Lawmaker Stalks Problems in Fish and Game Department

When he fired off a letter to Cypress Assemblywoman Doris Allen last January, recreational fisherman Phil Ponder said he had no idea he “was starting anything.”

Ponder, of Huntington Beach, who remembered Allen from her days as a school board member and mistakenly believed she represented the area where he lives, said he just wanted to complain a bit.

Ponder had read that the financially strapped state Department of Fish and Game was months behind collecting from agents for hunting and fishing licenses, and was allowing certain fish processors to get away without paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in import and privilege taxes.

Allen, a Republican first elected in 1982 after two unsuccessful tries, acknowledges she had never thought about those problems, which department officials say are grossly exaggerated, before getting Ponder’s letter. But as vice chairwoman of the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife, she started asking questions, “mainly out of curiosity.”

Tiring Political Fight

Now, irked that the department’s answers were slow, reluctant and unsatisfactory, Allen has made problems in the operation of the Department of Fish and Game the most tiring fight of her political career.

“I’ve lived, breathed and slept this since I became involved,” said Allen. “ . . . I’ve put more time into this than anything.”

Considering that she has never hunted, seldom fishes and represents a suburban district, even Allen admits it is an unlikely crusade.

But Allen, who is sponsoring 30 other bills, said the issue is important to many of her constituents, not just those Cypress residents who hunt or fish. Many more are fiscal conservatives like herself, she said, who are offended by any inefficiency in government.

Allen said she is convinced there has been serious mismanagement and that department policies, in some cases, virtually defy state statutes.

The questionable practices, said Allen, go back years, perhaps decades. Jack Parnell, the second appointee of Gov. George Deukmejian to head the troubled department, most certainly “inherited the problems,” she said.

Officials Defending Themselves

But even today, Allen complains that top officials of the department spend more time defending themselves than straightening out the mess that they admit has existed for decades.

The officials counter that legislators, particularly Allen, are not giving the procedural and administrative changes they are trying to initiate enough time to work.

Allen, who has introduced a bill to force a substantial restructuring in the department’s accounting and collection procedures for hunting and fishing licenses, is not alone in her concern.

Last month, largely at Allen’s insistence, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, chaired by Assemblyman Art Agnos (D-San Francisco), ordered the auditor general to conduct a comprehensive review of department practices during the past five years regarding:

- The “issuance and accountability” of all fishing and hunting licenses.

- The assessment and collection of all commercial fish fees and taxes.

- The collection of any other money owed the state.

In addition, Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno), chairman of the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife, said last week that the panel will hold fact-finding hearings later this year about department operations and procedures.

“I think we have to take a close look at the system, given the things that have come to light,” Costa said. “It is really kind of an antiquated mom-and-pop system that originated many years ago when the state was much smaller (less populous).”

The things that have raised Allen’s ire have come to light slowly.

Delayed Budget Approval

Earlier this year, at the direction of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), Allen delayed committee approval of the department’s $75-million budget request until department officials responded to letters she had written them for information.

A December, 1983, internal audit had revealed that some trading posts, bait shops, sporting good stores and other outlets that sell hunting and fishing licenses were nearly a year late turning in the money to the state, although current law requires agents to make those remittances within 10 days.

That audit also revealed that the department had no checks to determine if it was being paid.

But even more irksome to legislators than those findings was the fact that they never heard about the 1983 audit until newspaper articles about the delinquencies appeared about a year later.

A subsequent review by Auditor General Thomas Hayes confirmed that several agents--including United Merchandising Inc., operators of Big Five sporting good stores--were in arrears in remitting money to the state, but that the amount was not as large as the articles had claimed.

No Collection System

But the articles pointed out publicly for the first time that the department was not being reimbursed as fast as it should, and that there was no system for collecting from delinquent agents.

Allen said a full-scale, comprehensive audit is needed because “even now, you can’t get a straight answer from them (department officials).”

Jim Messersmith, an assistant director of the department, said that he is reluctant to talk about specific agent accounts because “there is a degree of confidentiality that should be observed.”

Messersmith, a 17-year Fish and Game Department veteran who was given control of the department’s licensing division last January, added, “What I can tell you is that by the time I came aboard, they had paid their bills.”

The licensing division’s new “30-60-90-Day Plan” could solve the problem of slow collections once and for all, Messersmith said, if legislators would only give it time to work.

‘90% Are Good Agents’

The new plan, simply stated, means department officials would first notify an agent if its account was 30 days in arrears. After 60 days, the state would no longer consign licenses to the agent. After 90 days, it would begin collection proceedings, which might include legal action.

“The real shame of any of this,” Messersmith said, “is that 90% of our agents are good agents.”

Unfortunately for department officials, the concerns about their collections of license fees and taxes could not have been raised at a worse time.

Historically self-sufficient, with the fees and taxes it collects generally paying for its operation as well as its conservation and wildlife management programs, the department is on the verge of its worst financial crisis ever.

Even with a $3.1-million reserve at the close of the just-ended fiscal year, the department’s preservation fund, its largest source of both revenues and expenses, was facing a projected deficit of $1.6 million at the end of the current year. The deficit would have been even greater had department officials not been allowed to juggle accounts and funnel about $5.5 million into the fund.

$2-Million Bail-out

To cover the projected shortfall, legislative budget writers approved a $2-million bail-out for the preservation fund. But the budget writers admonished department officials that any future fund transfers should be considered loans--to be paid back in the future.

The budget writers also instructed department officials to review their programs to determine if some of them, those not directly related to conservation and game management, might properly be transferred to other accounts.

The department’s financial problems also have broadened legislative interest in other problems regarding its operation.

Some legislators agree with department officials that inflation--in everything from the salaries paid to wardens to its salmon habitat improvement programs--is the major cause of the department’s financial crisis.

However, others like Allen are convinced that the department’s own mismanagement is the major factor.

Besides the department’s potential loss of interest and investment returns from the slow collection of license fees, Allen said, five Southern California fish processors are paying privilege taxes that are a fraction of what the law says they should be. She also charged that some species of fish are being weighed for tax purposes after their heads, tails and guts have been removed. Existing law, she said, calls for taxing on the weight of the whole fish.

Officials Admit Discrepancies

Department officials admit there are discrepancies in the way they collect so-called privilege taxes from processors. The discrepancies, they say, result from “verbal agreements” between the department and industry that go back six or seven years. But Messersmith said the department has a “conversion factor” to estimate the full weight of fish, although fishermen and processors are allowed to gut some species before they are weighed to protect the quality of the product.

Allen says she can find no evidence that department officials ever sought legislative approval for any of those practices, which she said cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Still, she supported legislation this year that would hike the price of hunting and fishing licenses, and said she would have agreed to the budget bail-out as well, had she been on the budget conference committee.

“For whatever reasons, they have a problem right now,” Allen said. “It is a real problem, and they have a real deficit. That problem, whether we like it or don’t, or whose fault it was, has to be dealt with.”

Love of Good Government

Allen said it is her love for good government that has fueled her demands for the past six months that the department explain and improve itself.

But she also concedes that had Ponder not written her a letter, or if department officials had simply responded to her early letters, instead of ignoring them, she might never have started the crusade.

She said she introduced her bill to restructure the department’s licensing procedures the day before the Assembly’s deadline.

“It was just exploratory,” she said. “I just wanted to learn more about their accountability of the taxpayers’ money. . . . I asked specific questions but I have not received specific answers.”

“There was no way that I wanted to embarrass the department or the administration or embarrass Jack Parnell,” she added.

“My interest started, really, with just a curiosity about their activities. . . . To this day, I have no clear answers.”