Natural disasters

The DNR is having a rough year.

Arrested development: DNR’s licensing app

The list of highly promoted state government website rollouts that have crashed and burned over the years is long. The disastrous 2013 MNsure website debut led to the executive director’s dismissal, followed by the backlash against the years-late, $100 million over-budget Minnesota Licensing and Registration System (MNLARS). Last year, the Department of Revenue’s taxpayer-funded e-bikes website crashed minutes after going live.

At the time, the Star Tribune hinted at another online foul-up in the making at the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The timing couldn’t have been worse with the fishing opener just around the corner.

Minnesota anglers who want to fish anytime soon are still going to need paper licenses despite last year’s assurance by the Department of Natural Resources that outdoors licenses and registrations would go digital well before opening day.

The agency has been working on the $3.5 million project since 2021 and last year hired a former head of the DNR’s Fish and Wildlife Division to solve potential problems and provide leadership for the system’s final development. Still, the DNR and its project partners, Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) and PayIt Outdoors, a private vendor, failed to deliver by its March 4 deadline.

No one’s saying much about what’s caused the delay or exactly when the apparent problems will be resolved. Only a vague target date to get online sometime this year, despite previous assurances everything was expected to be up and running by now.

The DNR’s Kelly Straka, who was promoted to Fish and Wildlife Division director in early July 2024, said it was her call to pause the new system’s kickoff. She said she’s relatively new to the project.

Over the winter, many things were still being tested and refined, and she lost confidence in meeting the deadline with a fully proven, functional system, she said.

“We ran up against the clock,” Straka said. “Are we racing to a finish line when we are not really feeling ready?”

Once up and running, the DNR app will handle tens of millions of dollars in transactions a year and make life easier for everyone. Minnesota is widely acknowledged to lag well behind other states in streamlining the licensing process online.

Russ Francisco, owner of Marine General, a fishing goods store in Duluth, said retailers across the state who sell licenses for the DNR have only been told the system won’t be ready for the May 10 statewide fishing opener.

“All we are hearing right now is that the system didn’t work,” Francisco said. “We’ve been waiting for how many years now?”

The DNR and MNIT continue to collaborate with PayIT Outdoors, a company with extensive experience in developing electronic licensing systems for other states.

Chris Willard, general manager of outdoors at PayIt, declined to be interviewed. He said in a statement that the company has been “partnering closely” with the DNR and MNIT to reschedule the launch. “When ready, the DNR will communicate our mutually agreed launch date.”

Straka said the DNR is “not expecting any additional budget” to cover state salaries and other project-related expenses. PayIt’s compensation will come from transaction fees.

Clearly, state officials have decided it’s less painful to take heat for an embarrassing delay than to take a chance on getting burned by an app that’s not ready for prime time. Perhaps in time for deer hunting season?

Incomplete reporting

The State of Minnesota is the second-largest landowner in the North Star state and the third-largest landowner in the entire U.S. Small wonder, then, that state lawmakers passed legislation requiring the DNR to compile and update a catalogue of the land under state ownership every two years.

Since the law was passed back in the 1970s, the magnitude of the state’s portfolio and need for an inventory has only increased. But during the whole time the law has been on the books, the DNR hasn’t gotten around to complying with it even once.

The agency got busted by the Minnesota State Office of the Legislative Auditor in a report and legislative hearing detailed by the Star Tribune in its April 25 story, “Audit finds 55-year lapse in DNR’s reporting of land inventory.”

The agency’s failure to publicly report its land holdings, as required under a law passed in the 1970s, garnered the most attention from lawmakers Friday when the office presented an evaluation of how well the agency complies with land acquisition processes and reporting requirements.

As part of the biennial inventory, the DNR is supposed to report on additional property the department wishes to acquire. Of Minnesota’s 51 million acres of land, the state controls 11% of it and DNR manages all but 1% of that slice.

A DNR official appearing before legislators fully acknowledged the agency somehow overlooked the law, confessing he never knew of its existence. And if DNR officials get their way, they will never have to implement it:

“We accept the failure,” DNR Assistant Commissioner Bob Meier told members of the Legislative Audit Commission. “I apologize that we’ve never done this before.”

Meier said the DNR wants the Legislature to repeal the law requiring the biennial inventory of state holdings because the information is publicly available in other formats.

Some members of the Legislative Audit Commission were in no frame of mind to let the agency off the hook.

“It’s shocking that decade after decade after decade the DNR isn’t doing what it is required to do,” said Rep. Duane Quam, R-Byron.

Quam said it’s disappointing and disingenuous for the DNR to say that the biennial reporting requirement should be repealed because it would be an administrative burden to fulfill. On the other hand, Quam said, the agency is telling lawmakers the information is “already out there, you can find it.”

“I’m worked up,” he said at the hearing.

The audit found the DNR takes far longer than necessary to complete land transactions. It also reminded officials how unpopular the agency remains in some counties, which oppose the state taking more land off their tax rolls.