Ongoing Coverage: GOP top cop targets fish and wildlife board chair appointed by Dem governor
Outdoorsmen and women play a key role in the protection of Kentucky's natural resources, because the state funds its fish and game agency primarily through hunting, fishing and boating licenses. I made it a mission of mine at the Herald-Leader to engage with the little-known agency and give readers an inside look at how it functions.
KY Fish & Wildlife chair defies AG’s resignation
demand, says he will fight it in court
The chair of the board overseeing Kentucky’s fish and wildlife management agency says he will retain his post, despite calls from the state attorney’s general office that he resign due to ineligibility.
Fish and Wildlife Commission Chair Chuck Meade told the Herald-Leader he has retained counsel and will defend himself in court if Attorney General Russell Coleman files suit.
The attorney general’s interpretation of an exemption that allows landowners to hunt and fish on their farmland without a license would result in a “wholesale change” in the status thousands of sportsmen and women enjoy across the commonwealth, Meade’s attorney said in a letter filed late Tuesday and reviewed by the Herald-Leader.
“There will be far reaching political ramifications should your interpretation of the landowner license exemption be pursued,” wrote William Repasky, a Frost Brown Todd attorney in Louisville who is representing Meade.
In a Dec. 19 letter, Coleman’s office demanded Meade resign by 4 p.m. Dec. 31 because the commissioner did not hold a state fishing or hunting license for the five consecutive years prior to being appointed to the commission in 2024.
Meade said he held a license during three of those five years, but relied on the farmland exemption for the remaining two.
But Attorney Aaron Silletto, head of the Coleman’s Office of Civil and Environmental Law, said Kentucky’s farmland exemption only applies to individuals who are living on the farmland they hunt or fish license-free.
The statute applies to “the resident owner of farmlands or his or her spouse or dependent children.” Meade and his attorney said the term “resident” under the law means people who live in Kentucky, not any specific plot.
Meade represents Eastern Kentucky’s District 7 on the commission, which oversees the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources commissioner and the agency’s roughly $100 million budget — funded primarily by sporting licenses and boating registrations. He was nominated in 2023, appointed by Gov. Andy Beshear in January 2024 and confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate later that year.
He owns 2.5 acres of land in Johnson County where he often hunts deer, along with a 100-acre family farm in Lawrence County where he hunts and “engages in wildlife habitat management work,” according to his attorney.
“Our General Assembly knows how to draft laws,” Repasky wrote in his Tuesday letter to the attorney general’s office.
Elsewhere in the statute, Repasky said, the word “resident” is used to describe people who have resided in Kentucky for at least 30 days—no more or less.
“In a real sense, interpreting the statute as you propose is a textbook case of you trying to hide the proverbial elephant in a mousehole,” he wrote, referencing the U.S. Supreme Court’s major-questions doctrine requiring federal agencies to cite clear, explicit support from Congress when interpreting matters with sweeping economic or political significance.
The attorney general’s office has said it will file action in circuit court to force Meade’s removal if need be.
“Kentuckians expect all their public officials to comply with the law and fulfill the requirements of their positions,” Coleman wrote in a statement to the Herald-Leader last week. “In rare cases when that doesn’t happen, it’s the Office of the Attorney General’s responsibility to seek the removal of the ineligible individuals. After a fair and thorough investigation, our Office is working to remove this individual, uphold the law and protect Kentuckians’ trust in their institutions.”
The attorney general’s office first began investigating Meade this fall following an anonymous whistleblower complaint.
Meade said he will fight the attorney general’s decision in court “on behalf of the people of my district” and other Kentuckians who have relied on the farmland license exemption for decades.
It is unclear whether the Coleman’s opinion will have a trickle-down effect on the way Kentucky game wardens interact with other hunters and fishers in the commonwealth. The League of Kentucky Sportsmen has drafted a resolution calling on KDFWR to clarify the attorney general’s interpretation and how it applies to the men and women who use it in Kentucky.
League President Doug Ramey told the Herald-Leader he fears the effort to oust Meade is part of political movements to shield agency commissioner Rich Storm, who has clashed with Beshear over his office’s oversight, as well as procurement and conservation easements, as first reported by the Kentucky Lantern.
Senate President Robert Stivers has said it is the Senate’s priority to protect Storm from retaliation.
Sen. Gary Boswell, R-Owensboro, who serves as vice chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee and is a member of the Natural Resources and Energy Committee, said he is unaware of anyone in the state who has been ticketed for hunting or fishing on land they own.
“There are literally thousands of Kentuckians who hunt and possibly fish on property they own who would be in violation of the law,” Boswell told the Herald-Leader. “This thing is going to get pretty nasty before its over with if the AG’s opinion stands.”
Kentucky attorney general pauses effort to unseat fish & wildlife chairman
The Kentucky attorney general’s office has withdrawn its demand the chair of a board overseeing the state’s fish and wildlife management agency resign, pending a new legal probe of the state’s exemption for landowners hunting and fishing on their own property.
