Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: For the record, my name is Jason Batchelder. I'm the commissioner of Fish and Wildlife Department. I'm joined by Elizabeth Strattenden. She's our director of finance and administration. She's our our business manager and and the person that generally keeps the lights on for us. I'm I'm going to lean on her a little bit for for some granular questions. If we have them, but generally, we're gonna we're gonna tell a little bit of a story, and and hit the wave tops. Have, as you know, we haven't been into appropriations yet, but it certainly wanna give the due to our committee of jurisdiction here. So we have our before you our 2027 governor's recommend. And we can jump right into the second slide, if you'd She's just gonna follow me. Great. So as you can see in our overview here, I'm gonna go over our mission and department structure, our prior year fiscal year appropriation update, budget overview, our proposed budget language, our division budgets and reports and other information. Heads up, may have skipped over one of the reports because it doesn't tell us anything about one of the federal reports. But as you've likely heard prior commissioners and maybe me say, our our mission is the conservation of fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the people of Vermont. We also dedicate as you know, a great deal of time towards including and providing quality fish and wildlife based recreation and reaching Vermonters with the best possible information about these resources. I've done some testimony on food security earlier in the session. And I like to think that that's a big part of what we do also. We can serve a great deal of unseen wildlife that maybe not unseen, but what folks like to look at us as the hunting and fishing department, We are absolutely that, but we are absolute that that is probably one small fraction of of what we do. And I and I know, commissioner short sleeve mentioned that last year. From natural communities, fish habitat, invertebrates, wildlife, and plants, are we are encompassing of it all. And and you'll see in our FTEs and our budget, we we fight way above our weight class in most of these areas, but we do consider ourselves, the experts in these fields. I wanted to point out, since we have an invertebrates thumbnail there that we have a zoologist on staff, Mark Ferguson, who is a who is a state biologist, zoologist by trade, who's recently completed work on on cataloging and identifying Vermont's 350 plus pollinator species. You may have heard about this work. In that process, identifying over 130 who are in critical need with other partners such as Vermont Center for EcoStudies and Kent McFarlane, other folks of the like, really leaned into this to see why we're experiencing and nationally, a huge decline in our in our pollinator species. So I like to go from from maybe one polar extreme to the other to show what we encompass as a department and that's certainly something to be extremely proud of. Mark has made this his life's work and we're super proud of him. We also serve all Vermonters from hunters and anglers to people who just like to look at wildlife from a distance. We work closely with towns and communities as well as providing direct assistance to landowners to provide habitat improvements on their property. We take our commitment to future generations very seriously. And we work to ensure, that the healthy and thriving wildlife and wild places we enjoy today will be here for those future generations. Here's a little bit about our organizational structure. So the commissioner's office is very small, three FTEs, which I think we have a slide on that next or down the line, But very small commissioner's office. We have, five other divisions, administration, wildlife, fish, the warden service and our outreach division. Some of the hopefully I'll have time to get into, includes ADA accessibility for fishing access areas, strategic wood additions, which maybe some of you have been involved in seeing some of that work. Chop and drop, we used to call it, restoring stream functions and increasing trial populations and providing roost habitat on public and private lands for Vermont bat species and and continuing outreach for communication on materials and conservation education programs that are accessible to all Vermonters of varying English language proficient proficiencies or or none. Our administration division provides policy planning, personnel operations and financial management for the department. As I said, keeping the lights on, managing grants, keeping us within our budgets. The warden service, may seem self explanatory, but they've expanded their, their reach in in years, including the time that I was there, which is why we changed the name when I was there from the warden force to the warden service, essentially providing support for all aspects of life in Vermont, including a lot of support to other law enforcement agencies. The wildlife division, in my mind, is largely focused on land and habitat conservation and detection, even though they do have, big game biologists there, to manage harvestable species, and small game biologists and others that you hear about a lot. I like to think of them managing land. And that's become more and more critical over time and something that you've all helped us with tremendously. The fish division, monitoring fish populations and stocking fish. Vermonters have come to expect the quality that that our fish culture specialists provide and and certainly the the results speak for themselves. I I'm not sure if you're aware. I think I have told you at one point that Vermont has Vermont is the North Star for many agencies and their fish culture operations. And we're, as we speak hosting, nine in person states and 40 online participants, I'm not sure how many states that translates to, to essentially, study our fish culture process. And, in that in that process, those attendees can check a box and thereby, get a promotion in their home state. So, better way of saying they must come to Vermont's fish culture school to get a certain level of promotion in their state. It's not all of them, but most of the Northeast states, see Vermont as their as the gold standard. And the outreach division, likely most famous for the camps. But we also do a tremendous amount of education. All our all our online platforms are managed through outreach. Let's go fishing programs, which touched so many folks and hunter education. Touching on some prior year fiscal updates without getting too far into the weeds here. This is essentially something that has been asked for this year to show some status updates of these funds. The the Lake Champlain International and Lake Champlain Walleye Association are essentially pass through funds. We receive those monies and and and transfer them into efforts that relate to those to those entities. The $185,000 from last year is is a one time transfer key to presenting a balanced budget for FY '26. And then an $80,000 appropriation for for wardens radios, which is not quite complete. Hopefully, making that whole this year. I think we got just under half of what we needed. Again, an LCI appropriation and, a small cash fund for the for the Lake Champlain Walleye Association. Some of you may be familiar with the history there where, they would raise their own walleye and ponds. It's transferred to our our purview now, but they still maintain the money and give it over to us. And then, the, the instigation of a fish and wildlife specialist position I was told came through you folks. Thank you so much. Are, we are in the process nearing completion of hiring that individual of a very promising candidate that I I'm going to meet with over the next week to to hopefully seal that deal. And that's that's the act one eighty one land use act modernization position that that you helped us with. So thank you for that. A quick breakdown of our of our of our expenses by division. The fish division is the most expensive, but it does contain fish culture, our access area program, which is a lot of federal money in our in our watershed, excuse me, our yeah, our watershed grants out fund program. Warden services is the next most expensive and that's that's understandable and has gone up year over year since since I can remember in 2012. I think I think we all can agree that post COVID life is is extraordinarily expensive. We try to be and I'll probably say this again, we try to be as absolutely as lean as we possibly can with largely experiencing our pressures from salaries, benefits and ADS costs. We broke out lands at a request. Used to be held within our wildlife division, but folks like to see the amount of money we're spending on lands. And I think that's important. Because as I've as I've mentioned, I I look at that wildlife division as as a a land and habitat management division, and we do spend a lot of money buying and conserving land. And that is is our anticipated cost. '27. So I will our next slide is our proposed budget. Oh, please.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yep. Representing. Thank you. Can you just real quickly just talk about the warden service and how you allocate how many wardens are? Is it by land? Is it by And just wondering if you feel like you have, there's enough wardens to kind of manage the issues that we're dealing with.

