 Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota, produced by Lakeland PBS, with host Ray Gildow. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. For information available at BemidjiAirport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, tax preparation for businesses and individuals online at NiswaTax.com. Hello again, everyone, and welcome to Lakeland Currents. We're glad you could join us this evening. We're going to talk about a topic that I think has been interesting to most Minnesotans. Excuse me. The legacy amendment, the Sarge-Sams portion of the legacy amendment, how it came about, and how that money is being spent. Is it really being spent as it was promised when we passed this legislation a number of years ago, and we have an expert with us tonight who is going to tell us if that's the case. His name is Gary Leaf, he's the Executive Director of Minnesota Sportsmen for Change, and Gary has been involved legislatively in a lot of these projects, going back to the mid to, or early 2000s, I guess, Gary. Yeah, that'd be about right. And give us a little overview of what it is that we're talking about. Yeah, basically this idea for a constitutional amendment that would dedicate sales taxes actually began in Missouri in 1936, and they passed a constitutional amendment to establish a citizen-led governance council over the DNR, and that was led by Ding Darling, who went on to head U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He created the federal duck stamp, Nash Buckingham, who was a famous outdoors writer and author at the time, and Aldo Leopold, who's the father of modern conservation. Those were the people in Missouri that pushed that, and that passed, and then later in 1976, they passed the first dedicated sales tax to the outdoors, and they've kept that, and that was a major inspiration for a lot of the authors that worked at the capitals, namely Senator Bob Besard, and also Representative Mark Holston, who later on became DNR commissioner, and they started in on doing these constitutional amendments. The next piece that jumped out was that it moved along with a coalition, a number of coalitions, and then in 2005 we did what was called the Ducks Wetlands and Clean Water Rally at the Capitol in 2005-2006. Those were the largest rallies at our state capitals since the Vietnam War. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, it really is, that we had that many sportsmen and conservation that came there, and it was rallying around the dedicated funding theme and try to get it. There was a lot of different versions of this, a one-eighth bill, three-sixteenth bill, that type of thing. And then another major piece that we can talk about is the, in 1998, this was a, I was just talking to Senator LaSarde about this, they passed the Constitutional Right Hunting and Fishing Preservation Act. We were one of the first states to pass that. There's been 15 or so, 16, 17, and that establishes that hunting and fishing and the taking a game is a valued and protected constitutionally part of our heritage. And then the next year, after that passed at the ballot, that's when he began the first bill to dedicate one-eighth to Game and Fish, which was one-eighth, was originally dedicated to the DNR, and then we changed that. So the Constitutional Right Hunting Fish played a major role in the authors believing that we could get something like this on the ballot, but it took a decade. So leading up to, we had the Duck Rally was a major impetus, and then we got the financial aspects of a single amendment. It was sold to the people as the Clean Water Land and Legacy Amendment, but it really is one constitutional amendment that has four constitutionally separate funds. There's 33 percent that goes to Clean Water, one-eighth. There's 33 percent that goes to the Outdoor Heritage Fund, which is for Fish Game and Wildlife. We've got another 14.25 that goes to the Parks and Trails Fund, and then another 19.75, which goes to the Arts Cultural Segment. And I'm mainly here to talk about the Outdoor Heritage Fund. That was the one where kind of everybody was in their own silo. So that was that 33 percent. Yeah, that was the 33 percent. And that, while that was moving along, a year before it went out to the ballot, we pushed to get a citizen governance system over it before people voted on it. A lot of sportsmen were on the state, a lot of anglers, hunters, and conservationists wanted to know that there was a way in which the money was going to be spent. They agreed with the financial piece, but there was a lot of uneasiness about passing that and then moving on to where it passes, and we don't have a governance system. So that's how we started the Lusart Council. Actually, about six months before the ballot campaign really got going, and then before six, seven, eight months before people actually voted on it. Then moving on to other parts of it, kind of how that council works, is the main issue there is does the money really go to habitat projects. The Lusart Council was from the onset designed for conservation, and we really built in to accommodate local projects, smaller projects. There's 500 banquets in the state. There's a lot of local clubs, chapters, and groups. So we have a small grants program in there called the Conservation Partners Program. That was designed before, or put in place before we sold it to the voters. Then we have a larger fund that's an open and competitive fund, and that's where the multi-million dollar projects. The first year of the Lusart Council projects got as high as 40 million dollars. There was a project in by the