HB 151 BIG GAME GUIDES/REGISTR. AREAS/TRANSPORT  CHAIRMAN HALFORD called the Senate Resources Committee meeting to order at 3:45 p.m. and announced HB 151 to be up for consideration. REPRESENTATIVE SCOTT OGAN , sponsor, said HB 151 makes it illegal for registered guides, Class-A assistant guides, and assistant guides to hunt while a client of theirs is in the field, makes it illegal for transporters to knowingly accompany or remain in the field with a big game hunter who is a client, and makes it a misdemeanor to break the laws created above. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN said that it also closes a loophole that had allowed felons to upgrade for a new class of license under a grandfather clause. It also creates the ability for guides to register for one more guide use area if the federal lands requested would otherwise not be used and are adjacent to the existing guide use area. On the House floor it was also amended, he said, to give oral examinations for people who don't read and if someone has been a class-A assistant guide for 25 years (the highest level of assistant guide), they can automatically qualify without taking the test. CHAIRMAN HALFORD commented that the CS cleans up provisions that passed the House. He said the history on the bill is that it was originally designed for someone who wouldn't be able to pass the test, but obviously had been at it forever. The original version gave the person an area registration with only 10 years, but lots of people have been in an area for 10 years. So that was taken out and that question will still have to be dealt with. SENATOR GREEN moved to adopt the SCS for CSHB 151. There were no objections and it was so ordered. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN reviewed the sections in the bill. SENATOR LINCOLN said she was concerned in section 4 that individuals in rural bush communities who are just getting started, but really didn't get a license, would be able to qualify and asked what was proof of 25 years of experience. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN said that proof should be verifiable with the department whether they have had 25 years experience as a class-A assistant or assistant guide outfitter. Guides used to be called guide outfitters which is why the term is included. CHAIRMAN HALFORD noted that class-A assistant guides have been in effect since 1970 or before. SENATOR LINCOLN was concerned that certain guides would be precluded because of not officially registering sometime in the mid 1980s. She asked if this precluded any rural bush assistants or class-A guides. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN replied if they have been a class-A assistant guide, regardless of where they live for 25 years, they would automatically qualify for a license. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said that the class-A assistant guide's license is already loaded in favor of long-term residents and is the license most often used by local residents in small communities . This adds in a minor exemption because it's hard to qualify. SENATOR TAYLOR asked if by putting in 25 years of experience they would be excluding someone who had to leave the State and asked if they could add within 50 years. He also asked if it would exclude women. SENATOR LINCOLN said she hoped it didn't otherwise someone would be in court. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN said they are making it illegal for a guide to hunt while a client and lesser guides are in the field. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said the question was should it say "while the registered guide is accompanying a client." One side of the problem is that a registered guide may be at a lodge or camp that's 50 miles away from where an assistant guide is with a sheep hunter, and the registered guide may live there year round, and a moose walks by his meat house. He theoretically can't take that moose in season because of this requirement and he didn't think Representative Ogan was trying to stop this. He thought they were putting a standard on a registered guide who may be nowhere near a client and have not seen them for a couple of days. This is a standard that they, therefore, can't take any big game animals. The question on that amendment was "accompanies by" or just having it by contract. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN said he had wrestled with that concern and the reason they want to do this is because, for example, a guide has a client in the field who gets a 50 inch moose and they run across a bigger moose and the client says he'll pay another $1,000 to use the guide's tag. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said they might consider adding "while they have a client booked for the same species." Number 243 CAPTAIN JOEL HARD, Commercial Crimes Bureau, said that basically this language takes away the temptation for the transfer of tags or the taking of another animal and covering it illegally with either the guide or the registered guides lawful hunting tags. He said that in general he supports the bill. He explained that during the last legislative session it was left out of statute because it was thought to have been addressed in regulation and it wasn't. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN reviewed the rest of the bill. SENATOR TAYLOR commented on section 19 that the traditional way of hunting down here is that someone has a nice big boat, 35 - 50 ft. and puts some hunters on board the boat and they drive their boat out to Admiralty Island and anchor, and take the hunters to shore in a skiff and let them off. That would be in compliance with this restriction. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN agreed. SENATOR TAYLOR continue saying that in the evening they come back to the beach and someone comes in and picks them up and takes them back out to the boat where they are fed and housed. He asked if that would still be in compliance with this. He was concerned with "duties of embarking or disembarking" and if that meant just one trip out and one trip back like with a float plane. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN responded that it is covered in statute that they would still be able to practice that scenario; but they wouldn't be able to accompany the hunters in the field beyond that beach head. The hunters have to be on their own including skinning and packing. They can't sit in the boat and glass. CHAIRMAN HALFORD asked how employees would be affected; can they have someone who cooks at the cabin they always let people off at and pointed out that it's also not illegal to hire yourself out as a packer to carry things. This is an area that has been a continuous push back and forth between transporters and outfitters and guides for the total time that he has watched. SENATOR TAYLOR said he wanted to allow transporters to have people live on board a boat. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN replied that AS8.54.650 covers a person who is entitled to be a transporter who can provide transportation services and accommodations to big game hunters in the field at a permanent lodge, house, cabin owned by the transporter or on a boat with permanent living quarters on salt water. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said that the committee has correspondence from someone who is complaining about this language not being expansive enough. This only works if the area they are talking about is on federal land and permitting isn't available to anyone else. This amendment is designed to aid very few people in generally pretty small areas. He is not an advocate of people being this limited and found it hard to defend the details of how they work or work hardships. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN pointed out that a lot of guides contract with other guides who can register in three areas and so they can actually get more than three. He personally has problems with expanding it to three or four areas at this time due to that fact. Number 418 MS. CATHERINE REARDON, Director, Division of Occupational Licensing, said the first section says they will offer the exam in oral form if the applicant has a reading disability. They support this provision and they offer this under ADA. The second section was requested by the department and regarded licensing of felons. There is a loophole which allows felons who are assistant guides under the old law and now want to become registered guides, because they fit in the exemption, to upgrade their licenses even though they had a felony within the last five or ten years. There were two applicants like that and she thought that the legislature intended to let them keep their assistant guide license, but not allow them to upgrade to guide until their five or ten years were up. Another issue, MS. REARDON said, is the 25 years of experience on page 2, line 20, referring to one of Senator Lincoln's concerns. It's her understanding that the person had to have held a class-A assistant guide license for the 25 years and have been using it. She thought they would probably ask the person to write an affidavit to that affect. So someone who was out there guiding without the license would not be eligible. She said they have hand written records going back to 1973 and if there is someone out there who had a license starting in 1973, she didn't know who it was. She said she is not aware of anyone holding a license for 25 years just looking at their paper records. On the "otherwise remain unused" clause she said it would be better just to say everyone can qualify for four areas because she didn't understand why certain people under very certain circumstances could qualify for the fourth area. The defense to holding it to three areas when the bill was going through last time was that there's an advantage to spreading the guides out which benefits the resource and if that's the case, it should be three. If four doesn't disrupt that motivation, just make if four for everyone, she suggested. Another communication she has been getting from certain guides is that they would like even more areas. SENATOR TAYLOR asked how many areas there were in Southeast. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said there were four game management units and each unit might have as many as 40 guide areas. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN said he thought there might be about 10 or 15. Number 554 SENATOR TAYLOR said he was concerned this was like micromanagement. SENATOR TAYLOR proposed an amendment on page 5, line 4, after the word "while" to insert "accompanying a client of the registered guided" and delete the word "is" on line 9. So it would read, "You cannot knowingly personally take big game while accompanying a client of the registered guide in the field." REPRESENTATIVE OGAN commented that he thought this was a policy call. TAPE 97-31, SIDE B SENATOR LINCOLN asked what would be the circumstance the guide would want to take animals, other than a moose walking through camp. CHAIRMAN HALFORD responded that a guide may have a lodge that's in the flat country at the edge of the mountains and he may have sheep hunters hunting who are successful, but if he lives there, and some of the seasons are pretty short this year, he could get to the point where he couldn't hunt at all basically, because he has a couple of assistant guides out with sheep hunters through the whole moose season. This is not the norm, he added. The cases he personally is opposed to are where a guide actually takes animals when he is out with a guided hunter. The most obvious abuse is cross tagging and the other is he just didn't think a guide should be taking animals while he's guiding. SENATOR TAYLOR said that cross tagging only involves one incident during one season because the guide has only one tag and he may have eight hunters coming through. If a guy was going to take an animal anyhow, what difference does it make. The same amount of animals are taken. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN said it would be o.k. to incorporate language about the same species. SENATOR LINCOLN asked how to define "accompany." SENATOR TAYLOR said he thought it meant guiding within the same camp. His definition would be more expansive. Number 494 CHAIRMAN HALFORD said he would be more comfortable if Senator Taylor would make his amendment conceptual and add language that says "while accompanying or under contract for the species taken." SENATOR GREEN said she thought it would read better on line 4 if it said, "while under contract for the species taken or while accompanying a client of the registered guide in the field." CAPTAIN HARD commented that old language under the Board of Game uses "in the service of," but he didn't know if it applied at this point. He agreed with the concept of defining the word "accompanying" more definitively in regulation. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said the question is a conceptual amendment to ad accompanying or under contract for the species. SENATOR TAYLOR moved the amendment. SENATOR LINCOLN objected. SENATORS HALFORD, TAYLOR, and GREEN were in favor and the amendment carried. SENATOR LINCOLN said she objected because it is conceptual and she understands that it will leave the committee before it can be reviewed. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said his intention is if they move the bill, it will not leave their possession until everyone gets to look at it. SENATOR GREEN said she wanted to go back to section 1 and the oral examination. She suggested that "reading disability" is not what they want. She thought it should be a specific language disability or a specific learning disability. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said they didn't want to have to offer the test in other languages. SENATOR GREEN moved to change page l, line 11 to delete "reading" and insert "experiences a specific language." SENATOR LINCOLN asked why they didn't wait to pass the bill until they know exactly if that's the correct language to put in there. CHAIRMAN HALFORD announced an at ease from 4:50 - 4:55 p.m. He asked if there were any objections to Senator Green's amendment. There were no objections and it was adopted. SENATOR TAYLOR moved to pass SCSCSHB 151(RES) as amended out of committee upon approval of the chairman on the review of the conceptual amendment. There were no objections and it was so ordered. CHAIRMAN HALFORD adjourned the meeting at 5:00 p.m.