Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission
Finance Committee
April 3, 2002
Commission Hearing RoomTexas Parks & Wildlife Department Headquarters Complex
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
1
5 BE IT REMEMBERED, that heretofore on the 3rd day
6 of April, 2002, there came to be heard matters under the
7 regulatory authority of the Parks and Wildlife Commission of
8 Texas, in the Commission Hearing Room of the Texas Parks and
9 Wildlife Headquarters Complex, Austin, Texas, beginning at
10 9:30 a.m., to wit:
11
12 APPEARANCES:
13 THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION:
14
15 FINANCE COMMITTEE:
16 CHAIR: Ernest Angelo, Jr, Midland, Texas
Donato D. Ramos, Laredo, Texas
17 Philip Montgomery, III, Dallas, Texas
John Avila, Jr., Fort Worth, Texas
18 Alvin L. Henry, Houston, Texas (Absent)
Katharine Armstrong Idsal, San Antonio, Texas
19 Mark E. Watson, Jr., San Antonio, Texas
Joseph Fitzsimons, San Antonio, Texas
20 Kelly W. Rising, M.D., Beaumont, Texas
Lee M. Bass, Chairman Emeritus, Fort Worth, Texas
21
22
23 THE TEXAS PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION:
Robert L. Cook, Executive Director, and other personnel of
24 the Parks and Wildlife Department
25
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1 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: We will now convene the
2 Finance Committee meeting and Ernie Angelo, I will give you
3 the gavel.
4 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Thank you, ma'am.
5 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Before we do that, hold on. I
6 want to introduce our new -- our newest commissioner, Kelly
7 Rising from Beaumont, Texas, we're going to welcome him
8 aboard.
9 (Applause.)
10 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: And I would also like to
11 welcome our Chairman Emeritus, Lee Bass. Thank you for
12 coming.
13 CHAIRMAN EMERITUS BASS: Good morning.
14 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Good morning.
15 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Ready? The first item of
16 business for the Finance Committee will be approval of the
17 committee minutes from the previous meeting. Does anyone have
18 any corrections or additions? Hearing none, is there a motion
19 that they be approved as submitted?
20 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: So moved.
21 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Second.
22 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: All in favor say aye.
23 ("Aye.")
24 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Oppose? The minutes are
25 approved. Now, Mr. Cook, the Chairman's Charges please.
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1 ITEM 1. CHAIRMAN'S CHARGES
2 MR. COOK: Thank you, sir. I have a couple
3 that I would like to cover with you. One of the Chairman's
4 Charges was to identify and assess nonprofit organizations
5 that partner with the Department and establish an official
6 nonprofit partner. In Item 7 of the Regulations Committee,
7 I'm pleased to report that we have addressed this charge.
8 Staff will propose a Commission policy amendment that names
9 the Parks and Wildlife Foundation of Texas as the Department's
10 official nonprofit partner.
11 Another charge was to adjust rates charged for
12 licenses and commercial fisheries programs to provide funds
13 necessary to recoup all department costs associated with the
14 management of each program. Staff has published proposed fee
15 increases in the Texas Register for public comment. Item 9
16 will ask for adoption of proposed fee increases of
17 approximately 20 percent. This is part of a gradual approach
18 to reaching full cost recovery. And finally that we review
19 and implement appropriate State Auditor audit recommendations.
20 As you will hear later, Suzy will also address this issue in
21 more detail. But we have addressed or are in the process of
22 addressing most of the State Auditor's Office recommendations
23 including, for example, developing a prototype balance
24 scorecard for performance measures. We have conducted
25 additional audits of the point-of-sale license system,
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1 recommended improvements to the mailroom and cashier's process
2 to ensure direct and immediate deposits of all revenue.
3 In addition, the Department contracted with
4 Elton Bomer and his assessment team to review and assess the
5 agency's business practices, operations, and organizational
6 structure and to develop recommendations to address the
7 findings of the State Auditor's Office. Mr. Bomer has
8 completed his report as of last Thursday and is here today to
9 present a summary of his findings and recommendations.
10 Thank you, sir.
11 ITEM 2. BOMER MANAGEMENT REVIEW
12 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Thank you. Item No. 2 on our
13 agenda is the report from the management review that all of
14 you are familiar with by Mr. Bomer's team and I would like to
15 ask Elton Bomer now if he would come forward and discuss his
16 presentation.
17 MR. BOMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Madame
18 Chairman and Commissioners. Mr. Chairman, good to see you
19 again. I appreciate the opportunity to be with you here today
20 to discuss some of the highlights of the report. With me the
21 project team, T.C. Mallett and Sidney Hacker, sitting back on
22 my right shoulder here. I'm going to spend about 15 minutes
23 talking about some of the things that are wrong at Parks and
24 Wildlife. I could spend all morning telling you about things
25 that are good about the Department, but frankly you didn't
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1 hire me to talk about things that don't need fixing. I'm
2 going to talk about the things that I think we could -- that
3 do need fixing.
4 You know, as I said, there are many, many good
5 things; you carry out your mission very well. You're doing a
6 good job for planning for future generations and I think
7 you're a very high profile agency and you do a really, really
8 wonderful job. But let me get into some of the details of the
9 report. This report concentrates mostly on financials --
10 financial controls, budget development, revenue collection
11 practices, the Auditor's Report of 2001, and also some
12 suggestions in management structure rearrangement for your
13 consideration.
14 In addition, we reviewed three prior audits
15 that were made by the State Auditor's Office in 1995, 1996 and
16 1998 that dealt with management controls, state park system
17 and the catalog system, and that was in 1999. Those were in
18 addition to the 2001 audit by the State Auditor's Office. In
19 addition to that we looked at several prior internal audits as
20 well. We find a very decentralized organization at the
21 Department. I think anyone who comes in like I have, you
22 would look at this as it's almost like ten separate companies.
23 Ten separate divisions. Because these separate companies have
24 their own budgets, they have their own purchasing, they have
25 their own equipment, they have their own legal staff and we
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1 think there's a lack of coordination between divisions 'cause
2 there's not a lot of incentive for them to the coordinate
3 between divisions. I didn't say cooperation, I said
4 coordination and there's a big difference. It's -- I think
5 that our proposed organization addresses this in a very
6 straightforward manner. I would be happy to discuss that with
7 you as well.
8 Now, with respect to the many questions that we
9 got about doing business on the phone and on the Internet. We
10 found in your call center they do a good job, about 350 to
11 400,000 calls a year. We found no 1-800 number for park
12 reservations and we know that you know that. And there's a
13 reason for that. Parks lose a lot of money and I think the
14 reasoning was we give them an 800 number, we are going to lose
15 more money. But people complain, that was the biggest
16 complaint we found in the public is that if we want to do
17 business with the State, we ought to be able to call a 1-800
18 number to be able to make the reservation. I know there are
19 discussions now. I talked with Mr. Cook about it --
20 discussions now with Texas On-line to explore on-line purchase
21 of hunting and fishing licenses as well.
22 With respect to the financial management
23 issues, we examined all the issues in the 2001 Auditor's
24 Report. We discussed the matter in detail with the State
25 Auditor's Office and his staff. We looked at revenue
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1 reconciliation which is a major item trying -- make sure that
2 we could -- or that you could reconcile your -- the entries
3 with respect to the internal financial system to the statewide
4 accounting system. You hired four part-time staff. Bob Cook,
5 we appreciate that. That was a recommendation that somebody
6 needed to be down there looking at each one of these lines
7 that were incorrect or unreconciled. Somebody has to be
8 looking at those and make the corrections so that it can be
9 reconciled. Those lines have gone down significantly since I
10 talked to you last. The numbers don't really matter that
11 much. You remember we started at $23 million, that's an
12 insignificant number, a gross number. Every day that number
13 changes. It goes down dramatically or goes up dramatically
14 each day. What really matters is the number of lines that are
15 reconciled because when you get to the end it will be zero.
16 So we got to get -- we got to concentrate on getting to the
17 end of the line. I visited with the staff this morning down
18 there, those four people in that room, and I went down to
19 thank them for their good work. They're part-time people,
20 they'll be here only until the task is completed and I think
21 they'll complete it in due time.
22 I found something that bothers us a little bit,
23 180 bank accounts at the Department. I don't think Enron had
24 that many. That's a lot of bank accounts. You got to
25 reconcile them. You've got to deposit them. You've got to
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1 sweep them. There's -- there may be reasons for those. I'm
2 not saying that you shouldn't have several bank accounts but
3 180 is probably too many. We found some excessive charges.
4 We found one major bank, for example, that -- well, I'll give
5 you the example. I looked at a situation where in a small
6 park in East Texas that had five deposits in one week about
7 $130 or $140 in deposits. The service charge was
8 $190-something dollar. So you went negative in that bank
9 account just for the charges for that week. Then they started
10 charging you $20 a day because you were negative. I just ask
11 you to look at that and make the appropriate changes. It may
12 be that you maybe send that money to Austin and let them
13 deposit it here someplace as opposed to following the
14 regulations that you have in place.
15 There are other reconciliation problems, for
16 example, in the expenditures that was not mentioned in the
17 Auditor's Report. Those are larger numbers actually or more
18 lines. We've asked the Department to concentrate on getting
19 revenue fixed first and then getting to expenditures. And
20 they'll get that done as well. Travel advances you know about
21 that. Petty cash. The State property was not reconciled to
22 the Controller's office. There was a huge number in
23 difference between the value of the State property of the
24 Department versus what's being shown over at the Controller's
25 office. That's a bookkeeping issue. Nobody is stealing
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1 property that we know of. We didn't find any evidence of
2 that; we didn't look for that. But we are satisfied it's a
3 matter of correct bookkeeping to get that fixed and they're
4 working on getting that fixed.
5 We found a problem that I was concerned about
6 that we found some lost money. Money 500 and I think it was
7 $539,000, over half a million dollars, that we found in 1998
8 and 1999 that fell off the table. You lost the money. You
9 gave it back. It went back to the Controller's office. It's
10 called lapsed in jargon of State government. That money
11 lapsed. There was almost another $251,000 and change that
12 almost lapsed as well. We worked with the CFO, she stopped
13 that from happening but it came close to that amount lapsing
14 as well. So in a cash strapped agency, nearly three-quarters
15 of a million dollars over that three-year period is too much
16 money to let lapse. I don't think that will happen in the
17 future since we've pointed it out.
18 With respect to the organizational changes and
19 the proposed organizational chart that is in your report. We
20 think that rather than making this look like ten separate
21 companies with the Executive Director as the president of the
22 holding company, we think that it ought to be more vertical
23 and we've tried to do that ever so slightly by inserting two
24 major jobs. One is like Bob Cook's old job as COO. We called
25 it Deputy for Programs. We also inserted a position called
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1 Deputy for Administration which would report to the Executive
2 Director. The two deputies, of course, would report to Bob
3 Cook. We're strongly suggesting that you have a general
4 counsel. This agency is large enough, certainly used to have
5 a general counsel. It was changed for a particular reason but
6 I think it's time to change it back again. And the kind of
7 significant reason for that is if there are ten divisions and
8 I don't know how many lawyers there are, let's say there are
9 five or six or maybe there's ten and you have them report to
10 the division director, you've got your legal staff reporting
11 directly to the person that decides how much money you're
12 going to make and sometimes the legal decision may not
13 coincide with what that division director thinks that wants to
14 be done. So it's appropriate to have a general counsel at a
15 certain level that makes a compatible legal document -- I mean
16 doctrine for the entire agency. And it certainly doesn't hurt
17 to have legal staff that has expertise in the different
18 divisions and I would expect them to continue to have that.
19 It's just the reporting structure that I had a problem with.
20 We found that the budget staffing was pretty --
21 pretty slight. We found four people doing the budget. You're
22 having some problems in the budget area. And you're trying to
23 do it with -- with one hand tied behind your back. We looked
24 at three different agencies, for example, that we were
25 familiar with. The Department of Insurance, TNRCC and one
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1 other -- the Controller's office. And the TNRCC came closest
2 to your agency because they're funds oriented, they take in a
3 lot of fees. They have about the same number of people you
4 do, about 3,000 people. They have 15 people in their budget
5 staff. You have four. We are suggesting transferring some
6 people -- we're not talking about increasing the number of
7 jobs, but transfer some people over there and give them some
8 help. They're going to be behind forever unless somebody
9 helps them in this area. Somebody needs to be screaming about
10 that. We're screaming about it and saying give them a little
11 more help in there to do this work.