Grand Rapids area, UPM Bland and Forest Legacy easement. There was 180,000 acres. It was the largest conservation easement in Minnesota history, and that's open to the public. It has multiple lakes on it, and there's a lot in an array of recreational opportunities that occur on it. And then the governance part is eight citizens and four legislators. So there's citizens from around the state that are appointed by the Senate and the House. They each get two, and then the Governor gets four. So it all in off years ends up with eight citizens and then four legislators, one from the Senate, one from the House, and then a minority member. So they would be the people carrying this to their full bodies? Well, basically what they do is they vet every year 100 to 200, actually closer to 200 million dollars worth of projects come in at a single point in time. Then they have a process that vets all of those projects and figures out how much money does each product get, which project has priority, and they prioritize it into a bill. And then that bill goes through the House and the Senate. So their main job is to select from all available projects that are out there. Then once that completed, it's also that it has to be done on a statewide basis. So there's projects distributed all over the state, I mentioned one. It's really impressive when you look at that map that you have of where these projects have been. There's literally not a part of the state that hasn't been impacted. Yeah, that's exactly right. This did a small fish passage dam up in Hallick, Minnesota. I didn't even know what that Hallick, Minnesota was. So I read about it, ends up being its name after the guy who originally started outdoor life. To the farthest stretch down by Albert Lee, out by Marshall, down by Mankato. So it's distributed, all different types of projects are distributed around the state, and that's really an impressive aspect of it. Could we just back up for a minute, Gary? I know people sometimes get this confused with some of the other environmental monies. Right. Where I know this last legislative session, there was money being taken from the Environmental Trust Fund, I think. To go to water quality issues in communities. There's nothing to do with this. No, that's a completely constitutionally separate fund. This particular fund is really got three major priorities that's in the Constitution. Wetlands, prairies, and forests. That's the major targets. The outcomes are supposed to be creating a habitat for production of fish, game, and wildlife. And game is separate from wildlife. Game requires a license. So there's big game, there's small game. If you're near a lake legally, it's called fish game habitat. Nobody probably thinks about a lake as fish game habitat, but that's what it's called. All those things require a license. So going back to the constitutional right to hunt and fish, and Senator Lassarde had a big interest in hunting and fishing. We've got one of the top states, fourth and anglers, second and third, tenth and hunters. We've all got a high population, and the risk of the public benefits from those two. They're open to the public. There's birding and a lot of environmental benefits. But the main constitutional intent is targeted to the wetlands, prairies, and forests, and with some outcome that benefits fish game and wildlife, a lot of secondary benefits. And Senator Lassarde is, what did you say now? He's 85? 87. 87, and he's still guiding. That's exactly right. He's official. And he's still in the outdoors. I mean, that's just an incredible story in and of itself. Yeah, he's got some really strong batteries. And you've worked with him for years. Yeah, I've known him for years. And there's a whole consortium of people, and he's very close. One of the people that was instrumental when we did the statewide ballot campaign was Bud Grant had an involvement. We did a fly around. And he was extraordinarily helpful because he's trusted by so many Minnesotans. And he's a big outdoors guy, big conservationist, and been involved in a lot of those causes. And that's how we got him involved. Now, there is a sunset on this law. Yeah. And that is what... 25 years, so it's another 15 years. 15 more years, and it will come before the voters again. Yeah, that's right. And so did the Missouri Constitutional Amendment. That's been re-approved. The approval rate in Missouri has actually went up each time it's been put back on the ballot. Oh, really? Yeah. Because people got more comfortable with it. And so I'll talk a little bit about specific areas that the money got spent. I really think that's so critical that people see how that money is being spent. And I know bits and pieces of it are in the papers all the time. But when you look at the summary of what's happening here, it's really impressive. It really is. And as I mentioned, the small grants program that we put in place, just this last year, coming in this year, was $70 million that went through that. We never got more than $5 million a year for wildlife projects. $70 million has went to basically smaller projects, smaller groups around the state, and a whole array of ways to improve and restore habitat. The second area, and we've moved almost, and we'll be at the billion dollar mark this year, since we passed it, no way, $1 billion just in this fund. And it really hasn't been enough to make any of us feel our pocketbooks have been hurt. No, it's just a small fraction out of your sales tax. I mean, sometimes I even forget about it, that a part of it's going to the outdoors. But a big area that we spent, that a lot of money has been