Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Game board chips in to cover cost of safari
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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With public outcry mounting over game department spending related to an African safari, the department's board is taking action.
They're passing the hat. Board chairman Dan Hoffler told The Virginian-Pilot that the board members are chipping in to reimburse the state.
At issue is roughly $12,000, covering the cost of gear and equipment top game department officials purchased with state credit cards prior to their September 2004 trip to Zimbabwe.
"So far we have about $12,500, and it looks like we'll have $15,000 when we're done," Hoffler said.
Ten of the governor-appointed board's 11 members have committed to paying. The one holdout is new to the board, Hoffler said, and wasn't around when the trip occurred.
"That shows you that the board, both Republican and Democrat, supported this trip and thought it was a good idea," Hoffler said.
Retiree William King of Arlington is among the Virginia sportsmen who does not think the trip was necessary.
"There is about as much to be learned in the country of Zimbabwe about modern game management, as there would be in visiting Las Vegas to learn about virtue," King wrote in a strongly worded letter to Gov. Mark Warner, a copy of which was provided to The Roanoke Times.
The 17-day excursion was planned as a state-sanctioned trip to allow top game officials to observe game management and wildlife law enforcement practices in a country where hunting is an important economic driver.
When Virginia secretary of natural resources W. Tayloe Murphy Jr. wouldn't approve state funding, Hoffler stepped in to cover most costs of the trip. The three game officials who took the trip - agency director Bill Woodfin and senior game wardens Mike Caison and Terry Bradbery - took personal vacation.
Before state funding for the trip was pulled the officials had already used state credit cards to pay for approximately $12,000 worth of gear and equipment to be used on the safari.
The investigation into whether those expenditures were appropriate was triggered by a tip to the state's fraud, waste and abuse hot line.
Hoffler told The Virginian-Pilot the equipment purchases weren't out of line.
"All of the equipment purchased - and I don't even know what most of it was because I didn't make any of the purchases - is inventoried and currently being used by the department," Hoffler said. "It's stuff we procure every year."
Hoffler said he could understand some of the backlash caused by media coverage of the story, broken in late December by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
"I can understand how the public would read the stories and come to bad conclusions," he said. "But the public wasn't getting all the facts straight."
Board member John Montgomery of Mechanicsville told The Virginian-Pilot that paying the money back isn't intended to deflect attention from the investigation.
"The questions raised have become a distraction to the good work the department has been doing," said Montgomery, who wrote a check for $2,500. "We want to remove all concern about what we as a department are doing. We felt like this was the most straight forward way to do that, and we hope this will take the issue off the table.
"But it is definitely not our intent to have any effect on the investigation and if we find that to be the case, we'll take other actions. We just want everybody to know that we take very seriously the use of the public's money."
The board has formed a subcommittee headed by Montgomery to look into how the department makes purchases, Hoffler said.
Hoffler, who has taken several other personal hunting safaris to Africa, said he would likely do things differently if given the opportunity.
"In retrospect, when Mr. Murphy questioned the trip, I should have decided not to go," he said. "Questions have been raised about whether the trip was legitimate or not, and I fully understand.
"But it was about business and I think some good things have come out of it."