12 Now, we are concerned about Federal funding.
13 Federal funding can be a big deal in an agency like yours.
14 The federal government, in my opinion, is friendly to large
15 States that do a job like you do -- that you do here.
16 Sometimes the financial division is surprised when a grant
17 rolls in the door. They don't even know it was coming because
18 of lack of coordination with all the divisions. We're
19 suggesting that there be a Federal funds coordinator whose
20 job, his or hers, is to go after Federal funds and keep up
21 with where they are and not be surprised when they come in.
22 We're suggesting that the internal auditor
23 report directly to you the Commissioners. I know that used to
24 be the case. It needs to be the case now. It needs to be the
25 case in every agency. It needs to be the case in every
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1 business. You need to have your own internal auditor so
2 you're not surprised when the State Auditor comes in and gives
3 you some of this stuff. You have an excellent internal
4 auditor in my opinion. He does a good job. You've got good
5 cooperation from him and I've looked at some other agencies
6 before and I've found some that are not so good. In this case
7 I think you have someone that does a good job. In fact, he
8 was in my office this morning talking about something that Bob
9 Cook has already got him working on that was in the report.
10 So I was impressed with that and appreciated it. With respect
11 to the fee increase proposal, I think you made an excellent
12 choice on that. I think the Department heeded the Governor's
13 desire that we trim our budgets down a little bit. We were
14 able to work with the Department in finding $7.2 million in an
15 operating budget balance that was largely unencumbered. Some
16 of it was obligated, but largely it was unencumbered. And the
17 Department, also under Bob's leadership, expressed a desire to
18 spend down some of fund balances to a more reasonable level
19 and we certainly agreed with the decision that you made.
20 Now, with respect to the long-term projects,
21 this is -- this is an important item I think. We worked very
22 close with Scott Boruff who we consider to be an outstanding
23 manager. He had good experience in the private sector in
24 project management and that's what you need here. And we were
25 impressed with the way he did his work and his staff did its
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1 work. You'll see in the appendix there some of the major
2 projects that are out there and in that appendix you'll see by
3 each project where the money is coming from for each project,
4 what the expenditures are expected by biennium until about
5 2009 and beyond, the need for the project, what the schedule
6 is and how much money you're short. That's an important item
7 for you to look at and pay attention to. The project team I
8 don't know if we agree with the Legislature or not, but I want
9 to convince you or try to convince you that the project team
10 feels no new projects ought to be added to the list for a long
11 time, or until you just cannot stand it anymore. You need to
12 pay for what you've already bought. And that's -- so you owe
13 a lot of money out there for these projects and it shows
14 pretty much exactly what it is and it also shows the operating
15 expenses that are anticipated for those projects.
16 We found one case where revenue was being
17 credited to the wrong fund. Now, I know that you're sensitive
18 to Fund 64 the Parks and Fund 9, the Hunting and Fishing fund.
19 But for a period, a short period of time, I don't know, a year
20 or two money had been -- if you bought a hunting or fishing
21 license in a state park with a credit card, it was being put
22 in the Fund 64 as opposed to Fund 9. And in the project
23 team's methodology, we estimate it to be around $300,000. To
24 the staff's credit, they came up with a more detailed, more
25 precise methodology and we now expect that number to be around
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1 $257,000. It probably should be transferred and correcting
2 that item -- it will be transferred -- be corrected in the
3 future as well, to get those fund balances corrected. We
4 found an audit report in 1999 that addressed the question of
5 vehicles at the headquarters. You have you a list in the back
6 of your appendix there that shows over 200 vehicles at
7 headquarters. In talking with Dennis O'Neal this morning I
8 know that some of those vehicles aren't really here at
9 headquarters, but they're registered at headquarters. Suffice
10 it to say the Department has been advised that it looks bad to
11 have -- maybe there's only 115 or 130, somewhere between 115
12 and 130 vehicles at the Department. The internal audit showed
13 in 1999 that there's not very much use of those vehicles. In
14 any one day about one-third of them are used. Some of them
15 are used just to go back and forth to work. And if that's
16 what you want to do with them, that's fine with me, but I need
17 to point that out to you. I know the Legislature raised a
18 question about it sometime ago. I'm getting back to this
19 question of credibility. The list is detailed, shows where
20 the cars are registered. That's not -- may not necessarily be
21 where they're used. I just ask you to look at that and make
22 the decision on it. I know you'll make the correct decision
23 on it. May not be any change at all, but you need to be aware
24 of it and take a look at it. They're low mileage, not much
25 official use. We relied on the audit report and just from
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1 looking in the parking lot. You might want to consider
2 forming a motor pool, a small motor pool for some of that
3 use -- not all of it, of course, but some of it. We have
4 recommended to the Executive Director that he take a look at
5 substantially reducing the number of vehicles at the
6 headquarters location.
7 We found a contract with Texas Monthly that
8 we're concerned about. It's located in Chapter 5, Page 127.
9 I know the Chairman and the Attorney General's Office are
10 negotiating with Texas Monthly on this. I think the contract
11 was probably a good contract when it was initiated several
12 years ago but it's time to take another look at it right now.
13 They print our hunting and fishing annual. I think there was
14 a fee of $949,000 I think it was, plus $100,000 in the
15 beginning or something like that. All the numbers are in your
16 report there. And in return they get some advertising space
17 in the Parks and Wildlife magazine for free that they're able
18 to sell. In addition, they get to sell the advertising in the
19 annual. I felt it was too sensitive to talk about it in great
20 detail, so I'm relying on the Attorney General's office and
21 the Chairman, and the appropriate people here at the
22 Department to look at that. And if there's a legal basis, and
23 if there's a good business basis, consider making some changes
24 in that contract.
25 With respect to the catalog that was -- you
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1 know, looked at by the State Auditor's Office, when was it,
2 1999? I believe -- was it 1999? And you made a decision
3 then, probably the correct decision, to privatize the catalog.
4 I did some checking on it. I think the catalog has a
5 distribution of over 200,000 between 2 and 300,000;
6 Christmastime it gets up to 5 or 600,000 so there's a lot of
7 distribution out there. We make out of that contract, now
8 that it's privatized, no more than about $38,000 a year. Now,
9 I think that unless the deal is made a lot better or we can
10 negotiate some other advantages in there like cross marketing,
11 for example, that you probably ought to get out of the catalog
12 business altogether. I can't see any reason to be in the
13 business for -- $400 million agency -- for a $38,000 profit.
14 So make a better deal there, if you can, after the contract is
15 expired, or make some management decision about the catalog.
16 You need to look at it again. You made the right decision
17 before to privatize it. You need to look at it and see if
18 another decision has to be made on it. And if you decide that
19 it's worth it to stay there, go ahead; but I know that we have
20 one person here, for example, that spends a lot of time on
21 that project. And you deduct that from the $38,000, you're
22 not making very much. You may spend 30 or 40 percent of his
23 time -- you may have to go to Dallas once or twice a month,
24 I'm not sure how much time. Not his fault and it's your fault
25 if you leave it there, you know, in place.
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1 I've had a lot of good discussions with the
2 Executive Director since being promoted to his job, which was
3 an excellent decision in my opinion. He's going to propose
4 transferring 25 to 30 percent of headquarters personnel back
5 to the field. He's going to propose increasing game wardens
6 to about 525. We certainly support his effort. This wasn't
7 our idea, it's his idea. He has some other ideas as well that
8 I've not even mentioned here. But some of the personnel at
9 the Department he feels can better be utilized back in the
10 field where the rubber meets the road. But our work is
11 completed now and I think the Department will take the
12 initiative to make the changes to survive the challenges that
13 are there for the future and move forward. We have an
14 implementation schedule in the back there, should you choose
15 to take us up in these recommendations. It's really a chart
16 for the -- for the Executive Director to use or to designate
17 someone to use to kind of keep up with what we think needs to
18 be changed. We certainly commend the staff and the Executive
19 Director for the management decisions and the observations
20 that have already been made ongoing. I appreciated the fact
21 that we've been here 90 days and they didn't wait until the
22 91st day to start. They started on it when some things needed
23 starting on early.
24 I think the Department -- I know the Department
25 will regain credibility with the Legislature because I think
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1 they have lost some. I intend to help. I know you'll help,
2 and I think you're going exactly in the right direction.
3 Madame Chairman or Mr. Chairman, I'll be happy to answer any
4 questions.
5 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Do any Commissioners have
6 questions of Mr. Bomer? Madame Chairman?
7 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Mr. Bomer, you've covered a
8 lot of territory and pointed out a lot of things that we need
9 to take a look at. What do you think is the single most
10 important area that we need to take a look at in going
11 forward?
12 MR. BOMER: Well, I think you need to get your
13 books in balance. I think it's the financials that I'm
14 concerned about. I think you need to get your revenue
15 reconciled and your expenditures reconciled, the petty cash,
16 all the things that I talked about earlier. I think you need
17 to get all the -- all the bank statements reconciled. I can
18 understand why they're not reconciled, but you have a huge
19 backlog of bank reconciliations that need to be done.
20 Somebody needs to pay attention to that. You've lost some
21 money in the past. In fact the exact number I think is
22 $539,000 and something dollars over a two-year period, plus
23 another $251,000 that you almost lost. You need to pay
24 attention to that. So I'm speaking of financials. That's No.
25 1.
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1 No. 2 item I think is organization. I think
2 the organization needs to be changed ever so slightly. But
3 No. 2 is not important unless you do No. 1. No. 2 ain't going
4 to make No. 1 happen. No. 1 has to happen by itself or with
5 the staff and management paying attention to it. And you're
6 just a little bit too decentralized, in my opinion, and need
7 to make it more vertical in the organization. But I think
8 those two things are the most important things you could do.
9 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: I have a follow-up question.
10 MR. BOMER: Okay.
11 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Can you go into a little more
12 detail for us on the things you think we're doing particularly
13 well.
14 MR. BOMER: Yeah, I can. I think that all
15 the -- I'm familiar with all the programs, not only when I
16 served in the Legislature because I love the Department, but
17 because I spent a lot of time out here and had good staff on
18 my side working on it, as well and good cooperation from your
19 staff. But of all the programs, I don't want to list them
20 all, but law enforcement is outstanding in our opinion. The
21 fisheries, Inland and Coastal Fisheries, is outstanding, and
22 has country-wide reputations as well as the programs in
23 Wildlife has a country-wide good reputation. You do a good
24 job on infrastructure. We were really pleased with the work
25 that was being done in infrastructure by Scott Boruff, good
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1 project management. You know, you have a good public
2 perception out there that you do a good job. The Legislature
3 is looking at you, so you're not doing such a good job because
4 they're looking at the money -- they're looking at the
5 financials. But the people, you have a good public perception
6 because a lot of people deal with you. Those that get nabbed
7 by law enforcement may not feel so good about it, but they --
8 even those I have been told as a State representative, they
9 treated them nicely in apprehending them. So they have a good
10 reputation there.
11 And game wardens have a special place in the
12 hearts of Legislators I think 'cause they're pretty active out
13 in the districts. Not only in -- at nighttime but in daytime
14 as well, you know, working -- working with Legislators. They
15 do a good job out there. But I think the programs do a really
16 good job. And as I said earlier, you're doing an excellent
17 job of planning for the future and the Department has a good
18 reputation country-wide. In talking with the U.S. Parks
19 and -- I mean the Fish and Wildlife Service people, they speak
20 highly of the Texas Department and so those are the things
21 that I think that you do really well.
22 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: I want to ask one more
23 question if it's all right.
24 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Sure.
25 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Going forward, what -- what do
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1 you see is our biggest hurdle in the upcoming Legislative
2 session?
3 MR. BOMER: Well, I think you have to regain
4 credibility with the Legislature and I think that you're going
5 about that the right way now. You're looking at your
6 problems, you're airing your problems out in the open and
7 you've already started doing something about it. And you have
8 to get these before the next Legislature starts -- you have to
9 get the revenue reconciled. You have to get these bank
10 balances reconciled. You have to get the expenditures
11 reconciled. You have to correctly present your budget to the
12 Legislature. And I don't want to say that you haven't
13 correctly presented it in the past, but it's been confusing to
14 the Legislature in the past. That needs to be done more
15 precisely and so we've already started doing something about
16 that, and good cooperation from your staff in doing that. We
17 talked to the Legislative Budget Board and we said we've got a
18 three-man legislature here, meaning that me and Sidney and
19 T.C. acted like legislators. We asked them, we want you to
20 come in and we want you to -- we want -- no, we talked to the
21 staff, excuse me, not the LBB. We talked to the staff and
22 said treat us like we're the legislature and present your
23 budget to us. And we made some suggestions after they made
24 their presentation. We were acting like legislators. We've
25 got the Legislative Budget Board and said we think they need
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1 some help in learning exactly how to present this. This is a
2 complex deal. This is not like presenting your home, your
3 household budget. There's a lot of funds involved and it's a
4 complex budget. But there are other agencies that do it and
5 you can do it as well. And the LBB, to their -- to their
6 credit, sent out their executive director or whatever it is, I
7 believe he's called director, got involved and he got his top
8 people involved, as well as the people that work out here.