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: Maybe, soon as we're down to twelve minutes, I'm gonna jump to my warden service slide to help me out. It doesn't encapsulate everything that you're asking. I think we're experiencing a time where the warden services turned from a proactive law enforcement division into a reactive law enforcement division. I think it's to their chagrin at times. I feel like every warden just wants to hide behind a blade of grass and wait for a violation to happen in front of him or her. And that's what makes them happy. But looking looking across the relevance landscape for the last X amount of years, the expectations on on a on a conservation officer in Vermont demand, that they be reacting. And so we feel, that it's it's a extraordinary give and take with being able to patrol for violations, and or to be able to react to a to a call of someone that's got a skunk with a soda can stuck on its head, right? These are all things that they do, and they do them well. So I think to answer your question, in November, November, December, if we had a warden in every town, that warden would be too busy. Right? I truly believe that. But in in April, May, June, maybe maybe not so relevant anymore in this example, because we have so many bears. And socially, our carrying capacity is being pressed. I think there are months of the year when we're okay. There are months of the year when I think wardens would say they're too busy every year. I completely commiserate with that having done that job. But I think we're at a time of transition. And I and I don't know if if more wardens is the answer. I think that there are many who would say that that is that is true. But balancing the cost across the spectrum of the agency is is a huge consideration for me and and how many we could we could support. Looking at other other funding sources for for their support is always a possibility, but then straying into a public safety role pulls us into other fields. Public safety seems to be a used to be an option for us if we could get lean more toward public safety, like like say Maine or Minnesota or some of the some of the states that do a tremendous amount of public safety facing work. We we we still feel we do that work, but we need to be wildlife focused to be to be true to our mission. It's always worth a discussion. But did I answer your question? Okay. I don't know if I should rewind or maybe I'll go back to where I was and then and then just was gonna say I'll be in this afternoon to talk about our official access area license. We are in the early stages, that second bullet there of exploring a committee fill and looking to allow us to make whole changes that the board makes when they propose a tag for us we are experiencing this year. And any of you who bought your 2026 hunting license got a free second buck tag this year. We don't wanna give that away next year and hope hoping we can avoid that. But if we if we can, it won't be the end of the world. But we did build that in to some of our budget language. I'll flick through these very quickly. This is our administration division, commissioner's office, business office and licensing. And I've touched on some of what we are responsible for here. Hunting, fishing license sales is a big one, federal grants, and then ADS and and other contracts management, pilot fees, and and then policy and planning that that comes from from my desk. Here's our administration divisions expense, excuse me, our budget and our where our money goes. Largely general fund, some fish and wildlife fund, and then where it goes is largely to internal service funds, ADS costs and pilot. Some salary and benefits, but in this in this particular and you'll see the scales tip in other divisions. But in in this instance, we are we are leaner on the salary and benefits side because of our our pass through and and some of the contracts we manage. Onto the wild lake division, managing land, outreach, botanists and our ecologists and our natural community scientists live here. A lot of conflict based work. We are banking a little bit of vacancy savings within the wildlife division this year. They have, as you can see 37 FTEs and some temps. I got to spend a day in the field with with a group of these wildlife managers on Tuesday where we did a strip cut of some alders that are that are getting too old up in Wolcott. It's a wonderful day. I I think if we had a thousand more technicians, we would we would still be too busy with our with our wildlife management desires and and dreams. I'm gonna jump down to our budget information here. This is our breakdown by fund. We are fortunate that that Pittman Robertson dollars do cover some of this with match, and then you can see where the money goes here. These these are largely scientists, technicians. Right? So we're not spending money on overhead. We're spending it on on keeping smart, dedicated folks in the field and and managing our wildlife. Fisheries, as I've said, is is broken down into three sections, but it's, it's it it is expensive because of the amount of fish we manage and the quality of fish with that we manage. It's people and not overhead, they've become so lean. I don't know where we would go if we had to use one less pound of fish food, I really don't. And it and it's within this division. I'll I'll skip over this so you can see look at our operating costs there in in f y twenty seven compared to salaries and benefits. It's just remarkable. The