THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 27, 1995 TAG: 9503270060
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
More than $13.3 million in coastal fisheries and environmental programs will be on the line this week when a General Assembly panel takes a second look at agencies targeted for cuts.
State coastal agencies, whose budgets survived an initial round of scrutiny by lawmakers in recent weeks, are breathing a little easier. But state fisheries regulators were preparing Friday to defend their agency's budget.
The General Assembly's Joint Appropriations Subcommittee on Natural and Economic Resources is planning this week to find about $15 million in cuts in natural and economic resource programs in various state departments. The subcommittee then will consider new program and construction requests.
The $234.3 million budget for the Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources is a prime target for cost-conscious committee members looking to cut an additional 1 percent from natural and economic resource programs.
Among the items on the subcommittee's ``hit list'' this week are:
The $9.6 million Division of Marine Fisheries budget, including $1 million in new fisheries research grants and $233,441 in funds for a crab fisheries research office in Tyrrell County.
The Division of Environmental Management's $3.5 million eco-tourism project for northeastern North Carolina.
About a third of the Office of Waste Reduction's $1.4 million budget.
The entire Office of Environmental Education and its staff.
Under Gov. James B. Hunt Jr.'s budget proposal, the Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources will lose 99 staff members, including the director of the department's regional office in Washington.
The Division of Coastal Management, which received about $1.5 million from the state in 1994-95, is slated for a $3,038 cut for supplies and equipment under Hunt's budget. That department also stands to lose one staff member during each of the next two years.
That proposal was left unchanged by the appropriations subcommittee.
The Division of Marine Fisheries already is slated for $137,505 in cuts, including four staff members, under Hunt's budget.
But the appropriations subcommittee recently voted to ``flag'' or target the entire budget for further review and possible elimination.
On Friday, the state's top fisheries official said that fisheries regulators have their work cut out for them to ensure their budget is not scrapped.
Marine Fisheries Commission Chairman Robert V. Lucas, a Selma, N.C., lawyer, said the subcommittee's decision to target the Division of Marine Fisheries entire budget was probably the result of poor communication by staff members.``Unfortunately at one particular hour on one particular day there was not somebody present at the subcommittee meeting who could explain the request,'' Lucas said. ``It's incumbent upon us to make sure that doesn't happen.''
Elimination or large reductions in the division's budget would have disastrous consequences for the state's coastal fish populations, he said.
``That would be like asking what would happen on the highways if the state eliminated the highway patrol,'' he said. ``To be sure that's not going to happen.''
But the division staff was apparently taking no chances.
Late Friday new fisheries Director Bruce L. Freeman was undergoing a series of briefings on the agency's programs and was unavailable for comment.
``There are a lot of questions being asked, and you and I both know (DEHNR)'s not a popular agency with the state,'' said Rep. John M. Nichols, a Craven County Republican and a member of the Joint Appropriations Subcommittee on Natural and Economic Resources.
``In the past the agencies have pretty much gotten everything they wanted but that's not the way it is this time,'' he said.
Rep. W.C. ``Bill'' Owens Jr., a Pasquotank County Democrat, said in subcommittee discussions that lawmakers should be careful not to hurt needed environmental programs or to pass costs of state projects on to county and municipal governments.
``We need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water,'' Owens said at one recent subcommittee meeting. by CNB