Already on the other board, thought some of you might want to know what we're looking at too.
Hope none of this is a repost.

Message from the Director's Office

The Governor announced his decision this morning to make $80.7 million in additional cuts to the budget passed by the state legislature. His decision makes final the special session deliberations.

As you have all heard in the media, the state is experiencing severe financial difficulties and needs to make cuts to programs in order to balance the budget. ODFW will have to cut some general fund and lottery funded programs as part of this effort.

An initial review of the cuts finds ODFW programs will be affected in the following ways:
§ Three hatcheries will close: Salmon River, Cedar Creek, and Trask
§ Willamette Trout Program production ceases
§ A GIS position in Habitat Division will end
§ Oregon Coastal Zone Management contract ends
§ Other cuts were also made.
Many questions exist related to the announcement. All affected staff in ODFW have been notified. Some opportunities exist for affected staff to move into vacant positions at other facilities. Human Resources and Northwest Region will be working directly with these employees to ensure they receive assistance during this difficult time.

We know the following right now:

Why these hatcheries?
The decision was made by the Governor's Office and the Agency based on four criteria: 1) 100% state funding, 2) high deferred maintenance costs, 3) high cost of operations, and 4) new DEQ/EPA pollution discharge permit requirements.

-All three of the hatcheries are funded 100% with state revenues and have deferred maintenance costs.
-Cedar Creek Hatchery requires significant upgrades to improve water quality discharges and meet state requirements.
-Salmon River Hatchery has high costs of operation relative to other state funded facilities.
-Trask Hatchery has high deferred maintenance costs.

When will the hatcheries close?
July 1, 2002

What will happen to the fish?
-Salmon and steelhead smolts will be released as scheduled this spring.
-Adult wild broodstock fish on hand will be immediately released into the appropriate stream.
-After evaluation, juvenile fish and fry on hand will be released to appropriate streams, lakes and ponds.
-Returning fish will be handled as directed by basin plans or other management directives, except that no eggs will be taken for broodstock (i.e. carcass sales, food share donations, carcass placement, and natural spawning in some areas).

Additional information is located on the Governor's website at www.governor.state.or.us.

We are developing a news release and fact sheets to provide you with additional information. They will be released later in the day.

Anne Pressentin Young
Acting Administrator, Information & Education Division
Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
(503) 872-5264 ext 5356
anne.m.pressentin@state.or.us

What does this mean for Tillamook county? No more Kilchis, Wilson, Trask and Nestucca hatchery Winter Steelhead. No more Wilson and Nestucca Broodstock Steelhead. No more hatchery Spring Chinook in Tillmook Bay, the Wilson, Trask and Nestucca. So basically no more fishing Spring Chinook on the coast because as of this year, it's hatchery fishing only. No more Fall Chinook Broodstock Program on the Nestucca (this one we just saw our first year returns of jacks last year) and no more Fall Chinook hatchery production on the Salmon River, Trask and Nestucca. No more Summer steelhead on the Wilson, Trask, Kilchis, Nestucca as well as no more Coho hatchery Production in Tillamook Bay and the Trask. No more coastal trout fishing including all coast lakes trout planting. No more broodstrock program and all Winter Steelhead production on the Siletz river and possible the Summer Steelhead there too. These fish are spawned and reared at the Ceder creek and Salmon river hatcheries. (Many thanks to Scott Ammerman for the info)

Comments?

http://www.governor.state.or.us/governor/mail/mailform.html

This is bad news indeed! Time to get motivated Oregonians and blaming Kitzhaber alone is not the answer. The senate,legislature and governor are equally to blame.
You can bet that the Association of Northwest Steelheaders will not stand idly by and allow these cuts to go unchallenged! We sponsored and monetarily supported the implementation of the broodstock programs on the north coast.
It's one thing to stand by and ***** about what is happening it's another to get up and do something about it.

It would be very sad to see those hatcheries closed and nothing done to replace them. The location of the hatcheries mentioned (all near Portland/Salem/Eugene) makes me wonder if this isn't just a political bluff to force the republican legislature's hand on increasing sin taxes to help with the deficit. I hope so. I've been outspoken about how bad I think hatchery fish are for wild stocks, but this seems like a slap in the face to the people of NW Oregon if it comes to pass. At the same time, those hatcheries have been rumored to be in a financial mess for awhile. If they do close, maybe a new, more modern hatchery(ies) could be opened on the N. Coast when the economy's better? Scary for some to think about, I'm sure. Me thinks the Gov. will receive some letters this week!

