Pete Bontadelli’s DFG Is Fair Game for All : Little Hoover Commission Is Latest to Check Into Efficiency of His Operation

Pete Bontadelli has been wearing a wraparound back brace since he lost a wrestling match with a trash barrel at his Sacramento home a few months ago.

It might be mistaken for a bulletproof vest, which would be more symbolic of his position as director of the California Department of Fish and Game.

The Little Hoover Commission, which looks into the efficiency and organization of government agencies in the state, seems to be coming after Bontadelli with both barrels, and there also are rumbles of dissension from within.

“It’s difficult to find anyone who believes the department is doing a good job,” said Northern California assemblyman Stan Statham (R-Oak Run), whose idea it was to sic the commission on the DFG.

“I talked to Stan,” Bontadelli said. “He said, ‘This is not a personal thing,’ that he was reflecting his constituency in terms of some of their concerns with us . . . some conflicts in his district.

“I’m not that panicked about the Hoover Commission. I think it’ll go well.”

The commission has 13 members, no more than seven of whom may be registered with either political party. Four are active legislators; nine are private citizens, five of whom are appointed by the governor, two by the Assembly speaker and two by the president pro tem of the state Senate.

The commission usually conducts about a dozen investigations a year. According to executive director Jeannine English, about 80% of its recommendations are implemented, so the DFG’s longtime critics eagerly await the outcome.

The DFG has been under a cross fire from outside special interests almost constantly since it was reorganized as a Resources Agency in 1952. Some think it doesn’t do enough to protect fish, wildlife and the environment; others think it goes too far. Most believe it’s strangled by politics.

When Bontadelli attended a meeting of the California Salmon, Steelhead and Trout Restoration Federation at Arcata in Northern California last year, members performed a skit suggesting that the DFG was run by politicians.

“The audience roared,” one observer reported. “Bontadelli didn’t think it was that funny.”

The Little Hoover hearing in Los Angeles featured farmers and land developers with their complaints about unreasonable obstacles the DFG places in their way in altering the habitat of certain birds and beasts. The one Tuesday in Sacramento will feature testimony from sportsmen’s groups.

Peter F. Bontadelli Jr., 41, is a former Army Reserve drill sergeant. He received a political science degree from UC Davis in 1970, joined the DFG in ’84 and was appointed director by Gov. George Deukmejian in November of 1987, in charge of more than 1,500 employees, at $85,401 a year.

Because of his back injury, Bontadelli missed the first hearing in Los Angeles May 15, but he will be on the hot seat for the second. He recently discussed some of his department’s problems.

Question: Was Statham’s assessment fair--that hardly anyone thinks the DFG is doing a good job?

Answer: I don’t believe that’s true. But in rural areas like Stan’s where natural resources are the basis of the economy, we tend to come into conflict with (certain of) those organizations.”

Q: Does it bother you that Nathan Shapell, the chairman of the Little Hoover Commission, is himself a major developer (based in Beverly Hills)?

A: I don’t have any personal problems with Mr. Shapell. I’m more concerned about the structure of the hearings. In Los Angeles, they had the Farm Bureau and the entire development community, who ripped us to shreds for being too pro-environmental. When we come up north, all of a sudden we have all the environmental and sports groups, and the topics change.

Several sportsmen are up-tight with issues like the deer zones and the management of people rather than critters by cutting down on numbers. A supervisor from Lassen (County), John Gaither, has gone after us on a lot of issues and frequently made the point that we have destroyed the economy by limiting the number of hunters that have come into the county. But the deer quotas are critical to us--and legislatively mandated. The herd can stand only so much pressure.

It would have been a truer reflection of the conflicts we deal with daily if you had had both groups at the same hearing. We are probably somewhere in between, doing as good a job as we can do, given our limited resources. People would prefer we manage it to maintain their occupation rather than our goals.

Q: At the first hearing, some of the Hoover commissioners seemed perplexed that while you serve at the pleasure of the governor, you take orders from the Fish and Game Commission.