9 And I think also gained credibility with the Legislature.
10 Make sure you work closely with the State Auditor's Office.
11 Don't wait for the State Auditor to come back and see you
12 again, knock on your door. Go knock on his door and say this
13 is what we're doing, as we did. We went down and said these
14 are some of the suggestions we're going to make, what do you
15 think? Are you going to be satisfied with this if we do it
16 this way? And, yeah, they signed off on most everything that
17 I can recall. I think you should do the same thing. And that
18 gains you credibility with the Legislature because if you have
19 the LBB and you've got the appropriation staff and you've got
20 the State Auditor's Office all say amen, then you're in pretty
21 good shape. Any other questions?
22 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Elton, just a little
23 clarification. Maybe everybody fully understood it, but just
24 to make sure, the money that you mentioned -- the $539,000
25 that is lost, it's not lost to the State, it's lost to the
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1 Department, correct?
2 MR. BOMER: That's right. Nobody stole the
3 money, it went back to the State and the State still has the
4 money. They used it someplace else. You didn't get to use
5 it.
6 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: And we had plenty of places
7 to use it, so it was lost to us.
8 MR. BOMER: You've got some jobs.
9 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: I wanted to make sure
10 everybody realized the money wasn't gone.
11 MR. BOMER: I understand. I think of it as
12 gone but you're right it went back. It went back to the
13 State.
14 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Another question I had with
15 respect -- you mentioned several different areas where
16 personnel, potentially additional personnel are involved and
17 you've also got in the body of the report a number of things
18 that could result in some cost savings to the Department in
19 terms maybe of personnel. What is your opinion overall as to
20 the effect of the personnel changes whether it will be a net
21 increase or decrease department-wide?
22 MR. BOMER: No, I wouldn't increase the
23 personnel. No, I wouldn't increase the FTEs. Bob Cook has
24 talked about maybe transferring some people back to the field.
25 Some of those people you'll probably consider transferring
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1 within the Department here. Not moving back to the field, but
2 maybe some of them down to the budget area or the revenue area
3 where they're needed. The departments and organizations get
4 out of balance in your business, they get out of balance over
5 time. I've worked for large companies and I've worked for
6 small companies and they all get out of balance and over time,
7 unless you're paying close attention, some of those transfers
8 have to be made. But, no, no net increase as far as I'm
9 concerned.
10 And I didn't mention one other area, and
11 probably most important, when you asked me an excellent
12 question -- your follow-up question. We found outstanding
13 management in the parks area. Because I didn't mention parks
14 it was an oversight on my part. I want to mention parks
15 because I think there's some meshes there. Dabney does a good
16 job. He has a -- I haven't talked to him a whole lot but I
17 admire the work that he did because he got very little money
18 to do the job that he does. We're like 49th in the country
19 with respect to per capita spending on parks. So I've talked
20 to the Executive Director about this. I also talked to Dabney
21 about it just a little bit. I think that you need to start
22 emphasizing to the Legislature the need for some additional
23 general revenue in the future to take care of these parks.
24 Because, you know, there's millions of people that enjoy the
25 parks out there and they're never going to pay for themselves.
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1 We simply cannot charge enough fees to pay for the parks. You
2 were talking about a fee increase that would raise a half a
3 million dollars. It was a drop in the bucket that was needed
4 in parks, but when you ask the Legislature for general revenue
5 you need to put something along with your request. And I call
6 that the economic multiplier effect which is mentioned in the
7 report there. You need to start using economic multiplier
8 effect to the greatest extent possible to get the Legislature
9 to turn their head. Because unless you can sell the idea of
10 economic -- the development of economic enterprise, the
11 economic gross increase, people that are buying gasoline in
12 restaurants and that sort of thing, 7-11 on the way to the
13 park, you're never going to get that general revenue. But I
14 would -- I would try to utilize that. That wasn't your
15 question but it was something that you reminded me of within
16 your question.
17 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Other questions
18 Commissioners?
19 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: I would like to thank
20 you, Mr. Bomer for your serious work and I know we're going to
21 take it seriously. It's a big job and I appreciate it.
22 MR. BOMER: I'll be available by phone anytime.
23 Unfortunately, the Chairman knows how to find me day and night
24 now with my cell phone and everything. I'll be happy to work
25 with you in the future, pro bono, because you've paid me well
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1 and I have a heart-felt appreciation for the work that the
2 Department does and intend to pay attention to the report,
3 myself, in the future.
4 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Mr. Ramos, did you have --
5 COMMISSIONER RAMOS: Yes. Mr. Bomer, are you
6 satisfied now that there's adequate internal controls and
7 procedures available to staff to prevent the type of
8 historical problems that we've had?
9 MR. BOMER: Available staff to do what?
10 COMMISSIONER RAMOS: To prevent some of the
11 reconciliation issues and internal control issues that you've
12 addressed. I mean are -- do we have the steps in place to
13 implement that?
14 MR. BOMER: Yeah, I think you do. And I think
15 you will next week and the week after that. It's going to get
16 better. There's some of the controls needed to be improved
17 and we've made those recommendations. For example, cash
18 coming into to the mail room you're already working on that.
19 And that's something that didn't have to wait until the 91st
20 day to start working on it. It needed to be worked on right
21 away. Yeah, I'm convinced that -- especially if you cut down
22 some of these bank accounts where you don't have so many to
23 reconcile that -- that you'll be okay. And you just have
24 not -- you simply cannot let all that revenue and expenditures
25 to get out of balance in the future. That needs to be done on
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1 a monthly basis.
2 COMMISSIONER RAMOS: And my second question is
3 what would be your realistic time line as to when we could
4 implement all of your recommendations, I mean realistically?
5 MR. BOMER: By the time the Legislature starts.
6 COMMISSIONER RAMOS: And I also want to address
7 Joe's comments. I want -- also, want to commend staff for
8 cooperating with you and your staff in -- because this was a
9 joint effort. You couldn't have done it by yourself.
10 MR. BOMER: That's right.
11 COMMISSIONER RAMOS: I think staff and Mr. Cook
12 need to be congratulated and we'll accept your medicine.
13 MR. BOMER: Good. Thank you, sir. I
14 appreciate it, Madame Chairman.
15 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Any other questions or
16 comments?
17 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: I have one question
18 on the structure that you mentioned -- more vertical.
19 MR. BOMER: Uh-huh.
20 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Would that include
21 changing the nature of the present divisions -- law
22 enforcement, wildlife, parks -- or is it above that level?
23 MR. BOMER: The -- the only change I suggested
24 in there was the Resource Protection Division which is headed
25 up by Dr. McKinney. By the way, that -- that area is
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1 outstanding in scientific knowledge and management as well.
2 We didn't see a lot of need. He's a -- he's a senior
3 director. You can pay a senior director more money without
4 having people report to him -- report through him. He's been
5 here a long time and has irreplaceable knowledge in my
6 opinion. So that area we -- we did not report in our
7 suggestion, that the Inland Fisheries and the Coastal
8 Fisheries report through that resource protection and aquatic
9 resources area, we reported them directly to the deputy. We
10 didn't see a lot of benefit to the Department reporting
11 through that layer of management.
12 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Thank you.
13 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Mr. Bomer, we thank you and
14 your team for a good job. We appreciate it, sir.
15 MR. BOMER: Thank you very much.
16 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Thank you for being here this
17 morning.
18 MR. BOMER: Thank you very much.
19 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: We'll move on to -- you want
20 to finish the Finance Committee, right?
21 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Yes, sir.
22 ITEM 3. FINANCIALR EVIEW AND UPDATE
23 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Move on to item No. 3 on the
24 agenda which is a financial review and update presented by
25 Suzy Whittenton. Suzy.
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1 MS. WHITTENTON: Thank you. Okay. Thank you,
2 Mr. Chairman, commissioners. For the record, I'm Suzy
3 Whittenton, the Chief Financial Officer. Today's presentation
4 will focus on three primary areas: Revenue collection, status
5 for this current fiscal year, operating budget status for the
6 current year, and also a time line for the development of next
7 year's operating budget. And finally a report on the progress
8 made to address specific SAO State Auditor findings.
9 Start with the report on revenue and cash
10 balances. In Fund 9 or Account 9, the Game Fish and Water
11 Safety Account, where the two primary sources of revenue are
12 license sales and boat registration and titling fees. In
13 looking at the total number of licenses sold from the
14 beginning of the license year, which is August 15th through
15 the end of February, we've sold nearly 2 percent more than
16 last year or about 2.3 million licenses, sales, and permits.
17 We've also sold 345,000 supercombo licenses which is up 6.5
18 percent over last year. And we've also seen significant
19 increases in sales of the senior supercombo and the senior
20 combo. Hunting license sales are up slightly over last year,
21 but it's less than a 1 percent change. We've sold over a
22 million hunting licenses. Fishing license sales are up over
23 5 percent when compared to the same period last year, and
24 we've sold just over 1 million fishing licenses as well.
25 Now, this slide compares our annual fiscal year
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1 revenue estimate for license revenue to the actual amount
2 collected as of February 28th. So that first bar is for
3 the -- what we estimate for the whole year through the end of
4 August and the second is how much we've collected as of the
5 end of February. So we've already collected 68 percent of the
6 annual revenue estimate. That's how much is actually in the
7 bank right now, or as of the end of the February was in the
8 bank. The license revenue estimate for this year is
9 1.4 percent higher than last year's actual revenue. And, at
10 this point, we believe we'll meet the revenue estimate since
11 revenue is up 3 percent when compared to last year, as of the
12 end of February. The other major source of revenue in Account
13 9 is from boat registration and titling fees. As you can see
14 from the chart, the Fiscal Year '02 revenue estimate is about
15 6.5 percent higher than last year's actual revenue was. This
16 is the State Controller's revenue estimate, the $14.8 million.
17 Since most of our revenue from boats comes in during the
18 spring and summer, it's a little too early to know how we'll
19 do for the whole year on that.
20 This slide again is comparing actual -- the
21 annual revenue estimate for boat fees to the amount we've
22 already collected. And as of the end of February we've
23 collected 28 percent of the total annual revenue estimate from
24 boat fees. At this point revenue from boats is up 4 percent
25 over last year. And we'll be watching these numbers closely
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1 in the next few months where we'll be collecting the bulk of
2 our boat revenue. And we do monitor the revenue closely so we
3 can manage cash flow. In Account 9 the Game Fish and Water
4 Safety Account, which is our largest funding source, you can
5 see that we started the year with $13.6 million in cash,
6 available cash. And we think we'll end the year with
7 approximately $8 million left over -- in that fund, which
8 we'll need to fund next year's operating budget.
9 Now I'll turn to the State Parks Account, which
10 is Account No. 64, our second largest source of fees. The
11 annual revenue estimate for parks was $27.6 million, but again
12 most of the park revenues are earned in the spring and summer,
13 so as of the end of February we had collected only 37 percent
14 of that revenue estimate which was about $10.2 million in park
15 fees. Now, we've had strong park attendance since the fall.
16 Revenue is up nearly 18 percent over last year for that first
17 six months of the year. So if this trend continues we won't
18 have any problem reaching our revenue estimate. And the cash
19 flow in Account 64 looks like this. We started the year off
20 with $2.4 million in available funds. We think we'll end the
21 year with about $700,000 left over. So that fund is -- the
22 fund balances are decreasing considerably. I wanted to update
23 you on the current year budget status as well to let you know
24 what our time line is for developing next year's operating
25 budget, the FY03 budget, and to briefly mention that we'll be
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1 submitting our Legislative Appropriations Request this summer.
2 It's due in August. That is our request for appropriation
3 authority for the next biennium, FY04 and 05. And of course
4 we would like for you-all to be involved in that.
5 At the end of February which is halfway through
6 the State's fiscal year, we had spent or encumbered 48 percent
7 of the operating budget. We're right about where we'd expect
8 to be in terms of our spending and our cash flow on that end.
9 We have already started the fiscal year '03 budget process.
10 Each division submitted their requests and they were due in
11 last week to the budget section. We've asked each division to
12 identify ways to cut as much as 5 percent from their budgets
13 so we can look at department needs. But they're also allowed
14 to identify their additional needs up to an extra 2 percent
15 over where they are this year. Each division will present
16 this information to the Executive Director and other executive
17 staff on April the 30th and May 1st. And then we are hoping
18 to have a budget work session with the Commission sometime in
19 the summer so we can wrap up final decisions by preferably
20 late July and then we'll bring you the final budget for your
21 approval at the August Commission meeting. And also this year
22 we'll be submitting our strategic plan which we revise every
23 other year just ahead of the Legislative session. Strategic
24 plan is due in June and that ties in directly with our
25 Legislative Appropriation Request which will be due in August.
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1 So that's the time line there.
