Outdoors : NOTES : Budget Deficit Casts Pall on DFG’s Plans

The California Department of Fish and Game, strapped by dwindling hunting and fishing license revenues, is prepared to reduce its operations by as much as 20% unless a projected $8-million budget deficit can be made up elsewhere.

However, Director Pete Bontadelli emphasizes that in directives sent to the various divisions--Inland Fisheries, Marine Resources, Wildlife Management, Wildlife Protection, Environmental Services--”we did not ask them to make cuts. We asked them to put (their programs) in ranking order.”

The Legislature has offered the DFG some suggestions on meeting the crisis.

“They say we can reduce expenditures, raise license fees or shift to alternative fund sources,” Bontadelli said.

The alternate-fund suggestion includes “all sorts of options,” he said, one not being a dip into the state’s general fund to help hunting and sportfishing programs, which are supposed to be self-supporting. Section 711 (c) of the Fish and Game Code prohibits that, although the general fund is used for non-game programs (711 (a), 712).

Bontadelli said that he does not want to increase sport license fees, adding that he hasn’t given up on the General Fund despite Section 711 (c).

“That’s a section that needs to be reviewed,” he said.

The DFG’s funding process may be in need of a total overhaul. In the environmentally aware 1970s and ‘80s, especially, the department was handed a list of responsibilities not included in its original mandate, which dealt mainly with hunting and fishing.

Among other duties, the DFG now has to oversee the cleanup of off-highway oil spills, take care of threatened and endangered non-game species--which far outnumber game species--and spend thousands of man-hours preparing documents to justify hunting seasons.

The Legislature concedes as much in Section 710 of the Fish and Game Code, stating in a 1988 amendment of the code that the fact that “. . . the department has not been properly funded . . . (has) prevented proper planning and manpower allocation . . . (and) has resulted in inadequate non-game fish and wildlife protection programs.”

One longtime DFG employee calculated that the department’s proposed budget of $141 million for the next fiscal year amounts to only 0.27% of the state’s total budget of $53 billion.

“The Legislature could double our budget and it would still be only one-half of 1%,” he said. “But it would do tremendous things for fish and game.”

The DFG’s financial fix has caused Bontadelli to spend much of his time in budget meetings, which is one reason he hired James Dwight as a deputy director last month.

Dwight, 55, is a certified public accountant who was associate director of the Federal Office of Management and Budget in 1972-73 and chief deputy director of California’s Department of Finance from 1966 to 1972. He recently retired after 15 years with a Washington accounting firm.

Dwight, who will make $78,252 per year, becomes Bontadelli’s fifth deputy.

However, that’s only one more than he had when he became director in November of 1987 and, considering current events, Dwight’s talent for figures should be useful.

Baja fishing: Marlin fishing has been fairly slow from Cabo San Lucas to La Paz but light-tackle fishermen at the East Cape region of the Baja peninsula aren’t complaining.

Tom Snyder of Encino recently returned from three days at Hotel Punta Colorada. His catch: three striped marlin, 30 dorado, two pargo and a few cabrilla.

Dorado to 20 pounds have been providing most of the action, but yellowfin tuna to 40 pounds and pargo upward of 30 pounds are being taken as well.

Briefly

Overall winner of last weekend’s Santa Monica Bay Halibut Derby was Tim Crissman of Newhall with a 31.2-pounder caught Saturday. Crissman gets his choice of a trip to a resort in Alaska or Mexico, or an outboard engine. Second place went to Wallace Kroutkramer of South Pasadena with a 24.6-pound fish, and third to William Northington of Redondo Beach with a 20.4-pounder. There were 1,950 participants who caught 463 legal-sized halibut during the two-day event.

The drive for an initiative that would ban gill nets along the Southern California coast is going strong, with 775,000 signatures gathered so far, according to Jim Paulk of the Committee to Ban Gill-Nets. The committee needs 595,000 signatures by May 7 to put the measure on the November ballot, but is aiming for 950,000 to assure that enough of the signatures will be valid.

Times staff writer Pete Thomas contributed to this story.