amount that these that these folks do without without the overhead. And we're talking about a place where you would think electricity and fish food and infrastructure and trucks would would eat us out of house and home. These folks have pared down their operating costs over time. It's so remarkable to see that certainly worth pointing out. But this is where we're experiencing our rift and I wanted to to touch on this when we when we are looking at salary and benefit costs as being our highest our pressure, combined with with recent ADS increases, we had to propose this rip because we simply did not have any other place to turn. And this was the most appropriate division because of the expenses that they experienced. Some of the questions we might get are around what what would be the result of this rip, and it's and it's going to have to be an internal look at currently at our our management request for cultured fish, which drives, the amount of fish that we produce and and look taking a deep dive into what it's going to take to to keep Vermonters happy, and to be able to live within our means, because, these costs are outstripping our ability, to keep as many positions on the landscape as we as we've currently had. A quick snapshot into our access area breakdown. You hear a lot about access areas because they can be contentious at times. We do receive a lot of federal funds here and we have to live within those guidelines. And hence the contention, you may have heard about bills and other committees that are that are looking to try to rectify some of that and we're watching those closely. A lot of contracts, a lot of plowing, a lot of kiosk work, lot of mowing. And so that's where a lot of that money goes. So warden service, we've we've touched on quite a bit. I had a couple of great warden stories I wanted to tell you, but I I don't think we're gonna have time for them today. But 44 FTEs, we are holding a a position and a half, I think. Is that still right? Just just one position vacant. We were we were fortunate that we were made all around the the reclass from last year, and so we were able to free up a couple of those vacancy savings. As you can see, they do a lot. And I in an interest of time, I'd love to come back and bring the colonel and tell you some fun stories about what they do. But I know that you've all been likely touched by a warden story at one time and they're they're extraordinary group as as are all the, technicians and biologists we have. There's their breakdown. As you can see, their their salary and benefits have have caught up. They rightfully so, over the course of of years, there's there's been there's been sort of right sizing and making them whole. I think they're they're at a place now where they're where they're getting paid for their expertise. For one one quick number is that there are only about 7,000 conservation law enforcement officers in the country. So it's it's a specialized and nuanced career as you can ever imagine. And something that's that's worthy of those, salaries and benefits. There's one number there, the $36,000 for Wharton physical fitness that are required by contract to stay fit. And so they've been living without these, these fitness incentives for a period of time now and we chose to put it back in this year. Outreach, as I mentioned, is camps and social media platforms. Camps is where I got my start as a natural resource instructor 2001. And we get a lot of employees out of camps, They touch so many children. We are experiencing a moderate increase in in the camp tuition this year. It's going from 300 to $350 doesn't even cover the food. So I'm very fortunate to be able to do that. And that'll, reflect in 2027 also. I probably will wrap up with the slide saying I've got a minute. Because of some funding that we were able receive last year and hold on to, are deep into a benchmarking study now where we're studying 10 other states through the Wildlife Management Institute and DJ case consulting firms that are going to that are going to compare us in relevancy based lens, and help us stay relevant and become more relevant, to Vermonters over the next two thousand thirty-fifty years, hopefully. Combined with that is a fish modernization project study, where we're trying to trying to make our leanest division even leaner. We will see how much success we have. I'm very excited about the results. A spoiler alert, they came here and they they they recognized immediately that they were looking at the best of the best. And so they knew that they were for a significant challenge. Anyway, made me feel, better and worse at the same time. And I'll be in this afternoon to talk about our area license. I'm excited to do that. And those bottom two bullets, they're just essentially our next steps for our relevancy study. There's our legislative reports that we are, that we owe or have delivered. We have, a couple of performance based reports, in where I was I was encouraged to come with a fun story for each one, and I I knew we would not have time, but I I could be pressed into it if you like. And then our adaptive reports, and I I think I think I actually muted that slide, so you probably aren't gonna see it. But that's that's where I'll wrap up a minute over. But I'm happy to take any questions. I know lunch is probably very dear to you.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon, Chair]: Representative and all of us. Yes. Thank you. But but you do have a question for COVID if you're

