Legislature considers restoring, raising sportfishing guide, operator fees

Bill would raise an estimated $420,000 annually for fisheries data management

A bill that would restore the state licensing fee on sportfishing guides and operators — which expired in 2018 — is slowly working its way through the Legislature.

An amendment in the House last year to charge nonresidents twice the annual fee as Alaska residents has raised some questions and concerns, most recently at a Senate committee hearing on the bill.

Restoring the licensing fee would raise an estimated $420,000 a year for fisheries data management work.

Meanwhile, a separate bill to bring back a longstanding surcharge on all sportfishing licenses that expired a year ago also is waiting its turn for legislative action. The legislation would raise an estimated $5.6 million a year for fisheries enhancement efforts.

Supporters say restoring the annual surcharge on a few hundred thousand sportfishing licenses could help cover salmon enhancement programs such as at the state-owned Crystal Lake hatchery in Petersburg, operated by the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association, and at the privately owned Douglas Island Pink and Chum hatchery in Juneau.

In an attempt to bring back the licensing fee for guides and operators, the governor last year introduced House Bill 79, with a proposed charge of $200 a year for guides and $400 a year for operators — twice the old rate.

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The intent is that the Department of Fish and Game would use the money to operate its saltwater fishing logbook program, which collects catch and fishing effort data.

The logbook program has been ongoing since 1998 but without a designated source of funding.

The data “provides critical information that informs sustainable fisheries management decisions,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a letter introducing the bill. The state is required to collect the data to meet its obligations under the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty and for the International Pacific Halibut Commission.

Without the revenue from license fees, the department has been using state general fund dollars to operate the data collection program, Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang told the Senate Resources Committee on Jan. 26.

The governor’s proposal applied only to saltwater sportfishing operations, but the House amended the licensing and fees provision to cover freshwater guides and operators, too, though the department could decide whether freshwater fishing operations need to maintain and submit logbook data.

The department required logbooks from freshwater guides and operators from 2005 until the program expired under a sunset provision in 2018.

Expanding the reach of the license fees is causing “heartburn” to freshwater guides and operators, Vincent-Lang told senators, adding that the department does not see “an immediate need” to require logbooks for freshwater fishing, while the data on saltwater fishing efforts is “critical” for management decisions.

In addition to adding freshwater guides and operators to the licensing fee provisions, the House amended the governor’s bill to cut in half the proposed annual fees for residents while leaving nonresidents at the higher rates. That would charge nonresidents twice as much — $100 for resident guides and $200 for nonresident guides, with the annual fee at $200 for resident operators and $400 for nonresidents.

The department reports that in 2019, pre-pandemic, there were about an equal number of resident guides as nonresidents, about 1,200 each.

The bill passed the House by about a 2-to-1 margin last May. It was held over for the second year of the two-year legislative session and had its first hearing in the Senate Resources Committee last week. The committee held the bill for further consideration “at a future date,” said Committee Chair Josh Revak, of Anchorage.

At the Jan. 26 hearing, Kodiak Sen. Gary Stevens questioned the legality of charging nonresidents twice as much for the same license as residents. Vincent-Lang said the Department of Law has advised that the price difference “is defensible,” based on past court action allowing higher fees for giving nonresidents access to the state’s resources.

The Southeast Alaska Guides Organization went on the record last year against the higher fee for nonresidents, saying it is not justified and is legally questionable.

Southeast Alaska’s four House members all voted for the bill last year. Reps. Dan Ortiz, of Ketchikan, and Jonathan Kreiss-Tompkins, of Sitka, both said last week they still support the measure and fee structure. But opponents of the measure have been able to stall progress on the bill, Kreiss-Tomkins said.

The governor’s other bill dealing with sportfishing licenses (House Bill 80), passed the House by an overwhelming margin last year, moved through the Senate Resources Committee in four days last May, and now awaits a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee.

The measure would restore a surcharge that expired Jan. 1, 2021, on sportfishing licenses. The surcharge had been $9 a year for residents and ranged for nonresidents from $10 for a one-day license to $45 for an annual license. The money had been used to pay back bonds for two salmon hatchery projects in the state, including the Crystal Lake hatchery in Petersburg. When the debt was paid off in 2020, the surcharge went away.

Dunleavy proposed bringing back the surcharge at a reduced level, knocking off $2.50 from each of the steps in the expired fee schedule, to establish a “sportfishing hatcheries facilities account” that could fund future maintenance at state-owned facilities.

The House amended the bill to direct some of the money to “fisheries management, fisheries research, invasive species suppression and eradication and habitat restoration,” with the rest going to “sportfishing stock enhancement and ongoing maintenance of the department’s sport fishing hatchery facilities.”

However, bringing back a fee that went away can be a political challenge, no matter how well-intentioned, Kreiss-Tomkins said, noting Alaskans’ aversion to fees.

In 2020, the state issued more than 300,000 sportfishing licenses, with almost 60% going to residents. Because of the higher fees, total surcharge revenue from nonresidents was about six times the fees paid by residents.

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