From Indiana Forests Forever

[hatchetjack]

I attended the DNR legislative meeting this week. The issues they discussed came about due to HEA 1623 which call for a new process for rules, fines, fees and penalties. This is a little complicated but I think I have captured the gist:







They have to review all the current fees fines and penalties and have over 100 pages of them that are considered invalid because created under the old process and must run them through the new process by 12/31/23. They hope to file these with the budget committee in October and expect those might be up for preliminary adoption at the January NRC meeting. They don’t intend to file them with any changes, just as they currently exist. After review by the legislative budget committee they will come to the NRC. The new NRC process is not substantially different. They expect it to be more expedited than the old process, possibly a 5 month timeframe once they push through all the do overs. There is still the public comment available. NRC hearings will be streamed online. So there is more potential for public engagement, but the NRC meetings will likely be more lengthy.







They can have interim rules for 365 days max and permanent rules will last 5 yrs instead of 7, so everything will be reviewed now, plus more often moving forward. The old emergency rule is gone, replaced with a provisional rule that has a 10 day waiting period and then can last only 180 days with no extension. So some things that were always under emergency rule (state park hunts, hunting regs) will have to use either provisional (which probably doesn’t last long enough) or permanent rule. All existing emergency rules expire October 1, 2023 so all those need to be re-evaluated and resubmitted.







They are also having to adopt rules for fees, fines and penalties that weren’t in rule before (Inns/marinas/concessions/in lieu fees/wildlife and fish kills) and are reviewing all other compliance documents. If they are currently “information bulletins” they probably need a rule submitted. Any property management policies that “regulate conduct” such as hunting rules, mushrooms, etc will probably need a rule.







There are a number of immediate changes for DNR but in the long run they feel these will not be a negative for the DNR and in fact could be a positive, although they acknowledged that this is loads of work and will need more constant reviews and things expire more often than before. I can’t imagine they have staff to manage this but they seem confident for now, they have an extra person right now working on it.







Joe Caudell spoke also about some deer hunting changes that are in early development which I’m not comfortable relaying properly- related to bonuses and some other things.



And another staff member discussed they are working on a invasive carp harvest program and showed us programs from IL and KY.







If there are any questions about the NRC changes, I’d suggest directing to David Bausman or Caitlyn Smith individually, or if there is a lot of interest perhaps one of them could join our call to discuss. I don’t know of anything that would be of concern to this group specifically.



Bausman, David C [e-mail]



Smith, Caitlin [e-mail]

[featherduster]

Thanks JACK!

[Woody Williams]

Thanks Jack for sharing this with us. It is much appreciated.

[hatchetjack]

Looks like NRC is going to be very busy along with DNR staff for the next few months.