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discrimination

1K views 8 replies 4 participants last post by  stevie1 
At one point years back, I was spending a lot of time sitting in meetings with the MDNR trying to get a fair tournament permit process. There was support of a fee and support for no fee (including the then Region III MDNR Parks and Rec boss who said it cost him $50 to process our $15 fee).

User fees are a common approach. I wasn't in on the meetings that the most recent changes came from. I do know the tournament permit fee is supposedly there to cover the cost of processing the applications. I also believe that higher fees were adopted for the size tournaments they were to try to limit the bigger open tournaments that occur on inland lakes since those are the tournaments that are least popular with a lot of non-tournament citizens and officials. Those are the tournaments with the most conflict and issues.

At one time, it was discussed that the Federation (MBCF) would have actually handled the tournament permit process, but some were concerned that since the federation also holds tournaments, it could cause complaints of conflicts of interest.

The January 1 date was chosen since it was the first day of the new season and we needed a date to target that was the same for everyone so we could have a fair first-come, first-served process. There was no attempt to hamper national tournaments. I would have jumped on that. At the time this whole permit process began originally we were several years away from our first national tournament ever. This project originally started a loooonnnnng time ago - back in the late 1980s.

There have definitely been ups and downs, but we had so many tournaments in such short time with enough conflicts and complaints that something was inevitable - believe me. It could have been worse.

The old policy we came up with was not just for tournaments, but any organized event that used an MDNR ramp. What we have now is partially a result of tournament anglers not keeping involved enough with the MDNR and not keeping involved in general enough with issues that affect us all. You don't hardly ever write letters and rarely go to public meetings. Lake association members do go to meetings. They do write letters and they do make phone calls. So do others that don't necessarily want to see more tournaments.

We stick out. We are an easy target and we are often our own worse enemy by our own behavior or lack of policing our own.

One thing we really need to change is to promote all the good things bass clubs and organizations do publicly. Also, we need to get more press in general so the public know what we really do and why. You'd be surprised how general many of the questions were in the original tournament permit process from MDNR employees who really did not know why we did most of what we did. It's the same with the general public.

We are a tiny minority that is a mystery to most people. We should take responsibility for that on ourselves. For example, I told clubs for years to make their local MDNR employees their friends. I'll bet the majority of bass clubbers still don't know the name of their local fisheries biologist. I know some of you do on this site because I've seen it, but you are not the majority. Of course, I like to see any positive move in the right direction, we just still have a long ways to go and it's uphill. Bass tournaments are the red-headed stepchild to many people in Michigan right now - maybe worse than ever.

First, we should all be aware of that and think about how that should affect our actions. Second, we need to think what is in our control to do about it. And third, we should start doing some of it.
 
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