Meeting Materials - Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries

S 29.1‐103.16 Lifetime license fee structureS 29.1‐103.16Efficient proportional feestructureS 29.1‐103.16 License fee adjustmentsRaise the amount that the Board is authorized toincrease lifetime licenses. The current $5 every 3 yearsfor residential license and $50 every 3 years for nonresidentsdoes not allow proportional increases inprices. Annual licenses will continue to be raised a fargreater percentage than lifetime licenses which meansmore people will migrate to the lifetime licenses whichhelps in retention, but hurts us in revenue dollars. Weprefer that all hard dollar prices be removed from theCode and that a relative pricing mechanism bedeveloped so that lifetime licenses are always a certainmultiplier of the annual basic license (e.g. lifetimehunting = 20x annual hunting, disabled lifetime license= 10x annual license, disabled veteran lifetime license =5x annual license, Legacy = 5x annual license, etc.) Ifthe relative pricing mechanism is unsuccessful, thenthe Board should have authority to raise lifetimelicense by $50 for residents and $500 for non‐residents.Remove all hard numbers in lifetime license language.Their fees would be a simple multiplier of the annualversion of that license. For instance, a lifetime license is20x the annual, a disabled is 10x the annual, a Legacylicense or disabled veteran would be 5x the annual.This means that a change in the annual license wouldbe reflected proportionately in the others with noadditional work. This could be extended to trip licenseand others with a bit more analysis.Add Board authority to increase permit fees in Chapter4. These are currently hard dollar amounts and outsidethe Board's authority to adjust although they aredesigned to defray the costs of administering theassociated programs and those costs fluctuate so theBoard should have the authority to deliver thelegislative intent.