St. Paul — Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council members have begun poring over the next round of proposals – there are 45, totaling more than $264 million.
It’s estimated there will be about $100 million available for appropriation recommendations in this round, which is for fiscal year 2020. It’s possible the estimate may be revised after November.
While council members have received materials on each of the requests, the proposals will get a hearing at the next council meetings that were rescheduled for Sept. 6-7, said Mark Johnson, executive director of the LSOHC.
“There’s a lot of pages to read,” said Bob Anderson, LSOHC chair, who wasn’t dreading the reams of paper he’d already dug into. “I love reading about opportunities in our state. We are very fortunate to have the resources we have and the citizen support to make habitat.”
The LSOHC has the responsibility of making funding recommendations to the Legislation each year for the Outdoor Heritage Fund, which came out of the voter-approved 2008 Legacy Amendment.
Council member Ron Schara, an Outdoor News columnist and recently retired TV personality, produced a half-hour special called “Minnesota’s Greatest Gifts.” The special looks back at the first 10 years of the Outdoor Heritage Fund. It was produced by Schara’s TV show, Minnesota Bound, and can be viewed on the show’s website, Schara said.
“It is very gratifying to see all of the work,” said Schara, who has been a member of the council for eight years. “If I am proud of anything that’s been done by government, it’s the Lessard-Sams projects. All of this costs us. When we buy something for $10, we now have spent 4 cents on Lessard-Sams. None of us miss the 4 cents.”
The LSOHC met for two days at the end of June, first conducting its annual field trip touring habitat projects that were all within a short drive of the metro area. It then convened the next day (June 28) at the State Office Building for a regular meeting where it handled normal council business, such as receiving the packets containing this next round of proposals, which ultimately will be approved during the next legislative session.
The 45 proposals are available for the public to view on the OHF website (www.lsohc.leg.mn).
Council member Jane Kingston noted that this year’s total group of proposals amounts to more than $100 million less than last year’s $389 million in initial requests.
“There’s still lots of good projects,” she said. “There is only one in my opinion that is disqualified right out of the gate, but the ones that are repeaters are good, and we have several new ones that look good.
Kingston, like many of the council members, is a stickler for approving only projects that fit the spirit of the constitutional amendment that was approved by voters to “restore, protect, and enhance Minnesota’s wetlands, prairies, forests, and habitat for fish, game and wildlife.”
But council members don’t all interpret the term “protect” the same way, an issue that comes up frequently enough.
Kingston gave the example of water control projects, some of which are for fish passage, while many others are not.
“If we start funding things that don’t have to do with habitat, that’s a misappropriation of funds. It’s infrastructure, not habitat,” she said.
But the one item she was talking about was a request by the group Wildlife Forever for purchasing boat cleaning stations and doing community outreach.
“I recognize and support the need for cleaning stations and for outreach, but that is not what this money is intended for,” she said.
Extension fails
A related issue came to a head at the meeting when the Initiative Foundation, which had been awarded $4.04 million in 2014, asked for an extension on the use of that money, which is currently only available through June 30, 2019.
That money was to “develop a series of pilot projects to enhance aquatic habitat by preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species,” and though it was approved at the time, many members, including Schara and Kingston, voted against the initial proposal because they didn’t believe it was constitutional.
“Traditionally, Lessard-Sams money doesn’t go toward research,” said Schara, who said, on the other hand, if there was a proposal that implemented research that would, say, eliminate invasive carp, that would be acceptable in his mind.
But this larger $4 million grant included the controversial Wright County Regional Aquatic Invasive Inspection Station, which was not known about when the initial grant was given to the Initiative Foundation. The money was granted at a time when there was political pressure to do something about aquatic invasive species, it was noted by Johnson.
As for the extension, which included seven different projects in total, the council voted 5-5 on the matter, which will ultimately be decided by the Legislature.
“I wish we hadn’t gotten into that,” Schara said. “It’s ludicrous to have me go and have my boat cleaned up before I launch it into a lake that is already infested with invasives, and then they don’t care what I come out of the lake with.”
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