spent on is public hunting lands, or public lands. That's been almost $350 million, and we'll be over that by the end of this year. And that goes to things that are most known are like wildlife management areas. Federal, waterfall production areas. Also, county lands. There was a project, let's say, in the Brainerd Lakes area called Mississippi Habitat Complex. There was a 2,000 acre project. That one's held by the county. No, by constitutional law, all those projects by law have to be open to the public for the taking of fishing game, hunting and fishing and so on, and be open to the public. That's its primary thing. Now there might be some other recreational activities in some of the lands, but it can't be an infringement on people constitutionally protected rights to hunt and fish and so on. And that was the best way to protect a project like that. Sometimes the DNR, but a lot of times these waterfall production areas have been a tremendous investment that the council has determined. $5 to $10 million every year goes into waterfall production areas. Another area that they spend about $200 million on is a range of habitat activities that have to do with the restoration of enhancement of, let's say, existing lands. Or they need to, they're going to get a parcel and then restore it so it can fall into one of these array of programs, like an AMA program. There was a project on malax that was an aquatic management area program that actually was used to protect musky spawning habitat along the lake. So that's another $200 million. And then another major category is conservation easements. Almost $250 million has been spent on conservation easements. And those range everything from the forest legacy easements. Those are always open to the public to trout stream easements. We do a lot of trout stream easements, a lot of trout stream restoration that's being done with this. And that's really great for people that, I believe the number is almost 50% of anglers don't have a boat. Well, if you don't have a boat, how do you fish? Well, the way to do it is, and they do it in Missouri, tremendous success rate in getting new angler recruitment down there because they're getting the kids involved. All they need is a fishing pole. And they go, a lot of fishing occurs. Just from the bank. Yeah, a lot of fishing occurs on piers up, let's say by Duluth or bridges and so on and so forth. A lot of things anglers participate in that we just kind of take for granted. You know, up on the range up there, a lot of those abandoned mine pits have been restored to be great fisheries that nobody knows about. So a lot of that money, so a lot of conservation easements, there's rim, there's CREP, there's AMA type, aquatic management area type easements, private land easements, they're going on shorelines and so on. So that's another 250 million. So to kind of go back over the numbers, 70 million went to the small grants. Another 350 million has went for new since 08 new public hunting lands throughout the state, WMAs, WPAs, county lands. And then restoration and enhancement, another 200 million and 250. And that gets us close right up to 850 million. And another similar set of those projects will come in this next year. And we've got some examples showing what do these things look like? Can we do it? That's pretty impressive. It's kind of like a before and after of a weight program. I mean, when a waterfall production area starts off, it's a barren field. Next thing you know, it's a waterfall production area and it's teeming with wildlife. A lot of these aren't that particular example necessarily, but they're additions to existing wildlife area structures. That's good for the public, bigger area. It's also good for the way they manage that bigger area, so they're more strategically targeted. Then we've also got an illustration of, you know, some grassland habitat. Minnesota has very little of its original prairie left. I was thinking of Laura Engel Wilder, what it would have been like then. It's hard not to think of her and prairie habitat. So they're doing a lot of prairie restoration. That's obviously good for a whole range of birds. Certainly pheasants, but a lot of other birding people with birding interests. It's a whole ecosystem. Yeah, it's a whole ecosystem that's developed under that. And then we've also got some examples of what the trout streams. And trout streams, you know, down, let's say, in southeastern Minnesota where a pheromone or that occurs, they may need to go back and actually restore it after a flood. We had that happen. They can't just make it floodproof and so on. So they go back and restore it or else. And we've had many, not just trout streams, but fisheries, for example, the one up in Halleck was a fishery that hadn't really been a fishery for 30 or 40 years and some have been longer. And when they restore it, get the sediment out there and control it and so on. Next thing you know, there's fish in there that weren't in there before. And that's a big deal to a lot of people. Now I went through kind of where the money went. And another piece that we really looked at was to make sure that the money went to projects on the ground. That's what sportsmen wanted. They didn't want to have it go into a bureaucracy and a lot of things like that. So by law, we have in there and that's the way it's worked. Since 2008, 99 percent, 99 cents out of every dollar has went into a project. There can be an additional 10 to 12 percent. You're still at 90 or just close to 90. And that's for the project managers and the laborers and all the people that are involved in these. You know, you