Ohio Division of Wildlife's bottom line needs a new floor if it's to stay solvent

The bottom line for any enterprise is always marked with the dollar sign, whether the entity is a business or a governmental agency.

And for the Ohio Division of Wildlife that keynote is valued at a price that places it in the ballpark of mid-size companies.

Found on the Wildlife Division’s 2018 “Wild Ohio” calendar is a one-page overview of the agency’s 2017 fiscal year revenue and expenditures. This sheet has a couple of cool, colored pie charts that illustrate the agency’s cash flow. (I love pie charts as they really do help simplify and explain things. But I digress).

The affair includes the notation that the Wildlife Division’s revenue stream included a tad more than $64 million in and some $73.6 million out. Not to panic, however, the Wildlife Division’s engine is not (mercifully not yet, anyway) operating on just five of its six fiscal cylinders. There is always a fudge-factored carryover that helps smooth out year-to-year budgetary wrinkles, as we shall learn.

“The difference in the two pie charts in the fiscal year 2017 financial report reflecting a negative balance is simple to explain,” says Wildlife Division assistant chief Mike Luers. “It’s just a matter of timing, with the fiscal year ending before all of the federal reimbursements were completed. No funds have lapsed and the division of wildlife is in good financial standing.”

As for being equal to a mid-size company, I say that because an actual definition exists for such nomenclature. More precisely, a bunch of interpretations exist for defining a mid-size company along the lines of L.L. Bean and Lands End clothing and they all pretty much dovetail.

The Ohio State University’s National Center for the Middle Market (you can’t make this sort of title up) says a mid-size company is defined as having annual revenue of between $10 million and $1 billion, while the European Union uses an even more refined international standard. It says such a firm as between 50 and 250 employees along with an annual income of less than $66 million.

Ohio’s Wildlife Division has between 420 and 440 employees. So it’s close enough to meet the qualification; not an unimportant item as it demonstrates the challenges of running an entity, whether that unit is a business or a governmental agency beholden to the public.

In any event, we see that for Fiscal 2017, the Wildlife Division collected $14.9 million in fishing license fees, another $10.6 million in hunting license fees, and $21 million in federal aid-to-restoration money.

And before the people who bought the 885,641 fishing licenses start yapping that they paid a bigger slice of the pie than did the people who acquired the 388,036 hunting licenses, let it be understood that deer tag sales contributed another $8.8 million, turkey tags chipped in $1.4 million and wetland stamps forked over $371,000.

What may come as something of a surprise to many people is that the Wildlife Division does collect a small portion of the state’s tax on the sale of gasoline. That’s because hunters and anglers buy fuel for their ATVs, boats and what-not and consequently pay taxes on that gasoline and diesel. It’s only correct that the Wildlife Division gets its fair share, as does the Watercraft arm of the Parks Division. This largess totaled something on the order of $2.3 million.

Oh, and the Wildlife Division’s Wildlife Diversity and Endangered Species Fund was fueled by nearly $639,000 while fines netted $380,000. That figure is good news for eagles, sandhill cranes, bats and a host of creatures that may never have to dodge a wad of lead shot or learn to avoid a lure’s treble hooks.

Sliding over the expenditure side of things we see that the Wildlife Division has segmented the pie chart into eight slices.

Not unexpectedly this pie chart appears with separate categories for “fish management” and “wildlife management,” each of which enjoys the largest wedges: $11.9 million (16 percent) for fish management, and $17.4 million (24 percent) for wildlife management.

Among the smaller expenditure slabs are things like Wildlife officers at $9.8 million (13 percent), capital improvements at $5.9 million (8 percent), law enforcement at $5.3 million (7 percent), Information and education at $5 million (also 7 percent), and $2.5 million (3 percent) for administration.

An interesting side-bar on the wildlife officer ledger item, however. The Wildlife Division’s fiscal report states that “Wildlife officers are assigned to each of Ohio’s 88 counties and Lake Erie” a claim that simply is no longer accurate as critics of the Wildlife Division’s administrative management continue to maintain. But, again, I digress.

Oh, for the Wildlife Division’s five district offices and statewide operations the pie chart shows another $15.8 million (22 percent). This catch-all/what-not drawer is described as including “fiscal and business management, licensing and permits, property management, computer services, environmental research and review, and wetlands habitat restoration.”

Now we begin to understand the dynamics of what it takes the Wildlife Division’s executives to manage not only the physical resources entrusted to them but also the financial ones.

Yet that work is being complicated by an Ohio Department of Natural Resources which believes it can continue to whistle past the graveyard, believing that cost-cutting here, there and everywhere along with squeezing a few pennies will result in many years’ worth of fiscal status quo.

Let’s face it, whether managing fisheries resources or land critters the cost is going to require more than just the spare change offered through increases to non-resident participatory fees, as was approved last year.

Sooner rather than latter, too. No question, the CEOs and CFOs sitting in their offices at the Natural Resources Department’s Fountain Square complex will need to accept the fact that for the solvency of the Wildlife Division and the continued forward motion of fish and wildlife management, resident license fee increases are now a necessity.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net