2 I wanted to just wrap up quickly with the
3 briefing on the progress we've made in addressing State
4 Auditor findings from the revenue management audit. Mr. Bomer
5 did address some of these issues but here's a little more
6 detail. These are the main findings, these bullet points.
7 The first is the license sales system. The auditors noted
8 some weaknesses in the management of the system which was the
9 old Transactive system. Most of these issues have been
10 addressed with the new system, the WorldCom system, which
11 we've been using since January. Such as, we now screen all
12 new license deputies to make sure they're eligible to do
13 business with the State. We're in compliance now with
14 requiring Social Security numbers from all license purchasers.
15 And we've adopted stronger document retention requirements
16 with the new contracts. We also hired PricewaterhouseCoopers
17 to audit the old system, and make sure all the funds had been
18 collected through that Transactive system. But since we
19 really didn't have any legal remedy to collect from
20 Transactive if we found anything we decided, with the help of
21 the management review team, to shift the focus of
22 PricewaterhouseCoopers' work from the Transactive system to
23 the new WorldCom system. And instead, to ensure that proper
24 controls are in place in the WorldCom system on the front end
25 so we don't get into a situation like we were with the old
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1 system. We expect to get a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers
2 later this month, but we've been working with them as these
3 findings have -- issues have come up. And WorldCom has been
4 working real hard with us as well on that and I'm sure Jayna
5 will talk about that more later in this committee meeting.
6 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Suzy, excuse me, if I might
7 interrupt you there. That change in the auditing process is a
8 change from what we all had discussed in terms of trying to
9 pursue funds that might have been lost from previous years
10 sales. And this change was, as Suzy said, worked out with the
11 management team, but it was also gone over with the Auditor's
12 Office and they approved that. So the thinking was that there
13 was less money to be gained than the cost of finding it. So I
14 want to be sure everybody understood that is a change in
15 approach.
16 MS. WHITTENTON: Right. That's a good point.
17 That's a good clarification. We did think it was not cost
18 effective to continue with the old system and we did get
19 approval from State Auditor to shift the focus there. We've
20 also asked the Controller and the State Auditor for a waiver
21 from that three-day deposit rule and they, in the audit, said
22 that we ought to collect funds from our license deputies every
23 three days because they are State funds. We did disagree with
24 that but we asked for a waiver because the contracts that we
25 have with our license deputies state that we will sweep once a
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1 week. And I think we'll consider this issue again when we
2 renew our contracts with the license deputies possibly just
3 with the larger vendors.
4 The second issue there, the stamp funds is the
5 issue of allocating supercombo revenue to those stamp funds,
6 the dedicated stamp funds. Now, the Wildlife Division is
7 collecting data to support a change in methodology. We'll be
8 discussing this with the Commission each budget year on how
9 we're going to recommend a method -- a change in methodology
10 for allocation of those sales to the stamp funds. The
11 mailroom processes were -- have mostly been -- the issues have
12 mostly been addressed. The main issue was that not all the
13 mail had been opened in the mailroom at one time and that was
14 changed last May. All mail is opened in the mailroom and
15 we're also looking at some process redesign in there and
16 possibly even moving people -- the physical location of where
17 some of these people are located within the building. That
18 ties in directly with this next issue, the nonvalue added
19 processes. State Auditor identified some processes that could
20 be streamlined. We have hired an employee, with the
21 assistance of the management review team, to assist in
22 redesigning processes in the cashier's area, in the boat area
23 and also in the mailroom and that has been underway for over a
24 month now.
25 The reconciliation issue, of course, our
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1 biggest issue we believe was covered by Mr. Bomer. We have
2 hired temporary employees who are assisting with the backlog.
3 A lot of progress has been made on that. And once the backlog
4 is cleaned up we will have a monthly reconciliation in place
5 to prevent any further backlog from happening again.
6 On revenue forecasting, the auditor mentioned
7 that we needed to document our methodology for estimating
8 future revenues. We have developed a methodology. We will
9 bring that to you at the next Commission meeting for your
10 approval and we'll then start developing the revenue estimates
11 for fiscal years '04 and '05. We'll also be working very
12 closely with the Controller's revenue estimators on those
13 estimates as we did two years ago and make sure we communicate
14 that well with the oversight agencies.
15 And the last issue there is on the automated
16 systems that need to be interfaced. Now, this is an issue
17 that will take some time to fully implement. We need to
18 interface all of our accounting and revenue systems together
19 so that we're not having to do duplicate entry in these
20 systems which is part of our nonvalue added processes. A time
21 line has been developed and this issue is in progress but it
22 does require some programming complexity and we are upgrading
23 our internal Oracle Financial System to the newest version of
24 that software which is required because Oracle will not
25 support the old system. So we have to get our current system
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1 upgraded before we can get all the revenue -- the interfaces
2 developed. So all the issues are aggressively being addressed
3 and we'll keep you updated on our progress every so often at
4 these Commission meetings, these briefings.
5 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Do the members of the
6 Commission have any question for Suzy on this presentation?
7 COMMISSIONER RAMOS: I have one. Do you have a
8 realistic time line as to when -- by when you think you can
9 address some of these audit issues?
10 MS. WHITTENTON: Yes. We have a time line set
11 up for each of the issues. The one that takes the longest is
12 the development of the automated interfaces and that's
13 actually going to take a couple of years to get them all in
14 place.
15 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: I have a question.
16 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Sure.
17 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Suzy, on the -- just so it's
18 clear, on this stamp allocation what we will do is come up
19 with a methodology and each year we will, as a Commission,
20 review the methodology and approve it. Is that correct?
21 MS. WHITTENTON: That's correct.
22 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: And that has -- is viewed upon
23 favorably by the State Auditor's Office? You've run it by
24 them and they're okay with that?
25 MS. WHITTENTON: Yes.
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1 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Okay, great.
2 MS. WHITTENTON: They just wanted to make sure
3 that we had a methodology that was supportable and that was
4 discussed in open meetings.
5 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Right. Thank you.
6 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Any other questions?
7 MS. WHITTENTON: Any other questions?
8 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: With respect to Commissioner
9 Ramos' question, you do have an August deadline for the
10 reconciliation that you believe you can meet, correct?
11 MS. WHITTENTON: That's right. We're trying to
12 get the reconciliation completed by August 2002. And what
13 we're doing on that is we're trying to hit the biggest items
14 that we're off first and working our way through that
15 progress -- that process.
16 COMMISSIONER RAMOS: But as stated by
17 Mr. Bomer, you have implemented and taken immediate steps to
18 implement the goals and other procedures to prevent what may
19 have worked as --
20 MS. WHITTENTON: Yes, that's right.
21 COMMISSIONER RAMOS: Okay.
22 ITEM 4. FOREIGN TRAVEL
23 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: All right, if that concludes
24 that item, then we'll move on to Item No. 4 which Suzy is also
25 going to present regarding an issue with respect to foreign
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1 travel expenses.
2 MS. WHITTENTON: Okay. This issue is brought
3 to you just for guidance on development of an agency policy
4 basically. What prompted this discussion starts with the
5 provision in the General Appropriations Act which states that
6 the Commission must approve, in advance, expenses for travel
7 to foreign countries other than Mexico or Canada. We
8 occasionally have outside entities that offer to pay the cost
9 of travel for staff members to attend meetings or conferences
10 in other countries where they'll pay the travel which doesn't
11 technically fall under this provision. But to play it safe we
12 really wanted to get your feeling on how you would like us to
13 handle those instances. For example, right now our wildlife
14 director has been asked to attend a conference to represent
15 the southeastern states at a meeting in the Netherlands
16 regarding endangered species. A private organization and
17 association is paying for all of his travel costs. The only
18 costs to the Department would be his staff time. The
19 recommendation from staff is that as a policy that might just
20 say that -- that foreign travel where expenses are paid by
21 outside entities could be delegated to the Executive Director
22 and in cases where we would actually have to incur travel
23 costs we would bring those to you for preapproval. So we're
24 just looking here for some feedback on what your feeling is on
25 these -- these cases.
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1 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: So this is not an action
2 item, but the question before the Commission is whether this
3 presents any problem or do you-all consider this an
4 appropriate approach? I would say that the Commission members
5 approve of this approach to the question.
6 MS. WHITTENTON: Okay. Thank you.
7 ITEM 5. LOCAL PARKS GRANTS UPDATE
8 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: That brings us then to No. 5,
9 which is --
10 Suzy, thank you for your presentations.
11 MS. WHITTENTON: Uh-huh.
12 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: -- local park grant
13 update from Tim Hogsett. Tim.
14 MR. HOGSETT: Okay. Mr. and Ms. Chairman,
15 members of the Committee, I'm Tim Hogsett from Recreation
16 Grants Branch and the State Parks Division. In your January
17 meeting Chairman Idsal asked that I prepare a briefing for you
18 on just some general issues of how our grant programs operate
19 under the Texas Recreation Parks Account. The Grant Programs,
20 under the umbrella of the Texas Recreation Parks Account,
21 include our outdoor recreation grants to local governments,
22 indoor recreation facilities grants also to local governments,
23 the community outdoor outreach program grants both to local
24 governments and to nonprofits to bring the traditionally
25 underserved folks into the ability to have a little more
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1 information about the outdoors, and the programs that you
2 adopted final rules for last meeting, the regional park grant
3 and small communities grants programs. The money for these
4 programs is a dedication of a portion of the sales tax
5 collected on sporting goods. To my knowledge it's the only
6 dedication of the State's sales tax for any purpose. It is
7 currently capped at $15.5 million. The Comptroller estimates
8 that much more than that can be attributed to sales tax on
9 those sporting goods but the Legislature has chosen to cap the
10 amount of money we receive at $15.5 million. Plus we are also
11 appropriated the earned interest on that amount of money which
12 typically is about from between $4 and $5 million annually.
13 The Commission has the authority under Parks and Wildlife
14 Code, Chapter 24, to make rules to administer this program
15 which includes administrative procedures, the scoring system
16 that we use to evaluate projects and all other items related
17 to general administration and payment from the program. That
18 $15.5 plus interest is allocated as you see on this chart.
19 The only -- the only mandates in terms of the amount of money
20 that you see here from the legislature of these amounts are
21 for the outreach grants at $1.25 million and the indoor
22 recreation grants at $3.2 million. The others are
23 discretionary in terms of how many money can be allocated to
24 the various programs. This is what we've done traditionally.
25 This does not include an amount of a couple million dollars a
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1 year which has been appropriated to us for consideration of
2 facility transfers, transferring facilities that are owned or
3 operated by the Department and you're going to hear about one
4 of those later this morning.
5 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: The mandatory
6 allocation is percentage or total dollars?
7 MR. HOGSETT: Total dollars. Both of those are
8 actually riders in our appropriation act and they specifically
9 mandate those amounts.
10 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: To be set biannually?
11 MR. HOGSETT: Yes.
12 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Back up just a second. The
13 interest, how does the interest get to be $4.5 million on
14 $15 million.
15 MR. HOGSETT: I think you're -- I'm going to
16 have to ask Suzy to help me with that question.
17 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Is it interest on the
18 entire sporting goods tax?
19 MR. HOGSETT: I honestly don't know. We just
20 depend on what the Comptroller tells us.
21 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Suzy, did you hear that?
22 MS. WHITTENTON: No, I'm sorry.
23 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: The grant money -- the money
24 coming from the dedicated sales tax is 15 millions plus
25 accrued interest. How does the interest get to --
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1 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: 30 percent.
2 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: -- be 4.5 million on a $15
3 million gross?
4 MS. WHITTENTON: Well, because we're not
5 earning on $15 million but on previous years' balances that
6 build up because it takes so long to pay out these grants. We
7 pay them out over --
8 MR. HOGSETT: Generally two to three years.
9 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: The money stays in our
10 account and it accrues.
11 MR. COOK: You can have that 40 in that
12 account. You can have 40 in that account at any one time.
13 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: That was an extraordinary
14 interest rate so I --
15 MR. HOGSETT: That amount --
16 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: I want to see if I could get
17 in on that kind of transaction.