do a lot of these control burns or whatever it may be. You know, you got to have the fire department or if you're going to do a grouse type habitat, you got to have a lot of people in their clearing areas for rough grouse and woodcock. So a lot of the money, or I mean the money, so it's not just the projects, but the monies went on. And that's what we go back. You know, we went back and look at how it was sold to the voters when we went around the state. On the outdoor heritage fund, that's what we were talking about with the sportsmen vote yes campaign. We were talking about that we've got a governance system in place so that when you vote in it, and then also to a lot of people have been watching that money. A lot of citizen volunteers have been watching that money throughout the state. Every year they watch it go through. And a lot of them have been pointed on the Lissart council. We've had some tremendous people on the council. We had Dr. Mike Kilgore. He set up the original process. He's an economics professor of forestry at the University of Minnesota. We've had Ron Schera. We've had people from Duluth. We've had people from Mankato. We have international falls. The chair of the current council is from international Minnesota. It was a long time involved in forestry. So we've had a tremendous, you know, people from the Minnesota Waterfall Association. Jim Cox was on the council for many years. Scott Rawl, who was a very active pheasants ever from Everett, from Worthington. He was on the Lissart council for a number of years. So we've had a lot of extraordinary conservationists from around the state that are amongst the citizens that serve on it. And then every three and four years then those appointments come up. And new people. Yeah, sometimes there's new people. We've had some carryovers of some people have been on there. But generally we like to see, you know, I mean, Minnesota is a big state. There's a lot of people that are interested in conservation, interested in the Lissart council money. So they're always looking for citizens to serve on the Lissart council. So it's, you know, this worldwide, we're down to about 25% of our forests. We've lost 75% of the forest worldwide. And I think it's in the millions of acres that are being destroyed yet every year. And there was just a study done here recently that's showing that when those forests go, the animals go. You know, if you take away the areas where the frogs are and the insects are and the things that are eating the frogs and insects are disappearing, in some areas we've lost 80% of the wildlife in those natural habitats because we've destroyed them. And that's why I've always thought this was such a vital program to Minnesota to preserve what we have left here, even though we still have a lot of development in our state. How do people apply to this when they want to get involved? How do they apply if they have an idea for a grant in their particular area? Well the best way to do it, they can very easily just do a search for the Lissart-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council and it'll pop right up and you call their staff. That's what they're doing. They have a staff in St. Paul that works on this, right? Yes, and they're full-time staff. There's four of them now and what they do is they organize all this stuff, help all the applicants come in and then lay out a process where people can bid. But they will definitely help you if it's a small project, let's say under 400,000, then they'd refer you over the DNR. They're the ones managing the Conservation Partners Legacy Grant Program, so you've got two routes to go. And what I was saying right after, you know, it passed and going out and talking to different areas and so on. There's an old saying that politics is all local or politics is all local. Well what I kind of changed that, habitat is all local, conservation is all local. You don't need a massive group. If you get a coalition together, you can either find worthy people that will help work on it that can apply for the CPL program or if it's a bigger project, you can get a local coalition together and figure out how to go about doing it and the Lissart Council staff will help you apply and then there's a competitive process. There's no guarantee that you get the money and it might take a year or two because there's like I said almost 200 million dollars now of requests for money coming in. Some are maybe more than what they'll get or whatever it may be and some projects always don't get the money. But it's a process that starts, you know, in April. So they will have the requests out there for everybody to send in that they want to apply and then a process to determine which projects they're going to hear and all of that but the Lissart Council staff has specifically been in place to help people that need help in figuring out how to get a project going. And the committee has a ranking system and they do sometimes you may not be ranked highly but you still might get some money if you're willing to take a lesser amount than you ask for. Yeah that's exactly right and even the projects that get really like the number one rank program that comes in every year because they allocate how much money goes to the Conservation Partners program. That's been the number one program. So it originally started off with people not having a lot of faith in that the small grants program would work. In fact it's worked the opposite. The council members have a high degree of faith in it and every year, every year there's a really good article in the Star interview and just about the CPL program