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Fish and Wildlife staff warn of deep shortfalls, outline legislative calendar and funding priorities
Summary
CFO Morgan Stinson told the Big Tent Committee that the agency faces multi‑million‑dollar reductions across programs, a projected roughly $1 billion statewide gap in the next biennium under current assumptions, and limited capacity for new agency requests; commissioners discussed outreach, hatchery closures and federal Mitchell Act funding.
CFO Morgan Stinson told the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Big Tent Committee on April 16 that the agency is facing sustained budget pressure and limited bandwidth for new legislative proposals.
Stinson presented slides showing reductions across the agency’s program areas — roughly $10 million to $14 million per year in many divisions — and described a statewide fiscal outlook that, even counting projected revenues, still shows about a $1 billion budget gap in the upcoming biennium under current appropriation levels. "Even when all of that revenue comes into place and is projected to be there, the expenditures on the state budget basically create ... a $1,000,000,000 problem," Stinson said.
Stinson and Legislative Director Melina Thompson outlined the calendar the agency follows: agency requests are due to the governor’s office in September, the governor’s proposal appears in December and the legislative session begins in January. Thompson said the department is already socializing three agency…
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