18 COMMISSIONER RAMOS: A lot of efficiency in our
19 Department.
20 MR. HOGSETT: That amount has decreased from
21 the last session. And I'm assuming It's going to continue to
22 decrease. This is -- since 1993 when the Texas Recreation and
23 Parks Account was first authorized by the Legislature, this is
24 a summary of how we've spent that money. Please keep in mind
25 that these are, with the exception of the outreach grants,
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1 these are all 50 percent grants, so the numbers that you see
2 there can be doubled in terms of the impact for indoor,
3 outdoor, and other types of parks and recreation opportunities
4 for local governments. The kinds of things that we do under
5 the outdoor recreation grant program are really traditional
6 parks and recreation facilities at the municipal level. They
7 are 50 percent matching grants. We can acquire land with
8 them. We can do everything from very passive
9 conservation-oriented projects to some of the other things
10 that you see there such as swimming, playgrounds, picnic,
11 trails, sports fields. This is the largest program and is the
12 oldest program. It's been around in one form or another
13 through one funding resource or another since about 1965.
14 MR. COOK: Tim, I would like to point out to
15 the Commissioners to make sure they understand in our review
16 of this program that that 50 percent match is the required.
17 Oftentimes these projects may be much higher percentage of the
18 total investment coming from the local community.
19 Fifty percent is required for our match up to our amount. The
20 project may be much bigger.
21 MR. HOGSETT: Particularly good example of that
22 are recreation -- indoor recreation centers. Often those are
23 $7 or $8 million facilities and we match $750,000.
24 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Fifty percent is our
25 policy or is that Legislative?
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1 MR. HOGSETT: Legislative.
2 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Legislative.
3 MR. HOGSETT: It's in Chapter 24 of the code.
4 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: I'm not trying to go
5 back over the ground, but in the allocation for indoors --
6 MR. HOGSETT: Uh-huh.
7 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: -- it is a
8 Legislative allocation?
9 MR. HOGSETT: Yes. It is also mandated in a
10 rider to our appropriations act.
11 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: 'Cause I know I
12 brought his up when you were presenting this, but what's the
13 definition of indoor recreation? How restrictive is that?
14 MR. HOGSETT: How about we do this?
15 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Thank you.
16 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: Talk about having the
17 answer.
18 MR. HOGSETT: It is a 50 percent grant program.
19 Indoor recreation can go the entire spectrum from a
20 traditional recreation center that you would find in an inner
21 city that might have a basketball court and a swimming pool
22 and volleyball and all sorts of other kinds -- weight rooms.
23 All the way to very passive interpretive facilities. I'm
24 going to show you a couple of them in a second that we've done
25 that fit more in that category. But that is totally within to
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1 the Commission's discretion on how we make those grants
2 available and what's eligible for assistance.
3 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: At the last
4 Commission meeting this came up and I asked this question.
5 This is what I was trying to distinguish. It seems to me we
6 were given a lot -- things that I would expect cities to do
7 sports centers and athletic things that didn't fit our
8 mission. Can we define these requirements that they fit our
9 mission better so as you do go into nature centers,
10 interpretive facilities, other things that fit our Parks and
11 Wildlife mission.
12 MR. HOGSETT: You have that authority. I think
13 that it would be something that would be somewhat
14 controversial among the supporters of the program out there
15 who have been very active in front of the Legislature, folks
16 like the Texas Recreation and Parks Society. They feel this
17 is an unmet need that State government should meet. And the
18 fact that it's -- that the program resides in the Parks and
19 Wildlife Department it probably is not as much of an issue to
20 them as the fact that they feel that there's a need for those
21 kinds of facilities. But we have done an awful lot of the
22 kinds of facilities that you're talking about. And those
23 typically are high scoring in our criteria and that's one
24 place that we could address that relatively easy is through
25 our scoring criteria, the amount of weight that are given to
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1 those kinds of projects. But we need your guidance on this.
2 MR. COOK: This is a part of the purpose for
3 this briefing is to go over these very kinds of issues because
4 this program, and Tim has done a great job with it, but it has
5 been molded through many years and many sessions and a lot of
6 input from those different interest groups and legislators
7 saying, well, we want you to do, you know, and some of that
8 comes down that's why. That's why there's a mandated amount
9 in some of these areas now is because we want to be sure you
10 do this, you know, and so they give us some direction like
11 that. And it is -- it is your discretion. We can -- we can
12 mold this that way or this way a little bit, you know, more
13 but it's -- it's been carefully approached and --
14 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: I guess my answer I
15 would rather see it fit the mission. I guess this is to the
16 law of unintended consequences. Maybe making that request may
17 make it worse. So I really leave it up to you-all for
18 direction how we --
19 MR. COOK: You know, periodically --
20 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: -- as we can but not
21 go the -- provoke the wrong reaction.
22 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: I would think the approach
23 that Tim has mentioned of adding a little bit more weight to
24 those items would be a lot more acceptable way to go about it.
25 And that you still don't slant the grants to the point where
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1 others can't succeed.
2 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Change the balance a
3 little.
4 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: It's clear that the
5 constituency wants us to be heading in more of the direction
6 that we've been heading rather than the reverse, wouldn't you
7 say?
8 MR. HOGSETT: You know, I think that
9 traditionally about every five years we've gone through the
10 process of remaking rules for these programs. And those are
11 intensive public hearing, input posted in the Register like
12 we've just done for the regional and small communities grants
13 programs. And I think that's -- I think that's a fair thing
14 for us to consider doing pretty quickly again and asking for
15 the input and see where we're going.
16 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: We might find a different
17 opinion than we think.
18 MR. HOGSETT: Could be.
19 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Is there an
20 opportunity? Because I agree with Phil's point that you don't
21 want to get off your mission, but you do have those other
22 responsibilities. If you're waving more toward nature
23 centers, interpretive facilities and you have these projects
24 that have a lot of -- you described one is $7 million and we
25 may be matching $7.5 of that, we concentrate on making sure
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1 that maybe that outdoor facility that has baseball and running
2 tracks also have a nature center and interpretive aspect to
3 it.
4 MR. HOGSETT: Those are the kinds of projects
5 that are coming to the top in the scoring system right now,
6 particularly in the outdoor program. To be competitive you
7 really have to provide not only active recreation, but you
8 have to have a strong conservation element as part of your
9 project.
10 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: I know one project
11 northwest San Antonio where my kids were playing soccer
12 there's a nature trail that just connects to the soccer
13 fields. And I thought, well, you know, sometime we're looking
14 at this either or well, it's either softball fields and soccer
15 fields or it's nature trails and we can certainly, I know in
16 San Antonio area where they're doing some new park projects,
17 encourage them to include our aspect in it.
18 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: That's right.
19 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: If we're going to be
20 matching. Of course, there's lots of TPWD Kids Fish stuff
21 around there.
22 MR. HOGSETT: This is a look at the demand for
23 these funds since 1993, since the sporting goods were
24 established as the resource. Total demand requests for funds
25 in the amount of $322 million and we've been able to fund less
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1 than half on that at $135 million. And again these are with
2 the exception of outreach grants or all 50 percent matching
3 grants. Another way of looking at that is the amount of
4 competition. And you see a very similar ratio. Numbers of
5 applications received since 1993 at 975 and numbers of
6 projects that we have through the scoring system, and you have
7 approved 375 of those. With this kind of competition and
8 demand, then it's very important we think as a staff to have a
9 strong set of review criteria to bring recommendations from a
10 staff level to you as a Commission to make decisions based on
11 objectivity and based on what we hear from the public are
12 their desires in terms of priorities.
13 Real quickly I want to go through the scoring
14 criteria for you. The indoor and outdoor programs, the two
15 largest programs have virtually the same scoring criteria with
16 a couple of exceptions and I've highlighted those exceptions
17 by colors here. So everything you see in white is the same
18 for either the indoor scoring system or the outdoor scoring
19 system. Ensure performance, that's a gateway criteria. We do
20 not bring an application forward to the Commission if they
21 have an active project which is not progressing adequately and
22 we also do not bring any forward that have postcompletion
23 problems. In other words, we've gone out and done an
24 inspection and it's not being well maintained or have other
25 problem. Both the indoor and outdoor program reward local
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1 planning. If a local government goes through the process of
2 adopting a Local Parks and Recreation Master Plan and ask for
3 the highest priority needs in their own master plan, we will
4 award them up to 20 points additional priority.
5 The next criteria is diversity and that is
6 simply the numbers of types of recreation opportunities that
7 they're providing. A typical park might provide a trail, a
8 picnic unit, a swimming pool -- you know, the more types of
9 opportunities you provide the higher the score is in both
10 indoor and outdoor program. Increased water related
11 recreation is exclusive to the outdoor program and that is the
12 access or acquisition of access to natural or any kind of
13 water other than swimming pools -- basically, reservoirs,
14 rivers wetlands, that sort of thing. Very much a
15 resource-related criteria. Improving geographic distribution.
16 That is within the sponsor's service area that they're
17 spreading out what they're doing. That they're providing a
18 diverse opportunity throughout their system. And the more so
19 they're doing that the higher the score we give them.
20 Maximize use of funds for parks and recreation opportunities.
21 I call that the bang for the buck criteria. We do a ratio
22 calculation of their application grant request and look at the
23 amount in that request that is for actual recreation
24 facilities as opposed to support. In other words, how much is
25 for the ball field versus how much is for the concession
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1 stand. The higher the ratio is for actual hard recreation,
2 the higher the score in that particular criteria.
3 The next one is your diversity criteria. The
4 provision of opportunities to low income, minority, elderly,
5 and youth at risk citizens. It's not a particularly highly
6 weighted category but an important one.
7 The next one is exclusive to the indoor
8 program. To provide indoor recreation facilities to a greater
9 number of citizens. That's basically just looking at how many
10 people that recreation center or that interpretive center are
11 serving on an annual basis.
12 Reward cooperation between government entities
13 and then I'll lump that with the next one, partnerships
14 between the sponsor and the private sector. Those are all
15 about where the sponsor of the application is going out and
16 actually receiving a part of the match either from another
17 government entity or from the private sector, whether it be
18 land, whether it be donation of materials, equipment, labor,
19 whatever the resource. It's trying to encourage
20 intergovernmental and public private partnerships in terms of
21 providing recreation opportunities.
22 The last criteria are projects that preserve
23 significant natural resources through public land acquisition
24 and stewardship. And that in both the indoor and outdoor
25 scoring systems are the -- I think are the highest ranking
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1 criteria in this those two systems. That's what's bringing
2 conservation projects up higher on the list.
3 Renovation, if you're renovating an existing
4 facility that is just simply worn out, not just lack of
5 maintenance but it's completely worn out then we give you
6 additional priority. That's sort of a balancing criteria
7 between people that are doing brand new facilities versus
8 renovations.
9 Promote wise use of natural resources. That
10 is, for lack of a better term what I call the green building
11 criteria. It's encouraging energy efficient and other
12 conservation elements in the construction of the facility.
13 And the final two are exclusive to the outdoor
14 program. We provide -- we give additional priority to
15 projects that provide for greenbelt linkages and those that
16 encourage the appreciation and the preservation of cultural
17 resources. We can't actually fund the development of things
18 directly related to cultural and historical resources but we
19 can do park and recreation facilities and interpretation
20 related to those kinds of sites. And that's the scoring
21 system for the two programs as it stands.
22 I'll run through these real quickly. I just
23 wanted to give you some examples of some recent projects that
24 you have approved. This one just approved in January. It was
25 the highest scoring project not only in this review but in my
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1 knowledge the highest scoring project ever in the scoring
2 system. It scored 143 points. It includes the acquisition of
3 donation of 41 acres in the City of Lakeway. The development
4 of a pool, junior Olympic, and also leisure pool and other
5 related facilities. It included a 24-acre of that acquisition
6 natural area dedication. There are several endangered species
7 on this site. So it was the -- it was the ability to take
8 part of the site that did not have endangered species and
9 other related items on it and use that for the active
10 recreation and then also preserve the rest of the site. It
11 was a $500,000 grant and as I say, it was just approved. Some
12 of you may have been to the Canyon of the Eagles, it's on Lake
13 Buchanan. It is an LCRA, Lower Colorado River Authority
14 project. Our involvement and this has been a few years ago.
15 But our involvement was the development of the outdoor
16 recreation facilities that are there. It was a $500,000
17 grant. It included things like trails, piers, a swimming
18 beach, fishing opportunities, a number of RV camp sites, a
19 canoe launch, wildlife viewing area, and amphitheater. It
20 also designated, and these are the green areas that you can
21 see, two large areas exclusively for endangered species
22 habitat preservation in this case, the black-cap vireo. An
23 indoor recreation facility that is, I think, a very fine
24 example of our accomplishing our mission. We made a $350,000
25 grant to the City of Baytown to acquire a 2-acre site by
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1 donation that on the upper left corner as you can see was an
2 old building that actually had been a bowling alley that was
3 privately owned, they had gone out of business. The City of
4 Baytown came back in and built the building that you see on
5 the right and it is called the Eddie Gray Baytown Wetlands
6 Interpretive and Recreation Center. This sits immediately
7 adjacent to a very large, very important wetland in Baytown
8 and the facility itself is a building that includes a nature
9 display. It has several large meeting rooms. It has an
10 environmental lab and that's what you see the kids at the
11 microscopes. And to my understanding is that every Baytown
12 Independent School District student in the fifth grade goes
13 through a program annually in that building. Another
14 facility, indoor facility, this one was also just approved.
