ARKANSAS SPORTSMAN : Agencies should keep hands out of AGFC’s pocket
Posted on Sunday, August 3, 2008
“Big energy” isn’t the greatest threat to fish and wildlife in Arkansas. Big government is.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission announced Monday that Chesapeake Energy was going to drop some serious coin — $ 30 million up front, plus a 20 percent royalty — to extract natural gas from Gulf Mountain and Petit Jean WMAs.
Freddie Black, AGFC chairman, said the commission would use that money to create more hunting and fishing opportunities for Arkansas sportsmen by buying more land or securing permanent conservation easements on private land.
Gov. Mike Beebe showed up to the news conference with a platoon of directors from other state agencies and strongly suggested the commission should share the money with its less prosperous cousins. He said several times, emphatically, that the oil and gas revenue from these public lands belongs to all of the people in our state, and that the AGFC should assist other agencies involved with supervising the natural gas industry.
Beebe’s comments were curious because they contradict the opinion he issued as attorney general two years ago on this very subject. In Opinion No. 2006-©, dated Nov. 22, 2006, and directed to State Sen. Steve Faris, Beebe wrote: “… in my opinion the funds may not be redirected to purposes other than those listed in Amendment 35. The answer to your third question is that, again, the moneys arising from the sources you mention may only be appropriated for the purposes listed in Amendment 35.”
There’s more.
Beebe continued: “In my opinion, receipts from mineral leases on Commission-owned lands are included in the phrase ‘funds arising from all sources’ by the operation of the Commission and within the phrase ‘from the sale of property used for said purposes.’ The section above thus requires that the funds be ‘expended by the Commission for the control, management, restoration, conservation and regulation of the birds, fish and wildlife resources of the State’ and for ‘no other purposes.’”
And finally: “In my opinion the funds may not be redirected to purposes other than those listed in Amendment 35. As noted above, the funds may only be expended for ‘the control, management, restoration, conservation and regulation of the birds, fish and wildlife resources of the State’ and for ‘no other purposes.’”
Beebe’s legal opinion seems clear, that mineral revenues from WMAs can only be used for fish and wildlife management.
I differ with the governor on another point. The AGFC bought Gulf Mountain, Petit Jean River and most of the state’s other WMAs with combined funds from hunting and fishing licenses and from the Wildlife Restoration Act, which is funded from an excise tax on firearms, ammunition and hunting equipment. Hunters and fishermen bought that land with the AGFC acting as their agent and, by extension, the mineral rights to that land.
The fact that the WMAs came into the public domain by way of a user-pay, user-benefit system entitles sportsmen to a greater interest in natural gas revenues from that land than from nonconsumptive users who contributed nothing to their purchase. I’ll go as far as to say it entitles them to sole interest.
The issue is a matter of encroachment on the AGFC’s constitutional independence from political influence. The Arkansas state government is a massive enterprise with about 27, 000 employees that raked in excess profits totaling about $ 256 million last year alone. That surplus is more than enough money to pay for anything the governor has in mind for the AGFC’s gas royalties.
However, the AGFC is the only arm of Arkansas’ government that represents the interests of Arkansas’ hunters and fishermen. The AGFC promised its constituents that it would use gas revenues to improve our investment in our state’s environment and natural resources, and that pact was the AGFC’s sole justification to allow gas drilling on WMAs. The worst thing that could happen to that money is for it to vanish down the black hole of the state’s general fund, where it will benefit nobody but bureaucrats.
In his former gig, the governor made it clear the AGFC has the sole authority to spend those funds as it sees fit according to its mission under Amendment 35, and the law didn’t change when he switched hats.
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