licenses sold in shutdown?

[Lee Borgersen]

  .....ST. PAUL – Senators voted 41-24 to keep hunting and fishing license sales going if state government shuts down like last summer.

“I saw firsthand how people were hurt by not allowing them to buy a fishing license,” Sen. Paul Gazelka, R-Brainerd, said Tuesday about why he brought the bill.


Hunting, fishing licenses could be sold in shutdown.
ST. PAUL – Senators voted 41-24 to keep hunting and fishing license sales going if state government shuts down like last summer.



The state lost $3 million in revenue   during the 2011 shutdown, Gazelka said, but “the tourism industry lost far, far, far more than that.”

Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, said some people plan hunting and fishing trips more than a half-year in advance. “To lose that kind of revenue is totally irresponsible.”

Democrats who blame Republicans for last year’s budget impasse that led to the shutdown said bills like Gazelka’s send the wrong message.

“This is another one of those bills where we expect the Legislature to not get its work done,” Sen. Mary Jo McGuire, DFL-Falcon Heights, said.

The bill would require on-line license sales only.

A similar bill by Rep. Larry Howes, R-Walker, awaits a House vote.

Several bills making their way through the Legislature exempt a variety of programs from being affected by shutdowns.

[JohnWester]

what about state parks too...


geez, another half assed job done.

[jkcmj]

Shutting off license sales was a joke anyway...they are done by retailers and hired online marketers...not state officials.  Good idea I think. State parks are staffed by state officials, so they would be subject to state funding.

[JohnWester]

but state parks operate in the black... one of the very few government run things that do.

[JohnWester]

and our legislatures are state officials... they keep working during a shutdown.