Fish and Game Commission: wildlife.

(1) The California Constitution creates the Fish and Game Commission. Existing law establishes the commission in the Natural Resources Agency to perform specified functions. Existing law requires the commission to hold no fewer than 10 regular meetings per year, with no more than 2 regular meetings to be held in Sacramento per year. This bill would require the commission to hold no fewer than 10 meetings per year, if the commission has adequate funding for related travel, including funding for department travel. It would also require no more than 3, rather than 2, regular meetings to be held in Sacramento per year. (2) Existing law requires the Department of Fish and Game to prescribe a minimum level of skill and knowledge to be required of all hunter education instructors, and authorizes the department to limit the number of students per instructor in all required classes. This bill would require the department to offer special hunting opportunities to qualified hunter education instructors by providing a limited number of existing tags and other hunting opportunities. (3) Under existing law,12 of all fines and forfeitures imposed or collected in any court of this state for violations of the Fish and Game Code are paid to the county in which the offense was committed and deposited in a county fish and wildlife propagation fund to be expended for the protection, conservation, propagation, and preservation of fish and wildlife, in accordance with specified requirements. Existing law authorizes the department to audit, or to require the county to audit, expenditures by the county from its fish and wildlife propagation fund in order to determine compliance with these requirements. The bill would authorize the department to require that all expenditures from the fund be temporarily suspended, or to seek reimbursement of funds that the department determines, based on the audit, were expended improperly, or both, if, after reviewing the audit, the department determines that expenditures are not in compliance with the requirements.