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Fish and Game warns sweeping dedicated accounts and proposed admin fee would create multimillion-dollar shortfall
Summary
New Hampshire Fish and Game Director Stephanie Simic told the Senate committee that House budget language would sweep or reassign dedicated-account balances into the Fish and Game Fund and add a 5% administrative fee to certain dedicated accounts. She warned those moves would disrupt federal funding matches, risk a fund deficit of about $2.5
Stephanie Simic, director of New Hampshire Fish and Game, testified to the Senate committee about several House budget provisions that the agency said would materially affect its finances and program operations.
Simic said House language removes a $1.5 million general-fund component that had been included previously to support conservation law enforcement, leaving Fish and Game to rely on the Fish and Game Fund as the default revenue source. The agency projected that, under current assumptions and absent changes, the Fish and Game Fund would show a negative balance of about $2.5 million by the end of the biennium if lapses and other offsets do not occur.
Simic and chief business manager Cathy Labonte also described two sets of House proposals the agency said would worsen the shortfall: a statutory sweep of dedicated accounts that the House would transfer (automatic transfers of balances above specified thresholds) and a proposed 5% administrative assessment on dedicated accounts. Simic warned the 5% fee, when applied to accounts that include federal grants or are used as state matches to federal programs, would be treated as a diversion of federal funds and could jeopardize federal funding streams.
The department also discussed the governor’s proposal to move environmental-review permitting work from Fish and Game to the Department of Environmental Services (DES). Simic said Fish and Game’s preference would be to retain the permitting work but that if the state transfers responsibility to DES, the department asked for language that preserves Fish and Game expertise, an ongoing consultation role and reimbursement for specialist time. The House proposal, Simic said, transfers most of the related positions to DES while leaving some duties ambiguous.
Simic raised procedural concerns about a new specialty plate (a loon/cyanobacteria plate) in HB 2, noting states that add specialty plates often see revenue cannibalization of existing conservation plates (for example, the moose plate), which can reduce funds available for conservation projects if revenue is not ring-fenced.
Why this matters: Fish and Game said a combination of dedicated-account sweeps, a proposed 5% administrative fee and the removal of certain general-fund support could create a structural deficit and reduce the agency’s ability to operate conservation, research, hatchery and enforcement programs. The agency asked the committee to reconsider automatic sweeps and the fee and to ensure that transfers do not violate federal-match requirements or undermine dedicated-account purposes.
Fish and Game asked the committee to preserve appropriations that support conservation-law enforcement, to exempt certain dedicated accounts from automatic sweeps, and to work with DES on any transfer of permitting responsibilities to preserve species expertise and reimbursement for consultation time.
