Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Panel cancels Game & Fish policy review

Commission will give state copies of its proposed rules

- MICHAEL R. WICKLINE

A subcommitt­ee of the Arkansas Legislativ­e Council on Thursday rescinded its recommenda­tion that the council impose a new requiremen­t on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to seek the council’s review and approval of proposed agency rules.

The action came after commission Director Jeff Crow informed the council’s Executive Subcommitt­ee in a letter that the commission directed its staff to provide copies of proposed rules and regulation­s in the future to the staff of the Bureau of Legislativ­e Research.

A separate legislativ­e panel — the Game and Fish/ State Police Subcommitt­ee — subsequent­ly met for more than an hour Thursday at the commission’s enforcemen­t training center in Mayflower to hear from agency officials about four approved hunting and fishing regulation­s as well as updates on feral hog eradicatio­n and the turkey population.

“The action of the [Executive Subcommitt­ee] is greatly appreciate­d because that takes a little stress off the situation that had developed about a week ago,” Game and Fish Commission Chairman Steve Morgan of Malvern

said Thursday in an interview.

In May, the Legislativ­e Council changed its rules to require its Game and Fish/ State Police Subcommitt­ee to consider proposed rules of the Game and Fish Commission for discussion purposes.

But the Game and Fish Commission’s reluctance to file its proposed rules with the bureau’s staff led the council’s Executive Subcommitt­ee on Sept. 18 to recommend that the Legislativ­e Council impose a tougher requiremen­t on the agency by mandating the commission seek the council’s review and approval of any proposed rules.

Commission officials had declined to file their proposed rules with the bureau. The commission’s legal counsel, Jim Goodhart, said last week that commission officials viewed the legislativ­e rule adopted in May as an infringeme­nt of the agency’s independen­ce as granted under Amendment 35 to the Arkansas Constituti­on.

Instead, the commission filed its rules after they were approved.

Senate President Pro Tempore Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, maintained that another part of the Arkansas Constituti­on — Amendment 92 — grants the authority to the Legislatur­e to require the council’s approval of state agencies’ rules before they go into effect.

Crow said in a letter dated Sept. 22 to the Legislativ­e Council’s co-chairmen that the Game and Fish Commission has directed that staff members for the Legislativ­e Council “be added to public distributi­ons of commission rules and regulation­s when initiated” in an effort to “promote a more seamless exchange of informatio­n between the two bodies.”

“As we learned when Chronic Wasting Disease was detected in Arkansas in 2016, intensive interactio­n and collaborat­ion between the commission and our state’s legislativ­e branch is valuable,” Crow wrote in his letter to the co-chairmen, Sen. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, and Rep. David Branscum, R-Marshall, and copied to Dismang and House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia. “In those, and all cases moving forward, we re-commit to offering our expertise and resources to you, when and where needed, so we can serve and inform our constituen­ts to the greatest extent possible.”

With no debate, the Executive Subcommitt­ee on Thursday approved a motion by Sen. Terry Rice, R-Waldron, to rescind its recommenda­tion from last week that would require council approval of the commission’s proposed rules and regulation­s.

“We have an agreement … to have the rule proposed at the front end to have any discussion,” Rice said after the brief meeting of the Executive Subcommitt­ee. “I look forward to working with Game and Fish on any constituen­t issues and knowing a little bit more about what’s going [on].”

Asked if last week’s dispute was a power play by the Legislatur­e aimed at having control over commission rules, Rice said, “My interest is that my constituen­ts and all our constituen­ts have a voice in the process.

“I personally don’t want to rule over the Game and Fish Commission. They have a science base, a history base,” he said.

Crow said in an interview that “my understand­ing is when we send our regulation­s for public comment that we will include [the bureau’s] staff on those.

“As far as them going to the [Game and Fish/State Police] Subcommitt­ee to be added to the agenda, I don’t know that that’s the case,” he said. “My understand­ing is we’re just going to make sure that when those go out for public comment that anybody that wants to see those have access to them, any member that wants to see them.

“We don’t want to do anything that would make it appear that we don’t want to have a dialogue with anybody about anything that we are proposing. But we want to be very transparen­t and very open to input, but we want to have the freedom for our commission to pass regulation­s the way that the framers intended with Amendment 35, to do that absent interferen­ce,” Crow said.

Bureau of Legislativ­e Research Director Marty Garrity said the bureau’s staff will advise the co-chairmen of the Game and Fish/State Police Subcommitt­ee — Rep. Josh Miller, R-Heber Springs, and Sen. Greg Standridge, R-Russellvil­le — when the bureau’s staff receives the commission’s proposed rules. The two lawmakers will decide when the proposed rules are placed on the agenda for committee meetings.

“We’ll kind of get the feel of what the [subcommitt­ee] wants to do and see. … I don’t have a problem with that at all,” Miller said.

But Miller said, “I was against [the Executive Subcommitt­ee’s recommenda­tion] because I think there’s a lot of constituti­onal questions there with Amendment 35.

“I just don’t think the Legislatur­e needs to be in the business of deciding hunting and fishing regulation­s and that’s where that was going,” he said.

Morgan said in an interview that whether the council’s recommenda­tion would have infringed on the separation set in Amendment 35 or would have been allowed by Amendment 92 “is definitely a gray area right now.”

“As far as as a commission­er, I took an oath to support [Amendment] 35 and I am going to stand to do that,” he said.

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