Geeez..........there has got to be something that can be done! Stew, I will see you at the next meeting, next wednesday right? This is as grim of news as I have heard in a long time! First they have reduced the number of hatchery plants and now we're talking stopping them completely? What a bunch of BULL***T!!! All of this from a Governer that is a supposed fisherman? How many dollars in revenue for the Tillamook region are they going to sacrifice?

I am a little ignorant on how money is spent here in Oregon country but how about some help from the lottery funds? How about making some of the hikers and camper pay some of the costs to maintain so much of facilities as they use? What a slap in the face!! All the money that is pilfered from the Pittman Funds and others that are supposed to be directed at wildlife are being thrown into the general "slush" fund and pi**ed away on something that it was never meant for!!
This is CRAP!!! I for one am writing a letter----tommorrow!

Crayfin out!!!

Next Thursday Crayfin. Yeah it's pretty gloomy!
Here is a short review of the cuts.
No summer or winter hatchery steelhead in the Kilchis,Wilson,Nestucca.
No summer steelhead in the Siletz.
No Chinook or coho in the Trask!
No coastal spring Chinook.
These are hatchery fish I'm talking about!
This is as bad as it get's for the North Coast folks.

I sent my letter. This news is real sad. You guys don't know how much I love to fish the Oregon coast in early summer.

Stew, as bad as that N. coast hatchery scenario is, it can get worse than that. The native fish will have more fishing pressure put on them - both the wild chinooks of the Wilson and Kilchis, and the wild steelhead in all of those drainages where chumps are more likely to illegally keep nates if this actually goes thru. And no broodstock programs to augment the dwindling nates. Could a complete closure be far behind in such a drastic scenario? ****!

And it would shift more concentrated fishing pressure to other NW rivers! If they have to make hatchery program cuts due to this budget crisis, why can't the cuts be spread out more?!? Crap!

Too bad there aren't more repub fishermen in the state senate. But it's hard to blame them for resisting more tax increases. What a mess. Hopefully it will all heal itself if a sustained economic recovery will come, in the not-too-distant future. ... Time to write letters again.

Waiting for economic recovery according to RT's pridictions, which I think hold some wisdom, is not an option. Our fisheries are in the entire NW corner of the state are going to be non-existant in a few years. Then it would take 5+ years to rebuild them and that doesn't even include all the volenteer (sp) work to establish brookstock runs etc.

If they close those hat. it will stay that way for a long time imo. I can't fathom this. All the thousands of lives this will impact. Guides etc. I don't see any commercial hatcheries getting closed. How about wiping out the net pens instead. This is purely political. There is at least 5 hatcheries that put a significant ammount of production into the Columbia net pens.

Kitzhaber sucks.

Bugle,

Kitzhaber didn't decide which hatcheries to close, ODFW did. They picked those hatcheries because they have high defered maintenance costs and they're 100% state funded.

I think Tilamook needs a source for funding the hatchery programs other than state funds.

Just to clarify the discussion, what they mean by "deferred maintenance costs" is this: they are saying that there is some large amount of work to maintain the hatchery, that this work has needed to be done for some time, and has been deferred, or postponed. This implies that there is some significant work that is required in order to keep the hatchery running. Sounds to me like they don't have the money to do the work, and are trying to allocate what money they have to keep as many programs as they can running.

Folks in Washington, this is coming our way, too. Too many people voting to cut taxes without figuring out that something has to go. Our state (and national) park systems are also sitting on large amounts of deferred maintenance. It won't take much to make them have to be shut down because the outbuildings, roads and trails are unsafe. The politicians are going to have to chose between paying for recreational activities like fishing and hiking, and more basic services like roads and social services. "Coming to this location soon, LESS FUN 4 U". And why, because we told them to be listening to that thieving idiot, Tim Eyeman.

Not that I have an opinion on the subject or anything.

Stew and I just got back from the ODFW meeting this evening in Cannon Beach. Essentially Lindsay Ball, Director of ODFW, and about a dozen of his commissioners came only to confirm that these hatchery closures are indeed for real. They are directives from Oregon Governor Kitzhaber's adminstration to cut out the 3 NW hatcheries. After questions, it was determined that Ball's administration had a lot of say in which 3 of 5 candidate hatcheries should get the axe. Despite lots of arguements from N. coastal fishers and guides, and several of us from the Portland Metro area, that this is both unfair and a major hit to that area's economy, it had no apparent affect on the commission's decisions.

But it's not all over yet - stay tuned.

RT

Did anyone notice that we once again have no money for fish, but both Oregon and Washington have about $27 million dollars each to partly fund a $200 million dollar project to deepen the Columbia River by 3 feet? This project includes, among other things, blasting bedrock and filling deeper sturgeon holes. The Oregonian newspaper recently completed a 6 month investigation concerning this project and their report covered almost 11 pages of print over three days. It is titled "Port's Quest to deepen Columbia built on flawed, outdated data."

