No Pay, No Say

Smarter and tougher from that defeat, the federation launched a campaign for another ballot initiative, this time for a one-eighth-of-one-percent state sales tax, with proceeds to be allocated to the Department of Conservation for fish, wildlife, and forestry. Resistance was formidable. The Farm Bureau ranted endlessly about what it called a “government land grab.” And if there’s one thing legislators hate, it’s dedicated funding because it circumvents the appropriations process and makes them feel nonessential.

At the time Dave Murphy, who now directs the Conservation Federation, was an Earth Day–generation activist and an undergraduate in forestry, fisheries, and wildlife at the University of Missouri. He circulated petitions that helped get the sales tax initiative on the 1976 ballot, and he was the only person in his farm-dominated precinct to vote for it, including his farmer father. “The 10:30 p.m. news reported that the initiative would fail,” Murphy recalls. “But when I got up in the morning the returns from St. Louis were in. The initiative had passed by 20,000 votes, and our world changed.”

Indeed it did. In 2008 two-thirds of the Department of Conservation’s $172.5 million budget was generated by the sales tax. In addition to conducting all manner of progressive ecosystem management, the agency now owns 788,706 acres of prime habitat and leases 202,864 more. Most of this is in Conservation Areas. Statewide there are now about 900, and virtually all Missourians are within a half-hour’s drive of at least one. A program run by the Audubon Society of Missouri records bird species seen on each area. Typical is the 4,318-acre Columbia Bottom Conservation Area near St. Louis, where, in just the past two years, 240 species of birds have been identified by Audubon members.

“We’re trying to create a mosaic of habitats appropriate for floodplain property,” says Columbia Bottom’s manager, Tom Leifield. “We have about 800 acres of intensively managed wetlands, elaborate pump-station systems and water-control structures, 300 acres of prairie in various stages of restoration, 140 acres of native hardwood plantings, and 250 acres of former ag land that we’re letting go back to cottonwood-and-willow riverfront forest.” This area alone gets something like 200,000 visitors a year.

Missouri’s Public Lands Program, also enabled by the sales tax, helps farmers manage their lands in wildlife-friendly ways and get paid by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to plant and encourage food and cover for wildlife. As a result the state is the first to report success under the Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative—a range-wide habitat-restoration effort by nongovernmental organizations and state and federal resource agencies. In the boot heel’s Scott County, where agriculture is especially intense, the state’s goal was to create 4,500 acres of quail habitat. Already there is 7,000 acres, more is on the way, and the quail population is up 66 percent from 2008.

Only Minnesota has come close to Missouri. Even as the economy tanked in November 2008, voters approved a three-eights-of-one-percent sales tax that will net about $270 million, a third of which will go to conservation programs for habitat, which, if approved by the legislature, could supplement the Division of Fish and Wildlife’s existing $70 million annual budget. Another third will go for clean water programs, and a third for parks, trails, arts, and cultural heritage. The only way Minnesota can get an initiative on the ballot is for the legislature to okay it. So that campaign took 12 years and was no less arduous than Missouri’s. “The sportsmen-environmentalist alliance won over 56 percent of the voters,” reports division director Dave Schad. “That’s pretty remarkable, given the economic climate.” Unfortunately, the funding system has a 25-year sunset clause, after which it will have to be reauthorized. But Schad sees this as added incentive to “do everything right.”

Arkansas had limped along with one of the stingiest fish and wildlife budgets in the nation. But in 1996 voters approved a one-eighth-of-one-percent sales tax. That effort also took 12 years, and it passed only after two failed attempts and with just 50.6 percent of the vote. As in Minnesota, the sportsmen-environmentalist coalition that designed the initiative had to split up revenue to get it passed. Forty-five percent, or about $27 million a year, goes to the Game and Fish Commission, boosting its budget to about $68 million. Another 45 percent goes to the Department of Parks, 9 percent to the Department of Arkansas Heritage, and one percent to the anti-litter organization Keep Arkansas Beautiful.

Like the Minnesota legislature, the Iowa legislature must okay ballot initiatives. And it has just passed a bill that will allow voters to decide next November on a constitutional amendment that would, with the first increase in the sales tax (and they happen roughly once a decade), allocate three-eighths-of-one-percent of the entire tax to fish, wildlife, law enforcement, watershed restoration, lake restoration, parks, trails, and other programs administered principally by the Departments of Natural Resources and Agriculture. The total would be about $150 million a year.

The strength of such constitutional amendments is that they circumvent the unreliable annual appropriations process and prevent raids from ever-destitute general assemblies and governors. The weakness is that because they are anathema to legislators, particularly appropriators, they are notoriously difficult to pass, especially in states that don’t have ballot initiatives. Virginia and Texas have enacted laws that dedicate a share of existing sales taxes on outdoor gear to fish and wildlife. Unlike constitutional amendments, however, laws can easily be changed or done away with.

Some states don’t even have sales taxes. But there are other options. Florida and South Carolina dedicate a portion of real estate transfer fees to their wildlife agencies. And Florida augments this with revenue from speeding fines. Wildlife agencies in Alabama, California, and Texas get a share of the cigarette tax. Arizona and Colorado get $10 million and $8.75 million a year, respectively, from state lotteries. Bond issues have been used widely and effectively, mostly for habitat acquisition. Some states dedicate sales of specialized license plates to wildlife. Others receive major funds from oil and gas leasing and production on public lands. Many states have check-off boxes on their income tax forms by which citizens can make voluntary contributions to nongame wildlife.