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Interim committee orders study of consolidating Game & Fish accounts and asks LSO to draft Game and Fish trust bill concept
Summary
Legislators asked staff to research combining numerous Game and Fish accounts into an endowment-style trust, to model spending policies, and to draft a bill concept for a 'legacy' Game & Fish trust seeded by excess earnings or modest severance allocations; the committee also requested LSO work on constitutional protection options for selected trusts.
The Select Committee directed Legislative Service Office (LSO), the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the state treasurer's office to study consolidating multiple Game and Fish accounts into an endowment‑style trust and to prepare bill language for the committee's next interim meeting.
Senator Hicks outlined an endowment model intended to simplify accounting and increase investment returns by moving several smaller accounts into a consolidated corpus with an income account and a spending policy similar to the cultural resource trust and the Wyoming Wildlife Natural Resource Trust. He said the pool of accounts under consideration totaled "somewhere between 90 and 100 million dollars" across access funds, aquatic invasive accounts, conservation stamp receipts and other departmental accounts.
Several members emphasized the long horizon for a legacy fund and the importance of protecting the corpus. Representative Warp warned against ‘‘penetrating’’ the existing Wildlife Natural Resource Trust corpus. Representative Harshman and others suggested seeding a new Game and Fish trust first with excess investment earnings and, over time, adding modest dedicated revenues (one suggestion was a multi‑year $10 million allocation from the over‑the‑cap severance tax receipts) rather than taking large operating dollars from current programs.
The committee voted to ask the director and LSO to draft a bill concept that would create a statutory Game and Fish trust with an income account and a spending policy; staff were also directed to consult the treasurer's office about likely investment returns and technical details for moving smaller accounts into a consolidated structure.
Committee members also asked LSO to produce a short bill concept exploring whether several statutory trust funds (for example, the cultural trust, outdoor recreation trust and the wildlife natural resource trust) should be considered for constitutional protection; that draft will be available for the committee to review at the next interim meeting.
Next steps: LSO and the director will deliver bill concepts and a staff analysis of consolidation options (including which statutory accounts could legally be rolled together), and the treasurer's office will supply projected returns and a recommended spending policy for committee consideration.
