Session’s finish has agency near financial limbo
No Game & Fish appropriation
After the Arkansas House of Representatives and the Arkansas Senate adjourned this year’s fiscal session Thursday without sending the governor an appropriation bill for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in the coming fiscal year, Senate President Pro Tempore Bart Hester said it’s the first time in known history the Legislature adjourned without enacting a budget for a state agency.
“Our No. 1 responsibility is to have a budget, which is why we were willing to stay here and do whatever it took,” the Republican from Cave Springs told reporters.
Before adjourning Thursday, the Senate voted to amend an appropriation measure for the Game and Fish Commission to increase the maximum-authorized salary for the commission director from $152,638 to $157,216 a year, or about 3%, in fiscal year 2025, which begins July 1. It then voted 31-0 to send the amended Senate Bill 21 to the House — even though the House had already adjourned.
Commission Director Austin Booth’s current annual salary is $152,638.
Before adjourning Thursday, the House’s 62-21 vote on another version of Senate Bill 21 fell 13 votes short of the 75 votes required for appropriation bills to pass the House, with 11 representatives voting present and six representatives not voting on the bill.
This version of the bill would increase the maximum-authorized salary from the commission’s director
from $152,638 to $190,000 a year. The bill cleared the state Senate in a 34-0 vote May 1 before the House’s 32-37 vote May 2 for the bill fell 43 votes short of the 75 required for approval.
The failure to approve an appropriation for the Game and Fish Commission means the agency won’t be able to spend money beginning July 1, unless Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls a special session and asks lawmakers to approve an appropriation and they do so.
Senate Bill 21 would authorize the Game and Fish Commission to spend up to about $177 million in fiscal year 2025 and to employ up to 644 employees.
With Sanders’ father — Mike Huckabee — as governor, the Arkansas General Assembly adjourned its regular session April 16, 2003, without enacting a general revenue budget for a two-year period and biennial appropriation bills for numerous agencies, including for the Game and Fish Commission, the then-Department of Parks and Tourism, the Department of Human Services, most of the state’s higher education institutions, and the lieutenant governor’s office.
Hester, who has served in the state Senate since 2013, said Thursday he was not aware of that.
The Democratic-controlled General Assembly’s regular session ended in 2003 because 27 House Republicans and eight House Democrats refused to vote to extend the session. Three House Republicans voted with 62 House Democrats to extend the session, but that was short of the two-thirds vote required to continue.
A key sticking point was whether to use some of what was called the General Improvement Fund, which was projected to have $80 million over a two-year period for onetime local projects, according to Arkansas Democrat-Gazette archives.
Huckabee, a Republican, called for a special session starting May 5, 2003, to deal with unresolved state budget issues. In a five-day special session, the Legislature and Huckabee enacted a state budget for two years, another measure allocating $90 million for two years for capital projects sought by legislators and Huckabee, and a $100 million tax increase on tobacco and income to avert major cuts in Medicaid services for the disabled, elderly or poor and to enable the state to open more prisons.
State Rep. Lane Jean, R-Magnolia, a co-chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, said Thursday he’s anticipating a special session sometime probably in June to consider the Game and Fish Commission appropriation for fiscal year 2025.
Asked whether Sanders agreed with Jean about the timing of a special session and her positions on the version of SB21 that the House failed to pass on Thursday and the version of SB21 that the Senate passed Thursday, Sanders spokeswoman Alexa Henning said Friday in a short written statement “I’m not going to get ahead of any announcements but all options are on the table.”
Henning referred to that statement when asked whether the governor wants to place other items — and if so, which items — on the call for a possible special session to consider an appropriation for the Game and Fish Commission for fiscal year 2025.
Some state senators expressed their frustrations Thursday with the state House of Representatives for not coming up with a version of the Game and Fish Commission appropriation for fiscal year 2025 that could have cleared the House on Thursday and for the Senate to consider on Thursday.
Hester said he understood the frustration in the House of Representatives, where some representatives voted not to approve the Game and Fish Commission appropriation without any explanation.
Jean said Thursday that he was against suspending the rules of the House to allow the House to amend SB21 on the House floor and then approve it and for the Senate to suspend its rules to approve the amended version in one day.
He warned that would create a bad precedent leading people to do “further monkey business down the road.”
Jean said Friday “there was no way the bill was going to get 75 votes” in the House on Thursday, and there were various representatives from northeast Arkansas who wouldn’t vote for the bill, and they had a variety of reasons for their opposition to the bill.
He said “I think the governor will get involved and help us with some of our members so we can get the appropriation passed” in a special session.
Jean said he didn’t ask the governor to get involved in asking representatives to approve the Game and Fish Commission appropriation during the fiscal session.
“We tried in good faith and came up” from 32 to 62 votes for the Game and Fish Commission appropriation, he said. “I think we get it (passed) all working together,” he said.
State Rep. Trey Steimel, R-Pocahontas, declined Friday to explain why he voted against SB21, and referred a reporter to Rep. Jeremy Wooldridge, R-Marmaduke.
Wooldridge, who also voted against SB21, said Friday that “for me, it’s about fairness and consistency.”
The secretaries of the state’s 15 executive branch departments were recently granted 2% merit raises and the Legislature in this year’s special session enacted a law for state executive branch employees to get an up to 3% market adjustment in fiscal year 2025, he said.
Wooldridge said “I don’t know how we can justify a 25%” raise for the Game and Fish Commission director.
“It’s not anything personal or a vendetta,” he said.
Wooldridge said he believes the state House of Representatives would pass the Senate’s last version of SB21 that would increase the maximum-authorized salary for the Game and Fish Commission director from $152,638 to $157,216 a year.
