Thursday, July 01, 2004
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: DGIF gains Level I status
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries long has been a top-tier agency in the minds and hearts of many outdoorsmen who hunt, fish and boat. Now it is officially that in the hierarchy of state agencies, having advanced recently from a middle-of-the-road Level III ranking to a top-dog Level I agency. That puts it on par with high-profile agencies such as the State Police and the Highway Department, at least on paper.
To celebrate that fact, Gov. Mark Warner made a rare appearance at a board meeting of the DGIF in Richmond Friday, lauding the agency as one of the best of its kind in the nation.
The upgrade came through an amendment that Warner proposed to the state budget. It received overwhelming support from legislators, by a vote of 79-18 in the House and 35-1 in the Senate.
"I thought it was the right thing to do," said Warner.
Elation over the new ranking came from Dan Hoffler, DGIF’s chairman of the board, and Bill Woodfin, the DGIF executive director.
"This is huge," said Hoffler, an avid outdoorsman and successful businessman from the Eastern Shore. His close friendship and support of Warner played a key role in the reclassification.
And it was just the beginning, Hoffler suggested. "Our governor knows that we are going to be back in his face for something else, and it is not going to be long," he said.
Does that "something else" include a request for general funds from an agency whose funding is limited to fees paid by hunters, anglers and boaters? To that, Hoffler said: "I will take money from anywhere."
"Level I puts us in the strongest position that we can be," Woodfin said. "It increases our ability to achieve the things that we want to achieve. It makes you more competitive. Over time, the programs of this department are going to be viewed at a higher level than they have historically, because we are playing at a higher level."
Sportsmen can hope that the Level I classification will mean greater attention from the General Assembly to the requests and needs of DGIF, and an end to the pilfering of the agency’s funding by legislators and governors who divert outdoor money to other needs. That, alone, would place high value on the new classification.
While praise for the Level I status came thick and fast during the board meeting, specifics were vague, leaving media members scrambling for facts.
At one point, Woodfin said: "That’s the best I can do on (explaining) Level I. I can’t say it any better than that. I wish I could show you 10 things that Level I does."
No details were included in the budget amendment bill with the exception that the DGIF director will be on a higher salary scale. Level III agency heads earn from $72,268 to $114,258 a year. Level I heads earn $95,572 to $151,103. Woodfin on Friday also received a 5-percent salary bonus from the board.
This has some people wondering: What about other employees of the department? What about programs and personnel that have been slashed because of the lack of funds?
As Level I was being praised in Richmond, members of the Smith Mountain Striper Club were receiving the July issue of their club bulletin in the mail. The cover article was by club member Dick Ankrstjerne, who blasted the fact that game wardens have been cut on Smith Mountain Lake at a time when boating traffic will look like a "re-enactment of the Battle of Midway" on July 4.
"Cutting enforcement on the lake by 25 percent, when the lake is exploding, borders on criminal neglect," he wrote. "How many more people need to be killed before the Administration wakes up?"
The fact that the director’s salary was the only thing spelled out in the governor’s amendment has resulted in modest criticism, not because the position doesn’t merit a higher pay scale, but because it comes at a time when programs and other personnel are suffering.
"This Level I is not solely about Bill Woodfin’s compensation," said Hoffler. "It is about us being on par with other agencies that are comparable to this agency, which will allow us to do for our people what other agencies that are Level I do for their people. We are still trying to formulate what that is. It is going to be more than what we are doing today."
