A task force charged with merging or consolidating the state’s natural resources agencies dissolved Monday without a plan to achieve its purpose, leaving some members worried that the initiative would be pushed through the Legislature without their input.
In its final meeting, the Natural Resources Agency Task Force discussed the details of a 30-page report that will be completed this month. The report will not recommend mergers called for by Gov. John Baldacci in the departments of agriculture, conservation, inland fisheries and wildlife and marine resources.
Baldacci unveiled an initiative to combine the four agencies into no more than two during his state of the state address last January.
Both chairwomen of the task force, Rep. Wendy Pieh, D-Bremen and Karin Tilberg, a senior policy advisor for Baldacci, called the result of six months of work by the committee “bittersweet.”
“I hoped that we could together come up with something, so in that sense I am disappointed,” said Tilberg. “Not knowing what change will bring has held us back. To be the master of our destiny is the ideal; that was my hope.”
Pieh shared Tilberg’s dissatisfaction.
“I’m sad we’re not walking out the door with a proposal to restructure,” she told the task force. “I expect the governor will put something forward with consolidation (of the agencies). That bothers me because I’d rather see us continue on the process and figure it out.”
Spending on the four agencies accounts for about 2.3 percent of the total state budget, down from about 4.3 percent in 1981. Despite those low percentages, the industries of aquaculture, fishing, farming, and tourism account for one out of every five jobs in Maine and generate about $1 of every $5 of wealth, according to a draft of the report.
Years of pressure to curtail spending coupled with the shrinking revenue streams – especially now, as the Legislature prepares to grapple with a structural budget gap of more than $500 million for the next biennium – have pushed the four agencies to the edge of viability.
“The future is not likely to change this pattern unless fundamental and systemic changes are made,” states the report. “It is now essential to break down the individual agency ‘silos’ that have kept biologists, scientists and other professionals from working together. This isolation has also resulted in some duplication and redundancy that Maine cannot afford.”
Despite wide acknowledgement of that problem, the task force – which includes 37 members from a range of natural resources industries and the commissioners of all four targeted agencies – found more problems with merger proposals than solutions.
In some areas, members argued that it would be inappropriate for a single agency to oversee both commercial and private industries, such as recreational and commercial fishing, for example. In other cases, the technical nature of a given agency’s activities would make it difficult to move it under another department.
However, the chief point of opposition was the fear that an agency’s operations would be dissolved or diluted when swallowed up by another.
“How do you make a shift in agency organization without having one person’s interests diluted or diminished?” said George Lapointe, commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources. “That’s the struggle a lot of us have had with this.”
George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, said his group has fought hard over the years to protect the sovereignty of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
“Nothing that diminishes the bond between sportsmen and the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife will probably win our support,” he said. “We have the fear that if you put parks and lands into IF&W, they’ll use our license fees to take care of the parks.”
Some members of the task force advocated for merging various agencies, while acknowledging it would be difficult.
“I think we could work to design and manage them in a way that would be very successful,” said Tilberg while discussing merging IF&W with the Department of Marine Resources. “There’s a kind of inertia in agencies, a certain insular quality that’s hard to break through. From where I sit, you have to really pound on the door sometimes to get people together. To really create integration is hard work.”
The draft report, which Tilberg hopes will be finalized by Dec. 19, after suggestions from Monday’s meeting are incorporated, will recommend a list of eight action items designed to make the existing agencies more efficient and effective. They include the following:
• Consolidate and enhance marketing of all of Maine’s natural resources agencies under the Department of Economic and Community Development. Each agency currently does its own marketing;
• Develop a central place for customers to procure licenses and permits ranging from hunting licenses to burn permits;
• Move management of all of the state’s boat launches to the Department of Conservation;
• Consolidate the field offices of various agencies to increase collaboration and decrease overhead costs;
• Increase collaboration between natural resources agencies, local governments and citizens within geographical districts;
• Create a single agency to manage public lands;
• Prioritize programs within each agency with the goal of dropping or reducing low-priority services;
• Evaluate agencies’ advisory boards and committees to make them more efficient;
• Recommend that the Legislature appoint a committee to continue exploring the possibility of merging natural resources agencies.
Each agency, along with Baldacci’s office, is expected to draft legislation that addresses these goals, which is to be presented to the Legislature during the upcoming session, which begins Jan. 7.
(State House News Service)