Illinois Department of Natural Resources needs cash, and we can help

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Updated: March 16, 2012 8:17AM

While Rep. Frank Mautino
gathers ideas and builds support for
sustainable funding of the Illinois Department of
Natural Resources from
the leaders of core
constituencies, he would do well to heed some words from ordinary citizens, too.

Times of crisis — and the IDNR is headed toward the tipping point of a financial mess — are the perfect time to restructure and rethink. And Mautino (D-Spring Valley) is one of the legislators powerful enough to persuade people to come together for the common good.

My sense is that most people would get behind the idea of a park fee, a public-site entrance fee or a user fee, as long as — and this is a key condition — it is something economically sensible, such as a windshield or license sticker.

The last thing we need are entrance booths at parks. Those would end up being summer make-work jobs for connected folks — or politics as usual in Illinois.

An annual public-site entrance fee of $20 or $30 via stickers wouldn’t completely finance the IDNR, but it would provide a major building block.

After listening to IDNR director Marc Miller lay out the financial mess Saturday, an audience member at the Tinley Park Outdoor and Fishing Show suggested selling parking rights, similar to what Chicago did. That’s intriguing, but Chicago’s parking sale doesn’t encourage me.

Several readers, among them Paul Schranz and Alan Epich, mentioned how out of whack Illinois’ nonresident fishing fees are. Many of us who fish also fish other states, and we know how inexpensive Illinois’ nonresident fishing licenses are.

At $31.50, Illinois’ annual nonresident fishing license is about half the price of one from Wisconsin and Michigan and less than one from Indiana, Iowa and Missouri. The price of Illinois’ nonresident fishing license should be raised to at least $50. I even would favor bumping it to $60. And the price of a single-day fishing license, now $5.50, should be made $10.

That wouldn’t solve the IDNR’s funding crisis, but a couple of million dollars here and a couple of million dollars there soon add up to real money.

A vendor who sells fishing licenses for multiple states said Illinois should go to a system in which nonresidents are charged what their home states charge nonresidents. In this computerized age, that’s easy to do.

On Tuesday, a reader texted another idea. He wondered whether there could be a box to check to give extra money on license applications. But he added — and this is the one refrain I’ve heard from everybody who talks about funding options — ‘‘that would be dedicated strictly to the IDNR.’’

In the coming weeks, as Mautino and others write the legislation for sustainable funding for the IDNR, they would do well to remember that their core constituents are willing to assist with that money, provided it is ‘‘dedicated strictly to the IDNR.’’

That’s the key piece in building public support in this process.

Stray cast

Determining the species of small temperate bass at Heidecke Lake is easier than figuring out why the White Sox signed Kosuke Fukudome.