Conservation Partners program what we tried to do then and how it's moving along, it's gotten 70 million dollars. That's a lot of money when you add that up. That would never have been there before. It would never have been there before and two, three hundred thousand dollars in a local project. Would it be a stream? Local community insights were going to restore a stream or that they're going to restore some wildlife management area or they're going to do some specialized project whatever it may be. It's up to the best projects are where the local citizens all get together, put together their own local coalition and then go through the process and figure it out. And that's a big reason why I'm kind of promoting that the system works is not just that the system works but we've had more and more projects that nobody ever knew about and that's the advantage of having an open and competitive system. There's also the advantage to having another one that's tailored to these smaller projects. They've even got an expedited fund in the Conservation Partners program that's a one-page form that's for $50,000 and under type programs. It's been designed to, whether it's the smallest group you could think of, to be able to try to get money and utilize it. And then you have the large groups, you know, Ducks Unlimited or the Nature Conservancy or Minnesota Deer Hunters, Pheasants Forever, all those known groups are in there competing. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service competes against the DNR, so it's also competing. I think it was last year the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association was asking for money from here, I believe, to purchase some of the potlots land that was being sold in northern Minnesota. So it's equal footing for everyone when they come to this group, isn't it? Yeah, that's exactly right. They're looking for, you know, a lot of different things. I mean, they're looking, you know, certainly trout stream restoration. People are looking at a different thing than what they are, let's say, musky spawning habitat on Milax or forest legacy easement or whatever. So the best way to do it, you know, is talk to the Lasart Council staff, and then you can, all the projects are all out there. It's all open and transparent from every year, as far as what the project requests are. So you can take a look at certain projects that fit, that are similar to the one you might be thinking about proposing and get a lot of ideas and help people are presenting it. Now, I know there's been some political pressure over the years to take some of that money. Yeah. I mean, some, yeah. But that's been well-resisted, hasn't it? So far? Yeah. Yeah, it's been resisted because sportsmen and hunters and anglers and conservations were adamant we're going to make this thing work. So we had had a number of efforts at diverting the fund, even led to a veto in 2012, but we prevailed. And the reason we prevailed, the number one thing that I tell people is believe it or not, there are emails and phone call contacts to legislators. So if you start seeing that the Lasart Council is in the press and it's going sideways, that's the time to contact your legislator. And it doesn't take very long to say I'm a local, you know, I'm a local sportsman. I want the Lasart Council recommendations passed as they are to work. And that's the message you leave. It takes about maybe five, 10 seconds. In your role as the executive director, do you primarily work in this area? Is that your, and I know you've worked across lots of different areas. Well, yeah. You know, some of the other ones that I did was I was involved in 2012 when the state government shut down. We passed, remember I was talking about how our constitutional rights to hunt and fish are passed. We passed the only anti shutdown bill. So if the government ever shuts down again, you still can go and get your fishing licenses because they're constitutionally protected. So different, different ones that come along. And we're looking at maybe in the next year is doing some more targeted fisheries related type stuff. So what's the website? How do people go to this website to find out? Like I said, what the projects were, how much has been funded and the overall information. Where do they go? The easiest way to do it is just do a search on the internet for the Lassard-Sams under Google. It's kind of hard, that long convoluted address of it. But that's the easiest, quickest and fastest way to get it. And then contact the DNR for their conservation partners legacy programs. And their staff has been really, really good every year. They know how seriously we took trying to adhere to the constitution. And they know how seriously we wanted to make sure that this money went to where it was intended. And they also take very seriously the DNR, the people that run the conservation partners grant program at working with the little groups. And they really go out of their way to help small groups. So come and meet with them or whatever help that they can get, even if it's for a $50,000 grant. And that's really encouraging. Well, you've done some really good work. And I know you've had a lot of, I'm sure you've got a lot of bumps and bruises on your body over the years doing these things, but very, very well done. And I just think this is a very, very important project. So thanks for jumping on board with us, Gary. I appreciate the time to give an example, tell the story of what went on here. You've been watching Lakeland Currents, where we're talking about what you're talking about. I'm Ray Gildow. So long until next time.