Legislature(2003 - 2004)
02/20/2004 03:35 PM Senate RES
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
SB 303-BIG GAME GUIDE BOARD & SERVICES
CHAIR SCOTT OGAN announced SB 303 to be up for consideration.
REPRESENTATIVE RALPH SAMUELS, Chairman, Legislative Budget and
Audit Committee, explained that this bill is in response to an
audit that came out in October that listed the problems that
have resulted in the absence of the Big Game Commercial Services
Board.
Guides have been licensed since before statehood and
they were regulated by a board from 1973 until the
board sunsetted in 1995. The audit, which was
requested in the previous Legislature, when it came
out, it gave a number of issues and concerns that have
not been addressed. You should have a copy of the
audit in your packet.
The first one was a lack of the ability of the
Department of Community & Economic Development (DCED)
to coordinate with all the state and federal agencies
required in an industry such as the guide industry....
Some of the agencies that are involved in the
discussion are the Alaska Department of Fish and Game
(ADF&G), Department of Public Safety (DPS), Department
of Natural Resources (DNR), Department of
Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the Department of
Community and Economic Development (DCED); and on a
federal level, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the
Forest Service (USFS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the
Park Service, the Coast Guard and the FAA.
The second thing the audit noted was a lessening of
ethical standards with the disappearance of the board
that was not adopted into the statute. A lack of a
detailed operating standards for guides, a weaker
focus on hunter safety.... Another point in the audit
was a diminished disciplinary climate for unsafe,
unethical or even illegal conduct. There are no ethics
standards to steer how guides or transporters conduct
business.
It needs a little direction from the department to
address consumer complaints. Usually, their only
recourse for a dissatisfied customer goes straight to
litigation. Under the current system, there are no
sanctions for multiple consumer complaints or game
violations. Fines for infractions have been greatly
reduced and the qualification exams are only for the
registered guides, not for the assistant guides. It's
been suggested that these issues could be addressed by
the department and without a board. However, after
meeting with a lot of the players that are involved,
it seems apparent that the department would have a
hard time solving all these problems alone. If they
could have, they probably would have in the past 10
years.
The reestablishment of the board would provide a more
accessible public forum to address the problems that
face the hunting industry, its interaction with
hunters and the various private and public land
managers. We are a world-class hunting destination.
People spend a lifetime of savings to come up here to
go hunting and we should protect both our reputation
and the resource.
In practical terms, the bill does three things. It
moves responsibilities from the department to the
board; it changes the term from guide to guide
outfitter - we had a hearing two hours ago in House
Resources and that was one of the concerns that came
up that we should identify.... Before the next
hearing, we will come up with a way to better define
the combining of the guide and the outfitter term. It
also raised potential fines from $1,000 to $5,000....
CHAIR OGAN said it was late in the day and he wanted to give
priority to people who had flown in to testify. He didn't intend
to move the bill today.
MR. RON SOMERVILLE, member, Board of Game, noted the March 2003
letter from the board asking leadership to examine the
possibility of reinstituting a commercial services board. In
some areas of Alaska, the perception exists that some hunters
are being dumped and not picked up. The Board of Game does not
have any authority over transporter activities and supports a
commercial services board that would exude some control over
them. Currently if there is a biological problem, the Board of
Game has to either initiate some sort of reduction that applies
to locals and non-locals alike or initiate aircraft closures,
which hurt locals and the legitimate guiding programs that rely
heavily on aircraft. "It creates all sorts of ripple effects
when the board takes those sorts of actions. I want to stress
that, because from the board's standpoint, that is a major
problem."
He said economic opportunity exists for residents of the Bush
and the state in general to derive some benefit if changes are
made. The proposed board would provide focus, motivation,
expertise and development of a performance ethic, which is
drastically lacking right now. It would provide enforcement and
a forum for resolving conflicts and maintain reporting
requirements.
Finally, a new board would add impetus for creation of training
mechanisms for people in rural Alaska, which was being attempted
before it was eliminated. Also, it's critical to have some sort
of reporting requirement for commercial transporters taking big
game hunters to a remote area.
SENATOR RALPH SEEKINS asked if someone has hunted rabbits for
the last two years in Alaska, could they be an assistant guide
to hunt grizzly bears in reference to language on page 8, line
2, under requirements to have an assistant guide.
MR. SOMERVILLE replied that would be theoretically possible. He
added that a training program could include first aide, how to
skin a big game animal, preservation of trophies and things a
big game guide should know.
