What Are Your License Fees Paying For?

As governments get bigger more is lost in the bureaucracy. I am an advocate of reducing the size of government and in particular that of states’ fish and game departments. They are too big and being asked to undertake more and more activities outside of anything to do with fish and game management.

Our license fees are intended to be used for the management of game, yet time and again we continue to hear of misappropriated monies. Some states, whose fish and game departments have been swallowed up into larger entities such as departments of natural resources or departments of environmental protection, passed laws requiring hunting, trapping and fishing license fees be spent on specific fish and game programs. Evidently that doesn’t matter much in some states.

Reports are now coming out of the state of Minnesota that the Department of Natural Resources used nearly $300,000 of license fee money to sponsor and pay for an international game warden conference held in St. Paul last year. Ooops! They made a mistake? Or ooops! They got caught?

Do you know what your license fee money is being spent on? This is another clear reason why it’s time to reduce the size of government and return fish and game responsibilities back to a small department whose only function is to manage fish and game. Not fish and wildlife. Not the birds and the bees. Not law enforcement of ATVs. Not search and rescue. Not building observation decks for wildlife gawkers. Nope! Just management of fish and game.

Tom Remington