15 It is the City of Lubbock is cooperating with a private
16 nonprofit entity called The Science Spectrum which already has
17 an existing building that is partially owned by this nonprofit
18 and partially owned by the City which is a science interactive
19 interpretive facility. Well, they want to -- they have an
20 unused floor of this facility that they want to develop for
21 a -- well, they call it a themed exhibit and it's based on the
22 Brazos river ecosystem. Essentially what you will do it's in
23 lower right-hand corner you'll enter that display and you'll
24 travel along the Brazos river ecosystem from the headwaters
25 which happen to be in the Lubbock area all the way to the Gulf
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1 of Mexico and learn about the environment and the species and
2 just learn about water quality issues and things related to
3 the Brazos river. The rest of that floor will be an
4 environmental classroom area, a science laboratories, computer
5 laboratories, a crafts laboratory and they're also going to
6 construct a climbing wall, an indoor climbing wall and that
7 was a $750,000 grant.
8 Brazoria County acquired a 55-acre
9 privately-owned campsite that was going out of business,
10 beautiful piece of property along Chocolate Bayou just outside
11 of Alvin and the $500,000 grant that you approved will
12 renovate a number of the existing facilities but will also
13 provide things such as a new playground, some new RV camping
14 sites and this is really almost a state park environment.
15 I've just seen it a few weeks ago for the first time and it
16 really was an incredible opportunity that they were lucky to
17 be able to take advantage of.
18 And then last but not least, recently the City
19 of Lubbock completed a project for the purchase and
20 development of a 116-acre site in the southwest part of the
21 city. It is a ball field complex, lighted ball fields,
22 lighted soccer fields, sport courts but it also has an
23 interpretive trail and a small amphitheater and I guess it's
24 no secret why I included this particular site in this
25 presentation.
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1 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: The Chairman's already made a
2 comment on that. Is there a criteria we have for former
3 mayors serving on the Commission?
4 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: I told Mr. Angelo that
5 Mr. Hogsett is incorruptible.
6 MR. HOGSETT: Some of the other things that we
7 do in recreation grants real quickly, we have a boat ramp
8 construction program that I'm sure you're familiar with. We
9 provide small rural communities with planning assistance. We
10 have are a couple of landscape architects that will go out and
11 do park site master plans free of charge to small units of
12 government. That program has been very poplar over and over
13 again. We have programs related to boat pumpouts and
14 construction of boat infrastructures. These are pass-throughs
15 from Federal government. The recreation trails grants that
16 you're familiar with. And we also provide lots of technical
17 assistance to local governments. And I would be happy to
18 answer any questions.
19 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Do I remember
20 correctly these grants cannot be used on state park property?
21 MR. HOGSETT: Correct.
22 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: It's everything but.
23 MR. HOGSETT: Correct. It is explicitly
24 prohibited by State law.
25 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Paul?
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1 MR. DABNEY: Chairman, Walt Dabney, State Park
2 Director. If I could just add one thing to Tim's excellent
3 answer a while ago. The source of the revenue from sporting
4 goods tax is an issue that's very near and dear to the
5 member -- our friends in the Texas Recreation and Parks
6 Society. It's not all coming from camping gear and that kind
7 of thing. A whole lot of it comes from balls and bats, you
8 know, sports uniforms and things that the Legislature has made
9 it pretty clear to us needs to go back into things that
10 support or are directly related to that kind of money. And
11 not all of this by a long shot are the total of $32 million
12 that comes to the State Park system, half of which basically
13 we distribute in these programs is all attributable to camping
14 and those kinds of things. A whole lot of this is from active
15 sports things. So it is probably pretty appropriate that it's
16 going back there and they would be very sensitive to the
17 notion that we would change it too far to going to other
18 things.
19 COMMISSIONER WATSON: That is correct. That's
20 an important clarification if they're paying into the program.
21 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Do we inspect every
22 project we grant?
23 MR. HOGSETT: Yes. We do a preconstruction
24 site visit before we bring the application forward to you and
25 we do periodic on-site inspections during progress and we do a
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1 final inspection and on-site audit before we close any of
2 these grants.
3 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: The other general
4 area I have a question about when it came up last time was the
5 amounts. We set arbitrary limits on the amounts that we
6 granted?
7 MR. HOGSETT: That's also a relatively
8 historical thing. It's been the way that -- it's evolved into
9 that. We started with the outdoor grant program then in 1993
10 the funding source changed from cigarettes to sporting goods
11 and also we added the indoor program. Then since then the
12 community outdoor outreach program has been added and then
13 we've also just done the regional. But those, with the
14 exception of the two requirements for the indoor amount of
15 $3.2 million and the co-op amount of $1.25 million, the rest
16 of the money is within the discretion of the Commission in how
17 it's allocated.
18 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Well, what I was
19 asking was the amounts per individual grant were set, as I
20 remember, as an arbitrary a quarter million and a half
21 million. I just wondered whether we -- do we have the right
22 number limit that number for a good long time too high, too
23 low. What's your opinion based on what the market for the
24 demand is?
25 MR. HOGSETT: Well, I would think that
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1 particularly in the outdoor program if we were going to go any
2 direction we would go down as opposed to up. When you get 50
3 to 60 applications every six months and you're able to do a
4 dozen of them with existing resources, I think if we increase
5 from $500,000 to whatever, you know, a million or whatever
6 they might ask for, you're just going to increase that
7 competition even more. We increased the indoor grant amount
8 about two years ago, I think it was, from $500,000 to
9 $750,000. But again that is totally within the Commission's
10 discretion. I think it would be a valuable thing for us to
11 ask when we go out and do public hearings to redo rules for
12 the program.
13 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: What's your judgment,
14 Tim, about where -- at some point you disappoint everybody and
15 you really don't have an impact on anybody.
16 MR. HOGSETT: I think we're about right for now
17 honestly.
18 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: That's what I'm
19 asking.
20 MR. HOGSETT: I think with regional grants
21 being able to be larger then 750 and the with the small
22 community grant program to help those smaller folks I think
23 the rest of it is probably about right.
24 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Any other questions or
25 comments? Thank you, Tim. We've got another item for you, I
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1 believe, coming up Item No. 6, which is the Urban Park and
2 Recreation Recovery Program.
3 ITEM 6. URBAN PARK AND RECREATION RECOVERY PROGRAM
4 MR. HOGSETT: The Urban Park and Recreation
5 Recovery Program is a grant program administered by the U.S.
6 Department of Interior National Park Service. These are
7 Federal pass-through grants that primarily provide for
8 rehabilitation of parks and recreation facilities in the inner
9 cities. It's for facilities that, for lack of -- for age or
10 for other reasons are really no longer usable, need renovation
11 and these are grants for either indoor or outdoor recreation
12 grants.
13 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: Rehab only.
14 MR. HOGSETT: Rehabilitation only, yes. The
15 State's role in this is that there is an incentive in the
16 Federal grant evaluation criteria that if a state cooperates
17 in providing a part of that between 70 and 85 percent match to
18 reduce the amount of the local match, then additional criteria
19 points will be awarded to those sponsors. So traditionally
20 the Commission has authorized us to use part of the Texas
21 Recreation and Parks Account resources to set aside a
22 commitment of match for any projects that might be approved
23 for UPARR grants in the State of Texas. There is
24 approximately $28 almost $29 million in this national
25 competition, and Texas communities are eligible for
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1 approximately 15 percent or $4.3 million of that.
2 Applications are currently being taken by the National Parks
3 Service. They will then evaluate those using their criteria
4 including whether or not Parks and Wildlife or the State of
5 Texas has made a commitment of part of that match. That
6 commitment could be as much as 15 percent which would
7 eliminate any local match requirement. But traditionally the
8 Commission in the past has felt that some -- that it is
9 important that there be at least some local match involved in
10 these projects. So we have committed a 10 percent share. And
11 any of the money that is not awarded would go back into the
12 Texas Recreation Parks Account. And so with that in mind,
13 tomorrow we're going to be asking you to authorize us to set
14 aside $433,500 from the Texas Recreation and Parks Account for
15 that 10 percent match. It's a little complicated but I would
16 be glad to answer any questions.
17 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Any questions or comments?
18 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: If we don't do this
19 where would the money be used?
20 MR. HOGSETT: It would stay in the existing
21 other grant programs.
22 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: The one you just
23 previously --
24 MR. HOGSETT: This is something we really I
25 think want to do because.
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1 COMMISSIONER ANGELO: For leverage.
2 MR. HOGSETT: It gave us a huge leg up in the
3 last competition.
4 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: I just want to
5 understand where the money is the coming from.
6 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Any other questions or
7 comments? If not we'll place this item on the Thursday
8 Commission meeting agenda for public comments and action.
9 And then we'll move to Item No. 7. Thank you
10 Tim.
11 MR. HOGSETT: Thank you.
12 ITEM 7. LAKE RITA BLANCA STATE PARK TRANSFER
13 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: We'll move on to State Park
14 Transfer, Walt Dabney.
15 MR. DABNEY: Chairman, Commission, I'm Walt
16 Dabney, State Park Director and I wanted to talk to you
17 briefly on House Bill 21 and a report on a transfer that we've
18 been working on since the last Commission meeting. At that
19 last Commission meeting you did authorize us to enter into
20 negotiations with the City of Dalhart to see if we could
21 arrive at an agreement to transfer the operation and ownership
22 and maintenance of Lake Rita Blanca State Park to them. This
23 park is the northernmost state park in Texas. It really has
24 not been developed. We had one person from Palo Duro Canyon
25 assigned to liaison, keep track of it and that sort of thing.
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1 It's about 1,668 acres. We've had it since 1990 in 101-year
2 lease. It actually was owned by the county -- counties, and
3 we had it on a lease. We've since begun a negotiation -- all
4 the things we had there were day use areas and no overnight
5 facilities, dirt roads, that sort of thing. We weren't
6 collecting any fees. The House Bill 2108 which authorized us
7 to look at the possibility of transfers to a subdivision of
8 the State which would be a county or a city applied in this
9 case. We would transfer our interest if it worked out back to
10 either the county or the city. We have $2 million available
11 each year. The grants would be based on the proposal and a
12 request from the governing body of either the city or the
13 county that they wanted to do that. Dalhart has submitted a
14 proposal that we think is acceptable in this case. They've
15 asked for just under $400,000 and it would do the things that
16 we're talking about up here. Three viewing towers. This is a
17 very important bird migration area. A lot of winter waterfowl
18 in this -- in this lake and marsh area, hiking trail
19 improvements, two restrooms -- there are none there now, a
20 large group pavilion which would be used by the people from
21 the city, playground equipment, and then boundary fencing and
22 marking and road improvements. This would be money that is
23 also coming out of the Texas Recreation and Parks Account
24 specifically to effect these kinds of things. I think you'll
25 remember that we've already entered into negotiations and done
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1 the transfer of Lubbock Lake Landmark, Jim Hogg site at Rusk
2 and Old Fort Parker over by Mexia. We're also actually
3 working on a couple of others now that could happen as well.
4 Tomorrow we would be making a recommendation that you
5 accept -- we won't be doing that today, but tomorrow we would
6 be making a recommendation that you allow us to consummate
7 this agreement. We think it as good one and we would be
8 making that recommendation.
9 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Any questions or comments
10 from the Commission? If not we'll place this on the
11 Commission agenda for tomorrow's meeting for public comments
12 and action.
13 MR. DABNEY: Okay, sir.
14 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Thank you, Walt.
15 MR. DABNEY: You bet.
16 ITEM 8. LICENSE SYSTEM UPDATE
17 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Item No. 8 is an update on
18 our license system and we'll ask Jayna Burgdorf to present
19 this one.
20 MS. BURGDORF: We got it taped down this time.
21 Chairman Idsal and members of the Commission, I'm Jayna
22 Burgdorf and I'm updating you on the Texas License Connection.
23 This is our new license system developed by WorldCom. Today
24 I'm going to cover three phases of the project. The
25 Transactive closeout, the production, which is live sales
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1 through the license system which is what's been happening
2 since December and then Phase 2 and 3 for the future. While
3 transactive picked up over 2,800 terminals they did have
4 difficulty retrieving some of these. We are asking our Law
5 Enforcement Division to assist with the pick up of
6 approximately 150 terminals. It is not the terminal or the
7 asset itself that we own. What we own are potential off-line
8 sales that are inside of that terminal. So we're actually
9 also contracting with two former Transactive employees to
10 extract these sales out of the terminal, if there are any, and
11 then we'll invoice the agents for these sales. That's why
12 it's important that we finish out this phase of the
13 transactive system.
