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Municipalities press for permit authority and cost recovery on fishing tournaments
Summary
City concerns about fishing tournaments spurred debate: municipal officials want permit notice, mitigation measures tied to permits, and a bill‑back option to recover trespass and cleanup costs; Fish & Wildlife warned bill‑back could unfairly burden small organizers.
Municipal officials and agency staff debated how best to regulate fishing tournaments near public water supplies, focusing on permit conditions, best management practices and who should bear mitigation costs.
Maggie L, speaking on behalf of a municipal interest, told the committee that the city of Barry had repeatedly learned about tournaments only after they occurred and that participants had trespassed on municipal property, imposing cleanup and enforcement costs. She said the latest draft frames tournament controls as "best management practices" and urged that the bill be coupled with a bill‑back provision so municipalities can recover costs for trespass mitigation.
"They were being issued; the city was finding out about them after the fact and they were trespassing people at great cost to the city," Maggie L said, urging that local authorities have a meaningful role in permitting and in cost recovery. She asked the committee to restore a bill‑back clause from an earlier draft.
Jason Bashel, Fish and Wildlife Commissioner, said the original bill‑back wording would place an undue burden on small tournament organizers and noted the agency has seen no incidents of anglers causing widespread problems in recent years. "I really can't get past the fact that we're in 2026 and have had zero incidences of problems with anglers on lakes," Bashel said, and asked the committee to avoid singling out organizers who hold a permit.
Agency staff and committee members discussed refining the best‑management-practice language to make clear that permit conditions should mitigate impacts and should not shift undue costs onto municipalities. Hannah Smith of Fish and Wildlife reiterated the department's intent: organizers are responsible for complying with permit conditions and municipalities will not be held responsible for permit noncompliance.
The committee asked staff to draft an intent section and to circulate a revised bill that clarifies the relationship between permit conditions, mitigation responsibilities and municipal cost recovery. No formal decision was taken at the hearing; committee members signaled a desire to continue drafting and to review a new draft at the next meeting.
