FWS Management of Sportsmen's Trust Funds Under Congressional Scrutiny The Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) management of the sportsmen's trust funds was the subject of two investigations initiated last year by House Resources Committee Don Young (R-AK). Three hearings were held to examine the findings from those investigations.
The trust funds are commonly called the Pittman-Robertson trust fund for wildlife restoration and the Dingell-Johnson (or Wallop-Breaux) trust fund for sport fish restoration. Of special importance to hunters and firearm owners is the Pittman-Robertson trust fund which derives its money from excise taxes on firearms, ammunition and archery equipment. Although the funds are designed to go to state fish and wildlife agencies as grant money, the Congress set aside a certain percentage that the FWS could use to cover the costs of managing the trust funds, called administrative funds. FWS receives 8% of the total collected annually in the case of Pittman-Robertson for administrative purposes. Translated into dollars, it amounts to around $30 million a year.
Young's investigation was prompted by concerns from NRA and others over FWS' use of these administrative funds. Concerns surfaced when Congress began consideration of a proposal to give state wildlife agencies additional conservation dollars. Expanding the Pittman-Robertson trust fund triggered the question over how much the administrative funds should be increased to cover FWS' cost of managing an enlarged trust fund. In order to answer that question, Young asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to conduct an audit of FWS' performance in using the administrative funds over the past decade.
GAO presented its preliminary findings to the Committee at a July 20th hearing. Those findings validated the concerns and fears of sportsmen's groups. GAO found "ineffective management oversight, inadequate internal controls, and inadequate policies and procedures" of the administrative funds. GAO witness Barry Hill concluded that "Collectively, these conditions have spawned a culture of permissive spending." Outraged over the breach of trust, Young declared FWS actions to be tantamount to stealing funds from the states. His concerns were echoed by numerous Committee members who participated in the hearing.
Young opened his second hearing September 29 with a focus on the use of administrative funds to pay for general overhead costs incurred by the FWS. Although acceptable practice is for FWS program offices to contribute to general overhead costs, the administrative funds were being used to pay an excessive percentage of such costs. Calling it a "shell game," GAO said that by using administrative funds to pay more than a fair share of overhead costs FWS freed up appropriation dollars to pay for its own projects, further reducing the amount of money that should have been sent to the states for their wildlife projects as the law intended. Under questioning from Committee members, GAO called FWS' management of the trust accounts, in terms of basic accounting practices to track expenditures, "one of the worst managed programs we have ever encountered."
Additionally, the Committee heard testimony from past and current Service employees. They testified to agency mistreatment as a result of their refusal to bend the rules in approving expenditures of administrative funds and refusal to withhold data and other information about management of the administrative funds from Committee and GAO investigators.
Under subpoena, the Interior Department's Assistant Secretary responsible for overseeing the management of FWS was called to testify before the Committee on October 26th. Don Barry was joined at the table by the Service's top official, Jamie Clark. Both engaged in often heated question and answer parlays with Committee members. The debate boiled down to three critical issues: whether or not FWS had authority to create separate pots of money to fund its own wildlife projects from the sportsmen's dollars, the legality of using administrative funds for foreign travel, personnel bonuses, relocation costs, and other expenses unrelated to managing the trust funds, and whether the funds were used to pay an excessive share of agency overhead costs.
Over the past several months, NRA has participated in a task group created
by the Chairman to identify what reforms need to be made through legislation
in order to end existing abuses and prevent future mismanagement. Young
will be introducing reform legislation soon and is expected to schedule
Committee action on it sometime in February. For copies of testimony from
both the hearings and for Committee press releases you may want to log
on to the House Resources Committee's
website. Look for the article written by ILA Executive Director Jim Baker
entitled, "Betrayal of Trust" in the March issue of the American Hunter.
Posted: 2000-01-28