SENATOR SEEKINS said if he was spending the big bucks to go
hunting and had an assistant guide who didn't know the big game
animal he was hunting, he would feel a little bit gypped.
MR. SOMERVILLE replied that a class A assistant guide has to
book through a registered guide who would be responsible for
making sure the assistant guide had the necessary help in the
field.
SENATOR SEEKINS said in reinstating the board, he wanted to make
sure qualifications were at a reasonable level or tighten them
up before rather than later.
CHAIR OGAN informed him that he was on the Big Game Commercial
Services Board before he was in the Legislature and helped
Senator Halford rewrite the law. At that time, taking away
testing for assistant guides was favored because a lot of rural
Alaskans couldn't take a test, but made really fine guides.
A registered guide is legally responsible for the
mistakes that the assistant under his supervision
makes in the field. It's like he did it himself. And I
don't think there's any other profession where if
you're a doctor and your nurse does something
criminal, you go to jail for what your nurse did....
The committee decided to let the guides make the judgment call.
SENATOR SEEKINS asked if someone is convicted of a violation
based on state statutes and then transported illegally, wouldn't
that be a better to say that than language on page 10, lines 23
-24, which says, "(1) is convicted of a violation of a state
statute or regulation relating to hunting or to provision of big
game hunting services or transportation services;".
MR. SOMERVILLE replied that the board hadn't dealt with that
particular question, but he agreed that some provision could be
made for the board to revoke a license if a person had been
convicted of any major federal law.
CHAIR OGAN related a case when federal agents caught some
hunters killing wolves and the board took their licenses for one
year. "So, there has been some history in the past for doing
that."
SENATOR SEEKINS had a question on page 16, section (b), about
whether another guide area could be added to areas that needed
more intensive management. He suggested inserting, "unless
otherwise provided by law" to facilitate that.
CHAIR OGAN and Mr. Somerville thought that was a good
suggestion.
MR. JOE KLUTSCH, Alaska Professional Hunters Association, said
he is a registered master guide and has been involved in the
guiding industry for over 30 years. When he was an assistant
guide in the early '70s, he attended the very first guide board
meetings and attended them until the Owsichek decision. He
helped the Legislature recreate a commercial service board. In
other words, he has some historical knowledge of this process.
CHAIR OGAN stated for the record that the Owsichek decision took
away exclusive guide use areas. The state took away the guide
board and created the Big Game Commercial Services Board that
wrote regulations that redefined and redrew the guide use areas.
MR. KLUTSCH said the Association represents the majority of the
active full-time contracting guides in the state and the vast
majority of members support the reestablishment of a Commercial
Service Board.
We see the board and the board process as a great
forum for interaction between the members of the
industry, both guiding and transporting, and the
various agencies, state and federal. It's an open
forum; it's a public forum and it's really the type of
situation where you get an active dialogue. You can't
do these kinds of things in communications, either e-
mails, conference calls or a few phone calls from all
different directions, and count on regulations being
developed administratively. It just doesn't work; it's
too sluggish. All the respective agencies, in
particular state and federal, are confused and
disconnected about what each other is doing and that's
really caused us some problems in the last five years.
In absence of the board, we've had a lack of
responsiveness in enforcement of existing statutes and
regulations. We're left over with some bits and pieces
of statutes and regs that were there prior to
sunsetting. Public safety is at a loss to enforce a
lot of the existing statutes and regulations. There
have been no enforcement actions to my knowledge in
the last five years related to ethics,
misrepresentation of services, reimbursement of money
for services not provided, unethical conduct. It just
hasn't been there and it's been very harmful to the
reputation of this industry and the state....
MR. KLUTSCH said that Representative Samuels did an excellent
job of outlining the inter-relationships between the various
agencies and also the justifications for recreating the board.
However, he underscored this message for the committee:
The guiding industry in particular does not want to
see any regulatory board create more regulations or
unnecessary regulations.... We want clear and concise
statutes and regulations that can be enforced....
He also agreed with Senator Seekins' comments and that this is a
critical juncture.
CHAIR OGAN took a minute to clarify that he wasn't a big fan of
creating more boards and, in fact, wanted to get rid of a whole
bunch of them, but he felt this board would be self-supporting.
He asked Mr. Klutsch what gave him comfort that a new regulatory
board wouldn't write regulations.
MR. KLUTSCH conceded the point and said the last thing guides
want to see is additional unnecessary regulations.
