The League of Kentucky Sportsmen fully supports Committee Substitute #2 to House Bill 506 published on March 12th.

As evidence to how a “clean bill” could be moved, the Committee Substitute was unanimously passed out of the House Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Committee and within a few hours it also passed unanimously on the floor of the House to the Senate.

We would like to thank Representative Hale for cleaning up the bill and making it a straightforward path to giving our Game Wardens the pay raise they so sorely deserve.

There is still much more to be done to fix the pay inequity our Game Wardens endure. The leadership of the League asks the legislature to stop excluding the sportsmen and women from the process.

In the last six years, there have been no less than ten bills which would structurally or materially change the mission, scope, operations, or funding of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. The League was never consulted, nor were any of our partner organizations in the Kentucky wildlife conservation community.

The KDFWR is a user-funded department. Commissioner Storm reminds us of that at the beginning of every Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting. Yet we are never consulted. We are never offered the opportunity to collaborate and cooperate on legislation that would change OUR department.

The League and our partners represent the interests of hundreds of thousands of voting sportsmen and women who buy the hunting, fishing, trapping, and boating licenses that fund the KDFWR. And we are exhausted with the current process.

The League calls on the entire legislature, House and Senate, to use the interim between “Sine Die” 2026 and the start of the 2027 legislative session to work with us and not against us. We would love nothing more than to champion a good bill we had the opportunity to help craft, versus a bill we never saw that we disagree with.

Further, we would like to be part of a Fish and Wildlife Commission action or legislation that finally bridges the gap to achieve pay equity for our Game Wardens with the Kentucky State Police.