A: I think it’s a lack of understanding of the real roles. The director does not work for the commission. (He is) appointed by the governor and independently confirmed. My job as the manager is to ensure compliance not only with commission policies but with state law.

Q: So, the commission’s main role is only to set hunting and fishing regulations?

A: Beyond that, their duties are not as clear-cut as some would like to believe. In the area of environmental review, we make our best recommendation to a city (or) county government or another state lead agency, except for those few projects we do on our own. The commission does not set nor review our budget.

Across the United States, most of the changes in the last three to five years have been to go to our form of direction, not to go to commission control.

Q: How has the role of the DFG changed in recent years?

A: We are no longer a group that strictly represents hunters and fishermen. We now have as many or more people in California who bird-watch or who enjoy nature photography. We are now the lead law enforcement agency responsible on oil spills and off-highway toxic spills. Those are some of the issues we’ve been into for which we have never been funded.

Q: Are you under-funded?

A: Our funding base is still predominantly user-fee supported--60%. Another 15% (comes) from the federal government, based on the number of hunters. Only $7 million out of a $130 million budget is (from the) general fund.

Q: One of your critics has said that the DFG’s accounting system is a guy with a green eyeshade and a pencil.

A: (Laughing,) That basically was an absolutely true statement four years ago. Literally, we had hand-cranked calculators handling our budget. We finally have a fully computerized system mostly in place. It will be fully in place in another two years.

I am amazed we have done as well as we have, given the inadequacies of our overall staffing. Our administrative staff when I arrived five years ago as chief deputy was basically at the same level as 22 years before.

Q: Just this year, there have been some progressive steps taken, such as a semi-automated hunting and fishing license system, the California Wildlands Program, which provides new revenue from nonfishermen and nonhunters by charging admission to selected nature sites, and an improved warden-training program, along with the improvement of field equipment. But many of your field personnel say they lack the manpower to perform necessary projects.

A: We have increased significantly the temporary help budget in the last four years. We put a freeze on it as of April 20 because we had a $5.8-million drop in anticipated revenue. When you have a drought year, you lose sales on licenses and you have increases in costs.

Q: Your field people, especially the biologists, don’t seem to accept that. One told me morale is not good at all, and that while concentrating on political concerns you really don’t know what’s happening in the field.

A: Our people in the field are feeling the frustration of a significantly increased role for the department. We are attempting to improve our communications. We have strengthened our public information section. We have used the director’s bulletin far more regularly. We have re-instituted the employee newsletter.

A major part of the frustration is that while I communicate regularly with our people down through the supervisors’ level, there seems to be a barrier past which information both coming down and coming up does not get.

We tried a questionnaire--a suggestion box approach--hoping it would provide an anonymous source of information for comments directly to the director, but that dissipated when (a newspaper) went to court to get it, saying it was a public document. I have a little problem convincing myself that that is a way I’m going to build communication.

Q: It’s been said that the DFG hasn’t had a real fish and wildlife man as the director since the first one, Seth Gordon, in ‘52, and that the rest have just been “wealthy Republican duck hunters.” But others have said it’s more important these days, when dealing with environmental, commercial and funding problems, to have a politically savvy person at the top. Which are you?

A: I am clearly in the latter category. We have some of the best fish and wildlife professionals in the world working for this department. It’s not my job to second-guess (them). My job is to bring them together with some policy and cohesion to set us on a forward-looking motion, recognizing that we are in a state that will have 40 million people by the year 2000 . . . setting a tone and direction, providing our personnel with the training and tools they need, finding increases in the budget and equipment.

We’re gradually turning around. The field people will probably not see it for another year to two years. Decisions I’m making now will be on the budget in July of 1990 and may not take effect until ’91.

Q: Do you have political ambitions beyond this job?

A: Before I came to the department, I spent 17 years working for the legislature, and I ran campaigns. I have two boys, and I enjoy my family life. One of the reasons I took this job was to have that. I wouldn’t be talked into running for office today.