Your source for the most in-depth and timely news, information, and analysis about outdoor issues and Maine travel.
The fifth annual Argentinean Wine Dinner at the Inn by the Sea was a sell-out.
We began the adventure with a wine seminar, enjoyed an amazing dinner, and spent the night in an elegant Spa Room.
Wow!
When Senator Anne Haskell agrees to sponsor your bill, you are in luck. She is smart, savvy, diligent, experienced, and relentless. And she needed all of those qualities today as the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife hosted work sessions on two of my bills, sponsored at my request by Senator Haskell.
The committee’s 1 pm work session was delayed, while we waited for Deputy Commissioner Andrea Erskine to arrive (she was here earlier but left to make photocopies of something) – a good illustration of the point I made in my earlier post on legislative committee work sessions that are dominated by state agencies. We couldn’t even start without Andrea!
The Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee, beginning at 1 pm in Room 206 of the Cross Office Building, will hear an interesting array of bills this afternoon.
LD 254, sponsored by Senator Troy Jackson, would establish yet another deer task force, this one focused on northern Maine. Perhaps this will give the committee another opportunity to assess the success of the Maine Game Plan for Deer, which is focused on northern Maine. Clearly, Senator Jackson is not satisfied with the plan.
LD 544, sponsored by Rep. Sheryl Briggs, a member of the IFW Committee, would allocate any-deer permits to landowners, and if there are more permits than landowner applicants, the rest would go to junior hunters. This “by request” bill is dead on arrival. The any-deer lottery already favors landowners.
John Dietlin is not a happy man. After reading my report that Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife allocates 60 percent of all the money it raises in Maine to the Warden Service, questioning whether this was appropriate and necessary, Dietlin emailed me the message below.
My report included statistics on the time wardens spent in 2011 on various activities, and the summonses issued that year. I am omitting the name of the publication in which Dietlin read my report, because this is not their responsibility. Here’s Dietlin’s emailed angry response.
John Dietlin’s Message
First off I would like to say I hope you are getting this e-mail directly. If not, I am hoping you will receive this due to it being an opinion of an avid reader. Please do every sportsman in Maine a favor and either resign from writing for (name of publication) or pick a new topic to write about. Your constant writing about how the Maine game wardens aren't doing justice is only hurting the state as a whole.
State agencies have a lot of advantages at the legislature. They don’t have to report their lobbying activities, so the public never gets to see how much time and money these agencies spend to get their way in Augusta. It would shock you.
It is not uncommon to see four or more state agency staff members at a public hearing or work session of a legislative committee. Legislators – especially those who are new – give great deference to the opinions and information supplied by state agencies.
Commissioner Chandler Woodcock of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife spends less time at the legislature than most commissioners, leaving that work to his Deputy Commissioner Andrea Erskine. Andrea has been a fixture for DIF&W at the legislature for many years and we are all lucky to have her there.
Combine a guy who fell in love with food during a year of graduate school in France, and the girl from Denmark he fell in love with who has also traveled the world, and what do you get?
Solo Bistro in Bath – an outstanding restaurant with a European flair and very creative food.
A lot of things came in the small package labeled LD 229, An Act to Simplify and Encourage the Sale of Hunting and Fishing Licenses and Permits.
Sponsored at my request by Representative Mike Shaw(shown in the photo at top of this post), the House Chair of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee, the bill is a grab bag of ideas that Mike and I developed over the past couple of months.
In addition to Rep. Shaw and myself, Bob Meyers of the Maine Snowmobile Association and Bill Swan, DIF&W’s Licensing Division Director, spoke in favor of the bill. Swan did express a few concerns about the bill’s language, and offered suggestions that would improve the bill and help DIF&W implement it.
All Episodes Can Be Seen on the Maine Audubon website. And on the Time Warner cable TV channel (channel 9 in most places) at 7 pm Wednesday, 6:30 pm Friday, 7 pm Saturday, and 8:30 pm Sunday.