It's not a very bright scenario for the North Oregon coast. Unless some minds are changed we will in the next few years essentially see the end of the hatchery salmon and steelhead runs on the Tillamook area streams. While it would be wonderful to be able to sustain a harvestable native run of these fish it just isn't realistic. The native broodstock programs which was the result of a lot of volunteer effort by a lot of people will end! The wild fish that were collected for the egg harvest will be released and very soon.
To blame one individual like the governor of Oregon is short-sighted and naive. Sure he owns part of the blame but so do the state legislature who deemed it necessary to make this a partisan issue.
Hopefully cooler heads will prevail.
Stew

RT, Stew

Very good posts.

It is easy to get caught up in the emotion of these types of issues but a more philosophical view is what we all should try to attain.

I believe we can have sustainable, harvestable wild runs, just not commercial harvest.

POS Clerk

Silver,

I usually agree with your posts, but I gotta call bunk on the last one here. The Puget Sound enhancement fee, 10 bucks, that we've been paying for several years now was specifically introduced to boost hatchery production of Puget Sound chinook for recreational YEAR ROUND fishing, not the limited windows of opportunity we are being dealt now. First it was an additional fee added to the license and the fees were targeted directly at the hatcheries. Now, it is included in the general license fee which is in turn rolled into the WDFW general fund. There goes your hatchery funding! There is another thread going on here about this issue, "Latest State budget news".
http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=008389

The so call 30 dollar tabs initiative is not even germain to hatchery funding, especially given the fact that the legislature in years past instead of using the vehicle excise tax to build the infrastucture of roads and bridges as that tax was created and intended for, instead took the money and rolled it into the general fund where we all know, the number of questionable spending programs is a bottomless pit. They abused that tax and didn't use it as intended. The initiative certainly did reduce funding for a lot of things, and no doubt there have been some hardships to endure. However, it is not even remotely responsible for hatchery closures, but the abuse of the enhancement fee most definiteley is.

Just another opinion!!!

Seacat,

You usually agree with me? I always knew you had style and taste. No problem with having another opinion, let me see if I can convince you to change it.

My distaste about the license initiative, and resulting pessimism is based on some experience I have that is a little different than most folks, education and experience in government fund accounting and public finance, degrees in accounting and economics, and considerable experience in large organization management. I have run one company, and divisions of two others, so I think I have some perspective on how hard the problem of budget management may be. I also look at the problem from the private section side, but have traiing in the public finance side, so I understand some of what the structures and constraints are surrounding the budget problem.

There is a common perception that the fees that we pay for various things, such as licenses, gas taxes, ramp fees, etc., are or can be tightly linked to the service we are expecting to use as a result of paying that fee. The issue is, the fees are very rarely close to the actual cost of the underlying service, and many of the services or facilities are fairly complex. For example, a boat owner pays sales tax on the boat, gax tax to get to the ramp, a ramp fee, and a fishing license fee. He uses roads, hatcheries, game enforcement, coast guard, state patrol, water quality enforcement, and fisheries management. What are the odds that the amount of fee or tax that he pays are going to equal the cost of the service that he uses? How do you put a fee price on the value of having the safety and rescue folks ready for you if you happen to be involved in an accident?

All of these services don't just start up and stop at the drop of a hat, so if the government/the public want to have quality services, they have to be planned out and provided over time. The problem with tight funding via user fees is that user fees go up and down with the use, and so, if the usage of the fishery goes down because of bad fish returns, the money to support fisheries could go down, precisely at the time that more money is needed. To see this, think about what the fisheries enhancement fee collection must have been like over the past 7 years, as puget sound salmon fishing sucked. A lot of people quit fishing. I sold my boat, for example. So, just as the government needed my revenue to maintain the fishery, I quit contributing several of the fees helpful to maintain the boating environment. (As an aside, I purchased a salmon tag and paid the enhancement fee throughout this entire time, even though I didn't fish salmon for about five years)

If you accept that government services should be provided over a long term interval in a thoughtful manner, then, to fund those services, you need a pool of money that is not tightly linked to ups and downs in usage. This is not to say that user fees can't be part of the funding, but it would be a mistake to constrain the management expenditures to the user fee income.

What is happening in the state of washington now, is that we have modified the pool of revenue sources by removing one of the larger, more constant flow taxes. Fow better or for worse, the license fee tax had the benefit of being relatively constant in both good years and bad, and it grew with population. The sales tax goes down dramatically in bad years, as does the business and occupation tax. Bad years are when our need for social services peaks. Bad years also create conditions where the government wants to spend money to encourage business to come and stay in our state.