14 In production right now with WorldCom system we
15 have what we would consider the two highest priority issues,
16 agent management and some findings from the
17 PricewaterhouseCoopers review. And when I say agent
18 management, what I mean is the number of agents overall, our
19 coverage, their satisfaction with the system, the suggestions
20 that have been made by the License Deputy Advisory Committee
21 and agent training. What we are doing to update -- well, what
22 we're going to update you on is our plans for agent training.
23 This is a map that is similar to the map that
24 we showed you at the January meeting. The green areas are zip
25 codes where we have had agent make sales through the WorldCom
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1 system. The bright pink areas represent agents that have
2 activated their terminals they put their terminals together,
3 they've connected to the WorldCom system. For whatever
4 reason, in general what we're hearing is they say they haven't
5 had customer requests, they have not made a sale. And the
6 white areas are zip codes where we do not have agents at this
7 time. And as you know we are working to try and get agents in
8 those zip code coverage areas for -- we are continuing
9 regularly getting applications from folks. This is very
10 regular in this industry. It's been this way since I've been
11 involved with this project. You have new folks who want to be
12 agents in the system. They start a new business. And so when
13 they come on and they're in one of these zip code areas, we do
14 not charge any lease fees in our -- trying to encourage folks
15 to started selling in this system. This slide here shows
16 where we've added these 1,250 new agents, additional agents
17 since the January meeting. So we've -- we're up to 1,857 who
18 have made sales in the system. If you'll remember we had
19 about 2,400 agents selling licenses with Transactive.
20 Twenty-three hundred of those turned in agreements saying they
21 wanted to continue with the WorldCom system. They signed
22 contracts with us saying we want to participate. We believe
23 that -- we've done some research on the 100 that we lost and
24 that's -- that was about 1 percent of our business before, so
25 in general these were probably very small folks who didn't
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1 want to learn a new system. But it probably didn't have a lot
2 of license sales to support it. We have almost 2,000 that
3 have activated their equipment, that would be the green and
4 the pink together and then we have the 1,857 who have made
5 sales. Okay. So getting to the agent satisfaction. In
6 February World Com conducted -- their help desk conducted a
7 survey. They called 856 agents for -- whether they couldn't
8 get them on the phone or they just weren't available, we got
9 about 510 who were willing to participate in about 14
10 different questions and what we've done is we've picked out
11 five of these questions to give you a sense of what the agents
12 are thinking. Okay? And what we've also done within these
13 five questions is what were the top answers. We kind of
14 looked for natural breaks in the survey data. The first
15 question was how many licenses have you sold and if you
16 haven't sold any why. And so this is the folks, the 41 folks
17 of the 510 who had not sold licenses. And the number one
18 reason was that they hadn't had business. There were some who
19 had problems with the equipment. And that's continuing to be
20 something that we're working with the help desk on. I asked
21 for information, you know, before this meeting what are the
22 high priority trouble tickets, that's what they call them if
23 an agent is having trouble issuing licenses. Right now it's
24 about 50 which is about 2.5 percent of our agents so it
25 could -- and that doesn't mean that these are the same folks
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1 who have had trouble since the beginning. It could be
2 somebody who had a power outage two days ago and is having
3 trouble issuing licenses now.
4 Another question, what part of the system
5 offers you the most challenges? A hundred and twenty didn't
6 have any specific answers. Getting the license to print was
7 56; too slow. Forty-six people -- 46 agents thought it was
8 too slow. Replacement licenses were a problem noted by 34
9 folks. That issue has actually been resolved since the survey
10 was conducted. That was an issue with making sure that all
11 the licenses that had been sold in the Transactive system in
12 the fall were available in the WorldCom system if somebody
13 lost it and wanted to get a replacement. So that issue has
14 basically been resolved. And then there's, you know, training
15 is an issue as we're going forward. When they were asked what
16 part of the system do you like the most, again 103 had no
17 specific information. Sixty-seven liked the license which is
18 consistent with our customer's comments. Sixty-four liked the
19 touch screen, especially I've heard from Academy and Wal-Mart
20 with the younger folks who work in their stores and, you know,
21 maybe high school folks, college folks, they're very used what
22 is almost a Windows-type driven application and so they like
23 that. They think it makes it very easy to train some of these
24 new folks. And, of course, they have higher turnover so
25 they're interested in that. This is in contrast to the last
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1 slide which said that printing was a problem, 56 folks thought
2 that printing is great, 42 folks think it's faster. So the
3 folks that we have that work at Parks and Wildlife who sell
4 licenses have told us that they think when you get used to the
5 system that it actually is faster. So hopefully those earlier
6 answers are more of a learning curve issue and again that was
7 an early February survey. They seem to be very satisfied with
8 the service that they get from the WorldCom help desk. That's
9 good. And the vast majority did not have any outstanding
10 issues with the license system and then some of the same
11 problems that I've mentioned earlier, equipment problems or
12 feeling that the system was too slow was mentioned by a few
13 folks.
14 And we have the License Deputy Advisory group.
15 They are -- you know, they represent these agents and they are
16 cross section of the different types of agent both
17 geographically and size of business. They met on
18 February 11th. They -- the focus of the meeting very much was
19 on the efficiency of the system. And so from -- they had very
20 good suggestions. They had a lot of suggestions and so I
21 don't want to at all imply that they didn't have concerns, but
22 they weren't concerned about the accounting. They weren't
23 concerned about getting swept for too many transactions or not
24 enough or not having the right reports. They were really
25 specific about having to do too many key strokes perhaps for
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1 date of birth or something like that. So we captured all
2 those suggestions and we are working with WorldCom to put
3 those into Phase 3. But overall it was a very positive
4 meeting.
5 We have conducted some agent -- some training
6 here at Parks and Wildlife headquarters. We think we do a
7 good job of that because we hear a lot of their questions and
8 we know what their concerns are. We had about 30 people here
9 and we think they were very pleased with the training. In
10 response to suggestions from the License Committee, we are
11 going to partner with Law Enforcement this summer before the
12 new license year and we're going to both train folks
13 regionally on the new system and also get them ready for the
14 new license year and also on the regulations that might be
15 changed, let them have an opportunity to ask a Law Enforcement
16 the kinds of questions they get asked by their customers.
17 We have redirected the PricewaterhouseCoopers
18 review from the Transactive system to the new WorldCom system
19 which was -- you know, a really good thing as we're starting
20 this new system. It is specifically related to transaction
21 integrity. The two most important issues that we -- that
22 PricewaterhouseCoopers found in their testing was that the off
23 line limitations are not functioning as designed. And let me
24 explain that a little bit. If the system were to go down, the
25 terminal would go off-line. So a customer would still be able
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1 to get a license. The system is supposed to be set up that no
2 agent should be able to sell in total more than $1,000 in
3 off-line transactions. Just kind of a precaution 'cause we
4 don't want to have, you know, any similar situation that we
5 did have with Transactive when some of the sales would go
6 off-line and we wouldn't get those uploaded to the host at
7 some point. That limitation is not being enforced right now.
8 And that's something that WorldCom is working on. So that's
9 an example of these off-line issues that we found. The other
10 thing that was found were these gaps in transaction numbers.
11 We had been assured that there weren't any gap in transaction
12 numbers and there shouldn't be; that's the bad news. The good
13 news is that what we have found is that all the gaps in the
14 transaction numbers relate to training transactions or aborted
15 transactions and as a matter of fact, our internal audit staff
16 after PricewaterhouseCoopers identified this issue, our
17 internal audit staff went to Academy, they looked at five
18 stores for a two-month period and they found no examples, no
19 instances where the live sale matched a gap in a transaction
20 number. So that's really good news. That means that we have
21 found no instances where a sale was made in the field that
22 didn't make it to the host system. And that's real important
23 for your transaction integrity. I guess what -- you know,
24 another thing I wanted to mention is that the Academy
25 controller told our internal audit staff that they believe
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1 this system is significantly better than the transactive
2 system. So we're also real pleased about that. Both of these
3 issues -- all of these issues that were found are being worked
4 on by WorldCom.
5 Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about
6 Phase 2 and 3. Phase 2 includes Internet licensing, and bug
7 fixes, and finalization of administrative support
8 applications. That is behind schedule. Right now we're
9 targeting May it was supposed to be completed in April. And
10 Phase 3 includes the enhancements, that would be some of the
11 suggestions from the Licensed Deputy Committee, some of our
12 suggestions as we have gotten some experience with the system
13 and we see some things that we would like to do differently,
14 and that will probably require a contract amendment. And I
15 would be happy to answer any questions. We also have George
16 Galindo with PricewaterhouseCoppers here and Bob Parker with
17 WorldCom.
18 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Mr. Montgomery?
19 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: The Internet license
20 you say you can bring it on-line to have it ready for this
21 summer?
22 MS. BURGDORF: Yes.
23 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: So that you would
24 have an application in the field. Can you give us a summary
25 of the scope of the Pricewaterhouse review? What were they
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1 tasked to do?
2 MS. BURGDORF: Yeah. They were tasked to look
3 at specifically transaction integrity and then also -- so
4 looking at are the transaction getting to the host system,
5 anything surrounding that. They were also asked to look at
6 our controls, what controls do we have in place Parks and
7 Wildlife and then what are the system controls that WorldCom
8 would have. And that deals with the kinds of things like
9 security to and access to their host system, disaster recovery
10 procedures. So basically they are looking at -- it's a
11 control review is what it is.
12 COMMISSIONER MONTGOMERY: It addressed all the
13 issues that were raised in the audit then?
14 MS. BURGDORF: Yes. They -- I mean, I think
15 they are looking at -- they had copies of the audit and they
16 know what some of the issues were in the Transactive system
17 and they're, I believe, specifically looking, you know, that
18 those aren't issues in the system. I think that's encompassed
19 in their control review.
20 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Mr. Fitzsimons?
21 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: My question has --
22 you mentioned Academy and Wal-Mart. They sale the vast
23 majority of the license.
24 MS. BURGDORF: Fifty-two percent.
25 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Combined?
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1 MS. BURGDORF: Yes, combined.
2 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: And those responses
3 in those surveys, I saw anywhere response from 150 to 500
4 bottom of the draft. Now, are those all different types or
5 are those --
6 MS. BURGDORF: Yes.
7 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: All right. Do you
8 break down the responses at all into those largest vendors
9 because I would be frankly more interested in their responses
10 Academy and Wal-Mart since they're selling the majority than
11 maybe some of the smaller ones.
12 MS. BURGDORF: You know, I don't know. We
13 could ask WorldCom if they could do that. I don't have that
14 information now. They probably kept track of who they were.
15 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Right.
16 MS. BURGDORF: I will tell you this, Academy is
17 great the way they have worked with us on this project. They
18 put one of their trainers responsible for the stores. They
19 were e-mailing me daily. They would have the agents -- each
20 Academy store was asked, you know, for their comments, any
21 problems. And their e-mail traffic is great. They would let
22 us know and they were very specific about what issues they
23 might -- and I'm talking mostly about December and January now
24 because I think overall they're really pleased with where we
25 are. They were at the License Deputy Advisory Committee, both
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1 their vice president of operations and this head training guy
2 who was responsible for the implementation at the Academy
3 stores. And they had some of the same comments about wanting
4 to make it more efficient. But they're really pleased with
5 where it is and they're very good about getting us specific
6 information if they have any problems on a very regular basis.
7 They're also good and compliments about the things they like
8 better about the system. So I'm real comfortable that we know
9 what Academy's issues are, if there are any, you know. Again,
10 I think it deals primarily with the efficiency of the system.
11 And Wal-Mart is much bigger, of course, they have many more
12 stores and they don't seem to have the same communication
13 channels that Academy does from headquarters. So we get
14 feedback from them. I know that I've been working with a guy
15 in internal audit, internal affairs and he has been showing me
16 when a Wal-Mart isn't selling and so we're escalating those.
17 And at this point I believe that all Wal-Marts are selling
18 licenses. We had one that, you know, they just couldn't get
19 the machine hooked up right. Finally WorldCom sent them a
20 machine completely packaged together, so all they had to do
21 was plug it in and it worked and they realized -- some folks
22 are just so visual, you know, they really need to see it and
23 not just hear, not just watch a video, not look at a piece of
24 paper, and not hear directions over the phone, they've got to
25 see it.