Attorney General Russell Coleman won’t immediately pursue legal action against Fish and Wildlife Commission Chair Chuck Meade, despite his office’s earlier insistence Meade is ineligible to serve.
“Everything is on ice in that process while we look at this opinion,” a spokesperson for the Coleman’s office told the Herald-Leader Friday morning.
Meade did not hold the required state fishing or hunting license for the five consecutive years prior to being appointed to the commission in 2024. Instead, he relied on Kentucky’s farmland exemption for two of those years.
The exemption allows “the resident owner of farmlands” and their family members to hunt and fish on their property license-free. An attorney in Coleman’s Office of Civil and Environmental Law interpreted that to mean Meade would have had to be living on that property, rather than just owning it, in order to legally use the exemption.
But the legal implications of that interpretation are far-reaching and could embroil Kentucky sportsmen and women who have believed they could hunt or fish without a license on land they own.
Meade told the Herald-Leader last month he would fight the attorney general’s office in court on behalf of those Kentuckians.
“We welcome the attorney general’s decision to revisit his earlier position in this unfortunate controversy,” Meade said Friday through his attorney, William Repasky of Frost Brown Todd in Louisville.
Repasky said Meade hopes the controversy will be “favorably resolved in the near future.” In the meantime, Meade will remain a District 7 representative and chair of the commission.
The attorney general’s letter is a “positive first step,” he added. Repasky and his client want to give the office “breathing space to do their work,” but said he remains mindful that the effort to unseat Meade is only on pause and not yet final.
Now, however, the legal drama over license-free hunting and fishing is paused until Coleman’s office issues a formal opinion on its interpretation of the legal exemption. That opinion came at the request of Sen. Gary Boswell, R-Owensboro, according a Jan. 8 letter the attorney general’s office sent Meade.
Sen. Boswell told the Herald-Leader he asked the attorney general’s office for an opinion because of the way the “political issue” could affect the state’s sportsmen and women.
“It’s always been my understanding, as a person who’s been hunting and fishing for 60 years, that you do not have to have a hunting license if you’re on your own property, no matter if you reside on the property or if your property is somewhere else,” he said.
The commission oversees the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources commissioner and the agency’s roughly $100 million budget. The agency is funded primarily by sporting licenses and boating registrations.
Meade was nominated in 2023, appointed by Gov. Andy Beshear in January 2024 and confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate later that year.
KY AG’s office reverses course on sporting exemption. What it means for hunters, fishers
Kentuckians who own farmland in the commonwealth don’t need a license to hunt or fish there even if they aren’t living on the property, according to Attorney General Russell Coleman.
The ruling from the attorney general’s office came Thursday, weeks after lawyers for the state told the chair of a fish and wildlife commission in January he was ineligible to serve because he relied on that exemption instead of maintaining an annual hunting or fishing license.
The formal opinion reverses that January interpretation — which also came from Coleman’s office — and agrees farmland owners can hunt or fish license-free on property where they don’t reside. As such, the office also closed the matter involving Fish and Wildlife Commission Chair Chuck Meade’s eligibility to serve.
Meade told the Herald-Leader he is thankful Coleman took a “personal interest” in the matter and came to the “same conclusion all Kentuckians have known and understood for many years now.”
“We have lots of work to do,” he said. “All this does is distract us from what sportsmen really want.”
The attorney general reversed a 1979 opinion in which the office defined the “resident owner” of farmland as someone residing on the parcel of land where they were hunting or fishing.
Kentucky Supreme Court cases underlying that opinion were distinguishable from the question at hand because they dealt with patrons of a pay lake and conservation officer’s ability to come onto private property to enforce licensure laws.
“As someone who grew up hunting with my dad on his Logan County farm, I’m proud to stand up for the rights of all sportsmen,” Coleman said in news release Feb. 5.
The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, which enforces hunting and fishing laws in the state, told Coleman’s office it has historically “applied a lenient interpretation” of the resident farmland exemption.
That interpretation includes “bona fide owners of farmland without regard to whether such owners physically resided upon the farmland,” according to responses the office included in its opinion.
Sporting groups the Herald-Leader has interviewed nearly all said they have never interpreted the exemption to mean farmland owners had to live on their property. The term “resident” was always understood to mean someone living in Kentucky, they said.
Sen. Gary Boswell, R-Owensboro, who initially requested Coleman’s office opine on the exemption said many Kentuckians rely on it and had unwittingly been in violation of the law under the standing interpretation.
Boswell said he was pleased Coleman’s office had taken a “fresh look at the issue” and come to the same conclusion most Kentuckians had already reached.
"This clarification is important for thousands of Kentucky property owners who responsibly hunt and fish on land they own and who were concerned that long-standing practices were being called into question,” he said via text message.
Coleman praised the “whip-smart attorneys” that considered the complex legal question “to uphold the law” for Kentucky sportsmen and women.
“Kentucky is home to some of the finest natural and wildlife resources in the world, and I encourage every Kentuckian to responsibly enjoy them while supporting critical conservation and preservation efforts.”