So the current situation creates a problem where the government's income goes down, as the need for public service rises. Bad, bad, bad. I should also be remiss if I didn't point out that the Washington state tax system levies a much higher percentage on your income than on Phil Condit's or Bill Gate's. Or, I might add, on Tim Eyeman's. I drive two new cars. I am saving over $1500 a year from the tax cut. About the same as Mr. Eyeman. I voted against the tax cut, because, unlike Tim Eyeman, I am not a greedy, selfish assh0le, and unlike many of his supporters, I believe that it is unwise for us to starve out government. It is certainly not perfect, but can you think of a better one in the world today?

We have been trying to keep the level of service we enjoy, while not paying for it, and that is unrealistic. It's easy to bash our government. It's a lot harder to contribute to solving the problem. Simplistic voting to reduce taxes, before answering the question of how we will pay for needed services is contributing to the problem. I urge you all to think carefully before siging petitions for, or voting for these measures in the future.

So, sorry for the diatribe, but, as you can tell, I have an opinion on the issue. Thanks for listening, if you got this far... I hope you will consider this line of thought in the future.

POS I think you may naive about harvestable native runs. What about the loss of habitat? Because of poor stream managment through the decades the loss of habitat cannot be reversed. Sounds pessimistic I know but it's also reality! To suddenly expect things to be reversed is not realistic.
Commercial harvest of these wild fish especially where treaties apply is not going to happen anytime soon either.
I'm sure you have your ideas about how to go about this so POS let's hear them.

Silver,

Whew!!! I hope your feeling better by getting all that off your chest!

You make some excellent points regarding long term thinking and pay as we go government. Because we don't have an income tax in Washington (did 'ya hear that Dave J! ha ha :p ), we pay taxes as we go, and you and I both know, that we are paying plenty. Even those that don't pay as much as we do through the taxes and fees related to recreational fishing still are users of the same infrastructure. I'm not sure I can blame myself for not paying enough on that point.

Seems to me that your position on taxing and spending in this state is based on a belief that the government is doing the best it can. This may be the case, I admit, governing is not a win-win situation, tough choices must be made. My belief though is that government is wasteful and doesn't necessarily do the job we need them to do, even if it's the best they can do. I think that the government should get out of the business of being all things to all people and provide the basic infrastucture to build the economy. Oh God, is that the basis of trickle down economics? Well, sorry for that, I just don't believe that more government is the answer to our challenges. Not saying I do know the answer either! I'm not the governer for God's sake!

On the issue of car tabs, I haven't said whether I agree or disagree with that referendum, what I said was that it cannot be blamed for the loss of hatcheries directly. If you agree that there was misuse of the exise tax as it was inacted, check it out Silver, it was inacted to pay for roads and infrastucture but was rolled into the general fund for ???, then I would agree that losing those funds has some indirect impact on the general funding for the WDFW. I'll skip over the fact that it was enacted when cars cost $3,000, not $30,000.

But separate from that issue is the enhancement fee. It was added to the cost of licenses for hatchery funding, to sustain them! Period. They have meddled with those funds and are now crying that they can't maintain and upgrade the existing facilities. I say foul ball! It was the program that was implemented by the legislature, and whether it was a constant source of income during good and bad periods of license purchases, geez, that's another topic all to itself. It was an additional fee. You know that Bern Shanks was the fall guy for the lack of license revenue, right? Now we've got Doctor Koenig, and the prescription he's on is to maintain maximum allowable harvest. Where will that eventually lead? You, yourself sold your boat, and I can understand why. Too much harvest. Not enough opportunity. OK, I digress...

I do agree that the wealthy are not taxed in a way that is fair to the working middle class. But will we ever be able to change that? Not as long as our government is for sale, which I believe that it is. Democrats and Republicans alike pander to special interest. Until we change that fact, we're screwed!

Just some more opinions, I know that it won't change the big picture or anyones mind, but I feel better!

We need to take care of our broodstock fish, and Tillamook Anglers needs your help now.
Please, if you have time or money, we need you!
We are going to take over the processing and maintenance of these fish until other arrangements are made.
If you have some free time, please consider giving Jerry Dove a call at: (503) 842-6519
or jdovetillanglers@tillanet.com
E mail him here.
Please, we need all the people we can get!

Jennie

Kitzhaber is most largly to blame on this issue. He chose to veto the will of many elected legislators and the will of the ODFW and to micro manage the state budget. His actions are, if not marginally illegal, at least unethical or manipulative. The Democratic fishermen of Oregon are just pawns in Kitzhabers Democratic agenda. The way I understand it, he really isn't cutting the budget, he is cutting his budget increases. All at the expense of hard working men and women of Oregon. I would like to see the numbers though.