But, as circumstances evolve, land use patterns
change, management objectives change, we need a degree
of flexibility and a board has that flexibility. We'll
be there to participate in the process. We will
hopefully have knowledgeable members from all sectors
of the commercial service industry represented on the
board, members of the public and lots of input from
the respective agencies, state and federal.
SENATOR SEEKINS asked if his experience with the period of
autonomy that has existed until now has been good or bad.
MR. KLUTSCH replied:
It's had a negative effect not having a board there to
be able to adjust regulations where they are unclear
as it relates to the driving statutes about who can do
what, about reporting requirements, about disciplinary
actions, about coordinating with the federal agencies.
It's had a very negative effect.
The quality of visitor services - we're a key
component of Alaska's tourism industry. And Alaska's
reputation for having quality big game hunting is
slipping relative to Canada and other destinations in
the world. I attribute it directly to proper and
concise regulations.
SENATOR SEEKINS asked if he thought this board would do a good
job for the people of Alaska in general and that it's not a
capitulation to big game guides and their out-of-state clients.
MR. KLUTSCH observed that as another good point and reasoned,
"If we're well regulated, resident hunters benefit, subsistence
hunters benefit, wildlife viewers benefit. If it's done
properly, it benefits everyone."
SENATOR WAGONER said a prevalent problem in the last several
years is that transporters take people out, especially in Prince
William Sound, and drop them off on an island or beach and then
pick them up sometimes many days after they said they would
return. He hoped this board would put some controls on that,
because one of these days lives would be lost.
MR. KLUTSCH righteously agreed. He explained that a serious
problem associated with those transporting activities is lack of
compliance with reporting requirements. The intent of the
required form is to provide accountability - that everyone has a
license, proper tags and when they are picked up, how many
pounds of meat they brought out, its condition, etc. "They are
required, if things are out of order, to report it to [the
Department of] Public Safety."
He related that a transporter in the King Salmon area admitted
to turning in at least a half dozen of his moose clients. "It
works. It takes enforcement."
CHAIR OGAN commiserated that wasting meat in the field is the
number one issue in rural Alaska. He's heard of racks coming in
with just the backstrap.
SENATOR SEEKINS said he didn't live in rural Alaska, but felt
offended, as well.
MR. PAUL JOHNSON, Alaska guide, said he had been in the business
for over 30 years. He pointed out that the guiding industry had
never asked the Legislature for loans, advertising or disaster
relief.
What we're asking for here is reasonable regulations
and a board back. We have an opportunity in this state
to save some industry here so that guiding will be
here for a long time.
MR. JOHNSON said that Alaska guides are competing in a global
market. People who come to our state have the opportunity to go
to a lot of other places and that won't continue to happen
"unless we clean it up." A lot of things have fallen through the
cracks since a board existed. There has been a big changeover in
administrators and there is no collective history.
There's confusion on enforcement, there's confusion
within the Department of Fish and Game on getting
information - they can't get, can't retrieve -
complete confusion over definitions - that weren't
there before.
He agreed with the issues that Mr. Somerville and Senator
Seekins raised and emphasized that state agencies aren't
coordinated among themselves or with the federal agencies. A new
board could solve those problems. "So, it actually saves money.
It can't be seen right on top."
MR. JOHNSON said the original task force, led by Henry Springer,
was working when it was sunsetted; then the whole thing
collapsed. He repeated, "The whole thing has collapsed.... We
desperately need this. I think this is a shot in our arm that
has to happen...."
MR. MATT ROBUS, Director, Division of Wildlife Conservation,
Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), said he had met with
the Department of Community & Economic Development (DCED) and
Department of Public Safety (DPS), but they hadn't come to a
consensus position, yet. He wanted to emphasize the importance
of this issue to be considered by the Legislature.
It's been apparent over the years since the guide
board has gone away, in working between my department
and the Board of Game, how much of a struggle it is
for that regulatory entity to get any traction on some
of these issues that we're discussing here. The powers
given to the Board of Game are for biological
management and while the board, with information
provided by the department, can be and is pretty
effective in dealing with biological problems, when it
comes to allocation between user groups, things become
very difficult, because the tools in the Board of Game
tool box really aren't the right tools to address that
problem.