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: in the

[Rep. Amy Sheldon, Chair]: The part I really like about your presentation is this very last part, the performance report, with all these metrics and, like, how you're doing year over year on achieving your targets. Mean, that is that's just it. I love seeing that fleshed out, that you're right down to the extreme detailed level on what it is that we're trying to accomplish, and here's how we're accomplishing, how well we're doing and acknowledging those things. So thank you so much for putting that level of detail together. One metric that I would suggest is how many pounds of meat are harvested during the entire all of the hunting seasons and fishing seasons and the associated market value of all?

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: Got that. You do. I will put it

[Rep. Amy Sheldon, Chair]: in there. Yep.

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: I've got That would be awesome.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon, Chair]: Because there are so many Vermonters that depend on for their food source. It's just truly important.

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: It's great. We have studied that so deeply, to not put it in there, little I'm blushing. We we've studied that to a point where and we've underestimated it with good reason. Right? We we we we are on on the conservative side, but we've I've testified in two committees on how much food we provide, and I and I'm sorry not to have it in there, but we will put it in. Thank you for pointing that out, and and I will make sure the performance individual who's responsible for this gets the credit. So thank

[Rep. Amy Sheldon, Chair]: you for mentioning It's it's important part of the whole the planning cycle Yeah. Everything. Like, it's like What do we wanna accomplish? What are the key metrics that are are sure that we're gonna get in? What do we have to do to track it to get and then and then what do have to do to achieve those? You know, what what are the programs we put in place to achieve those? So it's all part of a full cycle planning. You're talking about the legal It's be harmless in Britain. Yes. Say that again. Yeah.

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: Well, we we do capture roadkill also a little bit. Oh. And and there's a venison for Vermonters program Yeah. That takes some of that the salvageable meat and and brings it to food shelves that the two wardens run themselves half on stay time, half on their own time. It's a wonderful program. They receive donations for packaging and the food shelves say it's the first protein gone off the shelf, when they deliver it every time. So pretty neat. Pretty neat. Thanks.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thanks for your presentation. Sorry. We're a little tight on time with lunch. I might I'm and we might be able to talk a little bit about this this afternoon when you're back. But the benchmarking study sounds really intriguing and interesting and hope we'll get a chance to see that. Obviously it's almost done, but I'm curious about whether governance has been involved, whether there's an aspect of governance. You and I've talked about this a little bit outside of committee. Guess I've been really curious about the evolution of fish and wildlife boards. I've also seen other states have boards that oversee more than just the fish hunting regulations. And so I was just curious if that benchmarking study involves governance at all.

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: I don't know, but I will find out. Commissioner sorry, COO short sleeve is running those two studies. I would love to have her round that out for us. I should know that and I don't.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It'd be great to have her into findings after it's done in March.

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: And I think we'll still be in session when that culminates, right?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, says March 2020.

[Jason Batchelder, Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife]: Yeah. We shall see, but I'm happy to do it, and I'll I'll see her in an hour. So I'll mention that. Yeah. And you're so welcome. Thanks for having us.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. Thank you very much.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon, Chair]: Members, this concludes our morning session. We're going offline.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Until 01:15.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon, Chair]: 01:15.