When Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s budget arrived last month with a $2 million cut in the annual state parks budget, reactions were swift — and a bit on the melodramatic side.

“I just picked myself up off the floor,” Eric Hammerling, executive director of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association, said after learning of the proposed cut.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so shocked.

Nationally, state park funding has been a favorite target of governors and legislatures looking to save a few bucks — a practice that became even more pronounced after the recession hit in 2008.

Connecticut, it turns out, had been one of only two states left (Rhode Island is the other) that were using the state’s general fund as the exclusive funding source for their state parks. Nine states use no general fund money.

Connecticut has 140 state parks and forests, including 2,000 acres in the Upper and Lower Paugussett Forests in Newtown. Statewide, the 255,000 acres of park land overseen by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is poised to join the trend of cobbling together state park funding from an array of sources, including nongovernmental ones.

Legislation created in large part by the Environment Committee’s freshman Senate co-chair, Ted Kennedy, Jr (D-Branford), would establish a State Parks Sustainability account, derived primarily from a voluntary $5 charitable donation as part of motor vehicle registrations every two years.

The motor vehicle fee would be structured as what’s known as an “opt out” choice. In other words, the box to donate is already checked. A car owner who does not want to contribute would have to affirmatively opt out. “Opt outs” for these sorts of fees have proven to be far more successful than systems in which someone is asked to “opt in.”

With about 2.2 million passenger vehicles in the state, most on two-year registration cycles, even a 50 percent compliance rate would generate more than $2.5 million annually.

“This idea is not to replace the general fund commitment,” Kennedy said. “It’s to augment the general fund commitment.”

Structuring A Raid-Proof Fee

The motor vehicle fee tactic has been used successfully by a number of other states.

“I spent some time studying what are some of the things we should at least be considering,” Mr Kennedy said.

He looked at other widely used park funding mechanisms — a tiny percentage added to the sales tax, a portion of real estate transfer taxes, and lottery revenues.

“I’m pretty new here,” he said. “But I know enough to know they’re not going to fly.”

The registration charge is structured as a donation to avoid the kinds of raids other presumably dedicated funds have suffered when a need arose to plug budget holes elsewhere.

The bill also contains language at the insistence of Representative Melissa Ziobron (R-East Haddam) that would further restrict raids, though it doesn’t go as far as a constitutional amendment, which has been proposed to protect transportation funding.

“If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander,” she said, referring to the transportation funding. “I will do whatever’s in my power to make sure this money is protected.

“The state has a problem keeping its hands to itself,” she said, noting raids on tobacco and clean energy funds as well as the current effort to divert the Community Investment Act fund, which supports open space and farmland preservation, into the general fund.

State parks funding suffered a similar fate beginning with the 2010 fiscal year. Until then there was a dedicated funding source for parks called the Environmental Conservation Fund. It came from various park and environmental fees and revenues that went directly back to the parks. It accounted for as much as a quarter of the budget, with the rest coming mostly from general funds.

Now that revenue — which is about $6 million annually — goes to the general fund. The state park operating budget, which is about $18 million for the current fiscal year — $11.6 million of which is within DEEP — has to compete like everything else for a portion of that fund.

When compared with the state’s entire operating budget, Connecticut has the second-lowest percentage among all states being spent on parks, according to data provided by the National Association of State Park Directors. For fiscal year 2014, Connecticut’s parks operating budget was 0.063 percent of the state operating budget. The national average is 0.16 percent.

Exploring ways to enhance park funds outside the state budget was recommended a year ago in a report by the Legislative Program Review and Investigations Committee. The legislation also begins the process of looking.

Ideas include better ways of enticing philanthropic donations and restructuring the concession system, which now requires giving first dibs on running them to the Bureau of Education and Services for the Blind. Initial language in the legislation that tried to change that exclusivity was met with an outcry from advocates for the disabled and has been modified. An idea to use unclaimed bottle deposits was voted down by the committee.

But Mr Kennedy and others believe there are many ways of supplementing park funding, from expanded concessions, sponsorships, small business operations such as boat rentals, as well as increasing parking rates and extending the seasons at some of the largest and most popular parks, such as Hammonasset Beach in Madison.

“The time has come to explore these various funding options,” Mr Kennedy said. “We need fresh ideas, and to figure out: Are we leaving money on the table?”

Given the trends seen nationally, those ideas and that money will be needed.

Park Funding Trends Nationwide

Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan economic research organization that studies issues related to environment, energy, and natural resources, has looked extensively at state park funding.

“All state parks with the recession just got hit so hard,” said Margaret Walls, a senior fellow who has produced two reports on the issue in the last few years. “What are you going to cut? State parks.”

But, she said, there already was a shift underway toward greater use of dedicated funds and increased fees. Ms Walls’ report provides a long list of funding permutations. There are all manner of user fees within the parks. Michigan and Pennsylvania set up endowment funds derived from mineral, oil, and gas lease fees. There are philanthropic endeavors, something Connecticut is just beginning to try. There are special park districts for raising money. There are revenues derived from fees on everything from plastic bags — used in Hawaii and New York — to real estate taxes.

(This story originally appeared at CTMirror.org, the website of The Connecticut Mirror, an independent, non-profit news organization covering government, politics, and public policy in the state.)