Unless there is a biological problem to be solved,
it's really not possible for the department and the
Board of Game to allocate between different user
groups that may be having conflicts because they use
resources in a different way and they get crosswise
with each other. Largely we're talking about conflicts
between local rural users in the Bush and non-local
users, both non-residents and non-local Alaskans who
come into the area on top of local patterns of
hunting. Oftentimes those conflicts are really
conflicts, but they don't occur at a level where
there's a biological problem that needs to be solved.
Therefore, the Board of Game really can't go there.
If there is a biological problem, then the tools that
the Board of Game has can be effective in conserving
the resource, but they are pretty draconian if you're
one of the user groups that get taken out of the
picture....
TAPE 04-13, SIDE A
MR. ROBUS said the Board of Game has attempted to deal with some
of the conflicts and in most cases has backed away from any
final action:
It gets so convoluted and so draconian that the cure
is almost worse than the problem that we're trying to
address. As I said, it would be a complimentary power
to improve the regulation of the guiding industry and
the transporting industry. I'll also make the point
that the transporting industry is an extremely
important part of the problem and so far has not been
very much in the regulatory picture.
The final thing I'll say is just to point out that
over recent years, because of the state's inability to
allocate between different user groups, we have lost
more and more of the wildlife management authority to
federal agencies on federal lands, because those
agencies do allocate between guides, transporters,
private hunters, federally qualified subsistence users
- and, in some cases that I could name in Southeast
Alaska, for instance, when it came time for the state
to try to sort out some of those problems, we were
unable to do it. Federal agencies were able to and
willing to do it. Therefore, federal management is
really, in effect, where state management has not been
able to cope. So, for all those reasons, the
Department of Fish and Game feels that this is a
subject that really does require some attention from
you and we will continue working with the other
departments to try to come to a consensus position as
soon as we can.
SENATOR SEEKINS asked, "In other words then, the department says
something along this line would be beneficial to your ability to
manage the fish and game resources of the State of Alaska."
MR. ROBUS replied that was a good way to put it. "Wildlife
management in the big sense is more than just solving the
biological problems; it's also people management."
CHAIR OGAN asked him to talk a little bit about the difference
between state and federal management and why federal management
was able to differentiate between users more than the state
could.
MR. ROBUS replied:
In Southeast Alaska, with the proliferation of big
game guides, mostly for the purposes of hunting brown
bear on the ABC Islands and now on the mainland in
Southeast, the Forest Service put a moratorium on
additional guides joining in just because agencies
were trying to solve how the existing number of guides
was going to be allowed to operate. On tidelands
around the fringe of those federal areas there is
still the ability to go in and participate as a guide
or transporter under state law. So, the proliferation
can continue and the state, basically, is unable to
regulate that. I'm not saying the use needs to be
prevented, but there does need to be some reasonable
regulation and control.
The federal agencies have the power to distinguish and
decide of all the people who want to be a guide on
federal land, they can choose a subset and authorize
them to hunt and keep the numbers of guides down to a
level that the resource and people interactions can
reasonably support.
The only way the state could do something similar
would be to go to a drawing permit for those brown
bears and devastate the guide industry. Because now,
instead of being able to agree with a client that
you're going to go hunting together and get that
person a permit, you would have to go through a
drawing process with no certainty that any of your
clients would ever end up with a permit....
CHAIR OGAN asked if that was because the feds don't have an
Owsichek-type decision.
MR. ROBUS replied yes, the feds don't have anything like that,
but he is not expert enough in federal authorities to know why
they can do what they do.
MR. ROB HARDY, Wasilla registered guide, pointed out paragraph 3
of the sponsor statement that says, "Wildlife populations would
benefit from more coordinated enforcement of existing laws."
He thought that idea could be accommodated more
interdepartmentally. He said the key point is when someone today
said "if done properly," referring to reinstituting the Big Game
Commercial Services Board. He didn't think the board alone would
be able to accomplish what people thought it would. He felt that
having a 20-day timeframe for reporting violations (in HB 422)
is unacceptable. If he were to witness a violation in his own
operation, he would report it immediately so the enforcement
could happen efficiently. He feared that recreating the board
could possibly, if not probably, result in further
liberalization of industry regulation. "In closing, I would like
to say that this legislation as written does not have to happen
on this watch."
MR. HENRY WEBB, Staff to Representative Samuels, sponsor, said
the representative had to catch a plane, but would look at the
transporter and guide outfitter language and consider Mr.
Somerville's and Senator Seekins' concerns.
CHAIR OGAN called it a day and adjourned the meeting at 5:25
p.m.
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