our natural resources come from user fees (hunting and fishing licenses, natural resource permits and fees) gives us a better standing against the well funded animal rights groups who keep attacking us. They have made the Midwest their new priority. We will see that next fall in the referendum against the 'wolf hunt' that is really just another attempt from the animal rights group to raise a bunch of money and do away with ALL hunting, fishing, pets, farm animals and medical testing with any animals disguised as just a 'stop the wolf hunt' measure. It is really an attack on Proposal D we overwhelmingly passed in 1996, and all the recent victories in finally creating a framework for true scientific management of our natural resources - something particularly important to those of us who want to see more fishing opportunity and less closed seasons.

If hunting and/or fishing is important to you at all you will need to help us defeat this referendum. I will be sharing more information on how we plan to do that between now and the end of this year. If you think this will be just about hunting wolves and it doesn't matter I will have failed in explaining the true issues at stake here. I have already told the hunting groups that we anglers will be there with them.

Here's MUCC article with pictures of the various groups who attended the Governor's bill signing Tuesday.

[bigjc]

While I am not opposed to use taxes, I am quite displeased with our supposedly conservative Governor, tackling budget woes with a tax hike.  That twenty million dollar increase will mostly go to pay salaries and administration.  I would have rather seen some administrative budget cutting and less of an increase.

I guess a decade and a half of working for the government has tainted me a bit.  The lions share of most government budgets are personnel.  I can assure you that much of these increases are paying for unfunded liabilities...ie: pensions.

[Got Fish??]

 Not being opposed to standing up to the government. I'm not excited about the fee hikes,but it's just a fact that money runs state departments. It's going to cost more to run these agencies. Being a long time angler in Michigan waters, I don't want to see the MDNR or any other hunting and fishing agencies exhausted and fall in to the hands of a bunch of fat legislators with ties, who don't fish or hunt. If it's going to cost me more money to keep our scientists and biologists, keep our hatchery's and our state forests and public launches. Well I guess I'll just go fishing.

[djkimmel]

While I am not opposed to use taxes, I am quite displeased with our supposedly conservative Governor, tackling budget woes with a tax hike.  That twenty million dollar increase will mostly go to pay salaries and administration.  I would have rather seen some administrative budget cutting and less of an increase.

I guess a decade and a half of working for the government has tainted me a bit.  The lions share of most government budgets are personnel.  I can assure you that much of these increases are paying for unfunded liabilities...ie: pensions.

If you are referring to the license fees restructuring as your tax hike - it will be less than completely funded due to the late start in 2014 and less than $20 million in additional user fees in 2015.

I don't consider user fees the exact same thing as taxes. Taxes go into the General Fund to be used who knows where for what. These user fees go directly into the care of the Natural Resources we all love and enjoy. And they are not just going to personnel costs and administration.

The process included very detailed looks at where our user fee license money was going, where the shortfalls were including the MDNR being at their lowest employee numbers since the Great Depression - yes ~1930. The process also states where the money will either be specifically spent, or at least generally enough to see the value and need. Since the MDNR only gets 0.3% of the General Fund even though the impact of our natural resources is exponentially greater than that on our economy, they need more stable, consistent funding from somewhere.

What you are talking about isn't cutting. It would be more accurately called gutting. Cutting can sometimes be done wisely (not a word that seems to be well-known in government maybe?) without unrecoverable damage. Gutting is just damage - lose-lose. We can't afford anymore lose-lose with our natural resources protection funding.

I was there when the senior discounts were implemented a long time ago. The Legislature promised the MDNR they would refund the difference back from the General Fund. They have NEVER done this. What they have actually done is take the percentage of funding the MDNR gets from the General Fund from the 28 to 29% it was back when I first started getting involved down to less than 10% now.

It is fairly easy to argue that many more citizens and companies benefit from our Natural Resources than just the hunters, anglers and mineral/resource permit users. Yet, the percentage of the cost of taking care of our Natural Resources gets heavier on the shoulders of us few user fee payers every couple of years.

As I mentioned above, that isn't all bad. At least we have a pretty good argument against the people who want to take the outdoors away from us that they do NOTHING to protect the Natural Resources compared to what hunters, anglers and the companies who pay resource use fees do.

Here is the information on the new hunting and fishing license structure including how the money will be used assuming they get the additional money - New License Structure and Prices Begin March 1, 2014.

As I mentioned, I especially like the new public education program $1 surcharge fund. The program in Colorado has been very impressively successful and we NEED this type of thing now more than ever with the big money rolling in from the animal rights groups against scientific management of game and fish in Michigan. I also like that a substantial amount of money is geared towards more outreach to panfish, perch and bass anglers. I'm giving as much effort as I can to work with other groups to help define what all of this means.

Frankly, I shouldn't have to keep repeating this, but 17 years without a raise is ridiculous. Any one of us would scream (and I feel for those of you in situations like this) if we didn't get a raise for 17 years. There are plenty of other areas I would be all for making tougher budget and program cuts, but my natural resources isn't one of them! Especially when we are down to gutting, not cutting.

[Kal-Kevin]

I agree with you totally Dan but I think I would pay it even it they where asking 30 just for a bass fish license.

To those crying over the raise in the cost of licenses think of it this way if you went out for one night to dinner and a movie you would drop 30 dollars. Now that is just you add your lady and you can double that cost. Now you spend it on a licenses for you and maybe your lady you get many days on the water or in the woods plus leave some thing for the next generation! Try that with a night out and see what you get maybe memories that last you a life time or not!