Originally Posted By: yelloweye
Moravec,

Here are a few snippets I put together for the folks on the forum that actually admit to killing fish once in a while:

"Most license fees go into the wildlife account. (Bushbear can correct me, but I think saltwater, shellfish and clam licenses go into general fund).

You can find out quite a bit about the budget here: http://wdfw.wa.gov/about/budget/

I thought these 2 were particularly helpful:
http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/01145/wdfw_01145.pdf
http://wdfw.wa.gov/about/legislative/fact_sheets/2010_facing_future.pdf

I checked a spreadsheet I have from the department. For license year 2009 (April 09 - Mar 10?), it shows total fishing license revenue of $20.7M, total big game of $10.2M, total small game of $3.0M, and grand total license revenue of $34.9M. From the links I posted previously, total WDFW budget for the 2009-11 biennium was $327M, or about $164M per year. So the difference there ($164M minus $35M = $129M) is about what comes from federal taxes on fishing and hunting gear, contracts with PUD's, feds, etc., and general fund."


Bottom line, less than 25% of the agencies operating costs are covered by recreational license revenue.

Hope that helps.


GREAT POST!! Very informative. The 1st link (http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/01145/wdfw_01145.pdf) lists all of the activities WDFW does, and then breaks down their cost and # of FTE's. Except at the end of page 3 it has a caveat that says:

Funding also supports: Commercial and recreational licensing; asset management; regional operations; information
technology; fiscal and budget management, public information, human resources, safety, revolving accounts; Fish and
Wildlife Commission activities; policy and executive management. Or what you could call ADMINISTRATION, and it doesn't seem to break this component of the Agency down.

The second link you post (http://wdfw.wa.gov/about/legislative/fact_sheets/2010_facing_future.pdf) has the 2009-2011 biennuim budget listed as $327.1 million dollars and 1,386 FTE's. So if you take the infomation from your 1st link and calculate:

The TOTAL you only get 1,206.6 FTEs for $252.7 million dollars of funding which averages out to around $209,431 spent per FTE (Full time equivalent employee for those of you that don't know). Where's the rest? Well if you take $327.1 minus the $252.7 you get $74.4 million left over for what I assume is the FUNDING ALSO SUPPORTS little caveat portion (23% of the TOTAL BUDGET!!!). Doing the same mah for FTEs (1,386 minus 1,206) you get 179.4 FTEs which calculates out to over $400,000 per FTE for F*#$ing ADMINISTRATIVE costs for WDFW. You've got to be kidding me!!!!!! I've seen JohnQ on other posts complain about the # of IT folks they had, but not until I reviewed the actual #'s the AGENCY ITSELF PUT OUT THERE can I say. . . that is one HELL of a BUREACRACY! Hell of a good reason to raise my licencse fee right?!

Goes back to the classic 2 old government rules: 1) Bureacracies must grow or die; 2) Bureacracies never die.


Edited by rojoband (01/30/11 08:28 PM)