Commission Chairman Stan Jones said in a letter to House Speaker Matthew Shepherd, R-El Dorado, that the maximum-authorized salary for the commission director has not been increased since 2018 and “even if amended to $190,000 will still remain roughly $30,000 under the recently approved cabinet secretary line item maximums.
“In working with members of both chambers of the General Assembly over several months, we have consistently stated this measure is aimed at remaining competitive in the marketplace in the event of a future director’s search, not a disingenuous effort to increase Director Austin Booth’s salary,” Jones said.
“We are proud of the work that Austin has done for Arkansas and we hope he is with us for a long time, but this is not about him and he has never once requested a pay increase,” Jones wrote in his letter. “We need to be able to recruit a level of talent that is as strong as Arkansas’ expectations of the Arkansas outdoors, and from our perspective it is only responsible to be proactive.
“However, to underscore both this motivation and to demonstrate the Commission’s deep desire for a new era of trust with the legislature, I will commit to your colleagues and you that the Commission will not increase Director Booth’s actual salary in excess of the lowest-paid Cabinet secretary, which is $170,437.90, until June of 2025,” he wrote in his letter to Shepherd that Jean cited to the House on Thursday.
Rep. Jon Eubanks, R-Paris, told House members he was partly to blame for holding up action on the Game and Fish Commission appropriation during the fiscal session.
He said he put a hold on the appropriation based on a separate issue than the maximum-authorized salary for the commission director and Rep. Jeff Wardlaw, R-Hermitage, put a hold on the appropriation as Wardlaw tried to drum up support for an amendment to the appropriation that would have authorized the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation to supplement the commission director’s state-paid salary with private funds.
Eubanks said there was opposition in the Senate and some opposition in the House for authorizing the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation to supplement the commission director’s state-paid salary with private funds, so legislative leaders decided to pursue the route of boosting the commission director’s maximum-authorized salary from $152,638 to $190,000 a year.
He said state lawmakers’ opposition to the proposed, privately-funded salary supplements for the Game and Fish Commission director stemmed from the nonprofit economic development foundation paying supplemental private funds to then-Arkansas Economic Development Commission Executive Director Mike Preston, and state lawmakers not liking that arrangement because of the potential for undue influence.
The Game and Fish Commission director answers to the Game and Fish Commission, Eubanks said.
Rep. Jim Wooten, R-Beebe, said Thursday it will cost the state $100,000 to hold a special session to consider an appropriation for the Game and Fish Commission for fiscal year 2025 compared with about $20,000 for the pay raise that the commission wants to grant Booth.
Nonetheless, he told House members “they are arrogant. Well, one of them, let’s put it that way,” without mentioning particular names at the commission.
State Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould, who voted present on SB21, said Friday night that “the Game and Fish Commission needs to realize they are accountable to the Legislature and the people of Arkansas.
“When you are dismissive of the concerns expressed by legislators on behalf of constituents who are hunters and sportsmen and then have the audacity to ask for authority to give a director who already makes $150,000+, a $40,000 raise — a sum of which is more than many Arkansans make in an entire year — this is what happens,” he said in a written statement. “Yesterday’s vote should serve as a reminder to the game and fish commission that they do, in fact, still have to answer to the Legislature and to the people of Arkansas.”
Gazaway said the House of Representatives would likely pass the Senate’s last version of SB21 that would increase the maximum-authorized salary for the Game and Fish Commission director from $152,638 to $157,216 a year.
The Game and Fish Commission was created in 1915, but it was not until voter approval of Amendment 35 to the Arkansas Constitution in 1944 that the commission gained the power to enact lasting wildlife regulations, according to the commission’s website. Amendment 35 also gave the commission autonomy from the state Legislature and enabled wildlife regulations to be enforceable on a statewide basis, according to its website. While the state Legislature still has control of some aspects of commission business, Amendment 35 was “the true mark of the beginning of wildlife conservation in Arkansas,” according to the commission’s website.
Wardlaw said Friday he still supports the House’s last version of Senate Bill 21 that would increase the maximum-authorized salary for the Game and Fish Commission director from $152,638 to $190,000 a year.
“I think it is vital to pay the director what he’s worth,” he said
“People ought to let vendettas go and do what is the right for the state” and its strong conservation efforts, Wardlaw said.
Booth has served as the commission’s director since July 2021, succeeding Pat Fitts. He previously served as chief of staff and chief financial officer for the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs.
A lifelong hunter, Booth is a graduate of Little Rock Catholic High School and graduated from The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., in 2008. He earned a juris doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law. He also served as a captain in the United States Marine Corps in multiple capacities from 2011-2019, including a 2015-2016 deployment to Afghanistan.
In fiscal year 2023 that ended June 30, the commission received $122.3 million in revenue and its major revenue sources included $47 million from the Amendment 75 Conservation Sales Fund, $30.5 million from license sales, and $24.6 million in federal funding, according to Randy Zellers, a spokesman for the commission. The agency receives no general revenue funds from the state, and no funding from citations written by enforcement officers.
In fiscal year 2022, the most recently certified license year, the commission sold 1.04 million licenses, Zellers said
The major resident permits included 232,354 hunting permits, 339,694 fishing permits, 99,049 trout permits and 53,088 waterfowl permits, and the major non-resident permits included 71,403 hunting permits, 138,424 fishing permits, 61,505 trout permits and 50,089 waterfowl permits, according to Zellers.
The commission has 636 full-time appropriated employees and about 100 part-time employees and a total payroll of $47.2 million in fiscal year 2023, Zellers said.
Besides Commission Chairman Stan Jones, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission includes Vice Chairman John David “J.D.” Neeley, Anne Marie Doramus, Rob Finley, Philip Tappan, Bill Jones, and Brandon Adams, according to its website. Michelle Evans-White is an ex-officio commissioner.
Stan Jones could not be reached for comment by telephone Friday.