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1 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Sounds like a
2 particular sporting goods manager. Well, I would be
3 interested if you could look at it. It seems to me your
4 example of the responses on, let's say, printers or whatever
5 if most of those responses are from Academy or Wal-Mart --
6 MS. BURGDORF: Uh-huh.
7 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: -- that's more
8 significant to me with them selling over half of the
9 licenses --
10 MS. BURGDORF: Uh-huh.
11 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: -- than if it's 27
12 small ones. Not to discount, they're very important in the
13 system, but numbers matters.
14 MS. BURGDORF: Well, we can do two things. One
15 we can follow-up with WorldCom and ask them if they can, you
16 know, segregate their survey results by type of store and the
17 other thing we can do is just a follow up with Academy and
18 Wal-Mart and say, you know, what would you say your top three
19 issues are right now with regard to this new system.
20 COMMISSIONER FITZSIMONS: Thank you.
21 COMMISSIONER RISING: I had a question I'm
22 sorry.
23 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Go ahead.
24 COMMISSIONER RISING: I noticed earlier that
25 you stated that we have about 2,300 people or agents who
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1 intend to apply for the new system but we've got about 2,000
2 on line right now. Do we feel that that 300 is just -- is
3 that just because it's not license season or do we expect them
4 to come on line and are we going to follow --
5 MS. BURGDORF: That's what we think. We have
6 made two phone calls to those folks, Parks and Wildlife has
7 called these folks and actually WorldCom has called some of
8 these folks. And by the and large the answer we get is that
9 we either, A, we didn't have time to put the machine together
10 and that was more the answer we got back in January when they
11 had probably just been through their busy hunting season so
12 they wanted to finish up with Transactive or, two, they didn't
13 have any business. So as we -- you know, we -- what was an
14 interesting phenomena is over kind of the Texas two-week
15 spring break period is whereas we had been getting probably in
16 February maybe one agent a day was coming on-line, we were
17 getting four and five agents a day during that spring break
18 period which kind of indicates there's some truth to the fact
19 when they have business maybe people were out fishing, you
20 know, or spring turkey hunting, when they had business they
21 were going to take the time to get their equipment put
22 together. So what we need to do before the license year, you
23 know, give it another month, let's say, another month and a
24 half, see where we are with the number of agents, see if
25 they're still truly trickling on and call those folks again
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1 and say, you know, we have a contract with you, can we help
2 you get this set up. We want you to be ready for the new
3 license year. So we're very much hoping that these folks come
4 on line and that it truly is just that they're not -- they're
5 don't have customers right now. And of course a lot of our
6 agents are ranch folks and they don't -- they're not having
7 customers come to their ranch except during hunting season
8 so --
9 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Commissioner Avila has a
10 question.
11 COMMISSIONER AVILA: I was going to ask how
12 many states now have Internet license sales and then second is
13 our Internet sales going to be through WorldCom, I mean, have
14 they got a, you know, the web site and all that?
15 MS. BURGDORF: Okay. There are, I believe,
16 probably 25 states or so that have some form of what they
17 would call Internet licensed sales. And sometimes that's just
18 a few licenses. It's not everything. We hope to bring up all
19 recreational license sales and that number is just from memory
20 because there is this committee that's a subset of the
21 International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies that
22 specifically works on licensed system. And I can get you a
23 specific one later today.
24 COMMISSIONER AVILA: I just wanted to know
25 where we were in coming on line.
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1 MS. BURGDORF: We're probably a little behind
2 because we had ended up having to deal with this transition
3 when we could have been focusing our energies just on Internet
4 licensing.
5 COMMISSIONER AVILA: Right.
6 MS. BURGDORF: WorldCom is providing the
7 application, the back-end application. And all Internet
8 licensed sales will be on-line as well which is going to be a
9 good thing for the system. What they're then doing, though,
10 is we are giving out specifications to folks. There's -- and
11 there's some examples that some of you guys might have heard
12 of. A greatlodge.com, there's a fishing one. I can't
13 remember the name of it right now. There's some that are just
14 government-type web sites and these folks specialize in
15 selling hunting and fishing license and they would basically
16 bid with us on getting this business. We're hoping to --
17 COMMISSIONER AVILA: To us or to WorldCom?
18 MS. BURGDORF: To us. We're hoping to have
19 three to five Internet brokers selling our licenses. And John
20 Wilson, he's actually heading up that aspect of the project
21 and John did I answer that fairly accurately.
22 MR. WILSON: I understood it.
23 MS. BURGDORF: Okay. All right.
24 COMMISSIONER AVILA: I understood it too. I
25 guess the final part of that question is if we start getting a
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1 lot of use of the Internet sales the downside in quantity
2 doesn't have any effect on our WorldCom contract.
3 MS. BURGDORF: They will still get -- they will
4 still get a transaction fee because it will still be an
5 on-line transaction through the WorldCom system. So -- and
6 actually, you know, when we first mentioned the idea of a call
7 center back when we first automated their original license
8 system, we had a lot of licensed agents who were concerned
9 that they were going to lose business and it ended up being
10 like 3 percent of our business. It really didn't impact their
11 sales and the downside of an Internet license is if it's a
12 tag -- if you want it for a tagged species, you're going to
13 have to wait a few days to get that paper license. So I don't
14 believe that it's going to negatively impact the agent
15 significantly.
16 MR. COOK: Commissioners, Jayna correct me if
17 I'm wrong, the Transactive point-of-sales system was one of
18 the first in the United States.
19 MS. BURGDORF: It was the second and it was
20 largest.
21 MR. COOK: Automated system.
22 MS. BURGDORF: Automated system.
23 MR. COOK: That we implemented almost six years
24 ago now?
25 MS. BURGDORF: Uh-huh.
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1 MR. COOK: This system brings us in how many
2 million dollars a year?
3 MS. BURGDORF: Sixty-five million.
4 MR. COOK: I wanted to point that out because
5 of the importance of the system. It is a very, very complex
6 system. And Jayna mentioned it, but I wanted to recognize
7 this little guy standing back there by the door. John Wilson
8 and Jayna have worked through the years with these two
9 programs intensely. The complexity and the detail involved --
10 we learned a lot from the Transactive system, we all did.
11 And, you know, 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing and we're
12 trying to take advantage of it to the best of our ability at
13 this time to make our WorldCom system even better. And
14 WorldCom has been very cooperatively, Bob, and we appreciate
15 that. You know, these systems, I got really pretty closely
16 involved in this WorldCom system back in about March or April
17 of last year. And when you sit around with these folks who
18 are working, we have many people within this group, Suzy's
19 group of folks working on this system, a number of people, and
20 I -- they are so capable, so competent. When I sit around and
21 they're talking, I do lots of nodding and things like that.
22 And I try to act agreeable most of the time. But, you know,
23 we are looking at this system every day with the intent of
24 improving customer service, improving our ability to collect
25 our funds. It's -- it's an interesting challenge and I
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1 appreciate your -- I appreciate your involvement and interest
2 in it. And without people like Jayna and John and Bridget
3 Wolf and the people who have just been -- there's a whole
4 group of them, and I don't mean to leave anybody out, but they
5 have done us a great job. We're going to do better. We're
6 going to continue to make this system better. We appreciate
7 your help and appreciate your tolerance and we're gearing up
8 now. I was talking to them the other day, I said, okay, guys,
9 you know, we're going to start the new year again in August,
10 in early August, you know, are we going to be ready? I mean
11 those are the kind of issues that we've got to be -- that
12 August, September rush is a huge, I believe, in that first 60
13 days or so --
14 MS. BURGDORF: Fifty percent of our business.
15 MR. COOK: -- 50 percent of the license
16 transactions for year. So we got to fill in those holes
17 across the State where we need to fill them in and we can
18 evaluate that. We've got to find those vendors who are having
19 a problem and see if we can resolve them and we're doing that.
20 I appreciate their efforts.
21 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Any other comments or
22 questions? Thank you, Jayna.
23 ITEM 9. LICENSE FEES FOR COMMERCIAL FISHERIES
24 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: We'll take up Item No. 9.
25 Suzy Whittenton to present the recommendation on the license
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1 fees for commercial fisheries.
2 MS. WHITTENTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
3 Commissioners. We discussed a proposal at the last meeting to
4 increase commercial fishing license fees in the Finance
5 Committee. This originated from a State Auditor's Office
6 report that was published in December of 2000 that determined
7 that Parks and Wildlife did not receive enough revenue in the
8 commercial fishing fishery programs to recoup the cost of
9 program management. That report became the basis for a
10 Legislative Appropriations Rider in the current Appropriations
11 Act. That rider is pretty clear. It states that it's the
12 intent of the Legislature that Parks and Wildlife shall adjust
13 rates charged for licenses in each commercial fishery program
14 accordingly to provide funds necessary to recoup costs. You
15 know, in order to reach complete cost recovery we would have
16 to increase the fees by over 100 percent. This would be in
17 addition to last year's fee increase which was up to about
18 50 percent already. So the staff has been concerned about the
19 socioeconomic disruption to the coastal communities from the
20 large -- from a large fee increase. So as a first step
21 towards balancing the interest of the State and the
22 industries, a 20 percent fee increase was recommended. That
23 action would expect to generate about $663,000 in new revenue.
24 Here are examples of the impact of the proposed fee changes by
25 license type. Now, we published this proposal in the
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1 March 1st issue of the Texas Register and held 22 public
2 hearings across the State. We also took in public comments
3 through our web site, which is actually where we got most of
4 comments. This is what the comments looked like; 62 in favor.
5 Now, those are primarily coming from people not in the
6 commercial fishing business. These are coming off of our web
7 site. Anybody could log in and comment. Then we had 24
8 against and 44 where there wasn't really an opinion stated.
9 Either they were asking for clarification or making a comment
10 that was not a for or against. We got a couple of alternate
11 proposals that they asked us to consider. One was to increase
12 the fees by a greater percentage. Again, that's probably not
13 someone in the business. And then we had somebody write in
14 that a 5 percent increase would be more acceptable. Those
15 were the comments. Now, since then as a staff was looking at
16 all the fees when we were doing all our work on fee issues, we
17 realized that there was a need to clarify the rules associated
18 with transfers of licenses when a license holder passes away
19 and wanted to pass their license on to an heir. The way the
20 current rules read the heir would have to pay the full license
21 fee. And what happens actually in practice has been that we
22 charge them a transfer fee and so we just wanted to clarify
23 the rules here and propose a transfer fee of $10 for that --
24 in that situation. This would apply to licenses in that
25 license management program. And that's all I had. And we're
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1 just asking that this item be put on tomorrow's agenda for
2 public hearing consideration of adoption.
3 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Any questions or comments?
4 If not, the item will be placed on the agenda tomorrow for
5 public comment and action by the Commission. Thank you.
6 MS. WHITTENTON: Thank you.
7 CHAIRMAN ANGELO: Any other business to come
8 before this committee? There being none, Madame Chairman, I
9 believe that's all that is the business of the Finance
10 Committee for today's meeting.
11 CHAIRMAN IDSAL: Thank you, Mr. Angelo. We
12 will now reconvene the Regulations Committee; is that correct?
13 We need the chairman of the Regulations Committee,
14 Mr. Fitzsimons. Why don't we take a couple minute break here.
15 I think that might be appropriate. Be back in five minutes.
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1 THE STATE OF TEXAS )
2 COUNTY OF TRAVIS )
3 I, KIM SEIBERT, a Certified Court Reporter in and for
4 the State of Texas, do hereby certify that the above and
5 foregoing pages constitute a full, true, and correct
6 transcript of the minutes of the Texas Parks and Wildlife
7 Commission on April 3, 2002, in the Commission hearing room
8 of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Headquarters Complex, Austin,
9 Travis County, Texas.
10 I FURTHER CERTIFY that a stenographic record was made by
11 me at the time of the public meeting and said stenographic
12 notes were thereafter reduced to computerized transcription
13 under my supervision and control.
14 WITNESS MY HAND this ____ day of ____________________,
15 2002.
16
17
18 ___________________________
KIM SEIBERT, Texas CSR 4589
19 Expiration Date: 12/2002
3101 Bee Caves Road
20 Suite 220, Centre II
Austin, Texas 78701
21 (512) 328-5557
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1
2
3
4 ___________________________
ERNEST ANGELO, CHAIRMAN
5
6 ___________________________
KELLY W. RISING, M.D.
7
8 ___________________________
PHILIP MONTGOMERY, III
9
10 ___________________________
JOSEPH FITZSIMONS
11
12 ___________________________
JOHN AVILA, JR.
13
14 ___________________________
ALVIN L. HENRY (Absent)
15
16 ___________________________
KATHARINE ARMSTRONG IDSAL
17
18 ___________________________
MARK E. WATSON, JR.
19
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___________________________
21 DONATO D. RAMOS
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