The logo of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

FRANKFORT — The board overseeing Kentucky’s fish and wildlife agency voted Tuesday to establish a three-county surveillance zone after chronic wasting disease (CWD) was found earlier this month on a deer farm in Breckinridge County.

The Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission also for the second time approved a four-year contract for Commissioner Rich Storm following a complaint that the first approval had violated the state Open Meetings Act.?

Meade, Breckinridge and Hardin Counties are in the surveillance zone where the baiting and feeding of deer are now banned to prevent the animals from congregating and potentially spreading CWD. The commission also banned taking deer carcasses and high-risk parts such as heads out of the three counties and taking care of or rehabilitating injured deer in the zone.?

CWD is a fatal neurological disease that affects elk, deer and other species in the cervid family and has been found in dozens of states and a couple of Canadian provinces. The department established a surveillance zone in West Kentucky after CWD was detected in a wild deer in Ballard County last year, the first ever case in the state.?

Ben Robinson, the director of wildlife at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR), told the commission at the special-called meeting the department was hoping to collect as many samples as possible from wild deer in the three-county zone given evidence that wild deer had interacted in the past with deer in the Breckinridge County deer farm where the disease was detected.?

Robinson said the department also wanted to better understand where deer on the Breckinridge County farm had been transported to other “captive cervid” facilities around the state.?

“Our main goal is to collect as many CWD samples from wild deer as possible, because our goal is to determine if this has spread outside of the fence of this facility,” Robinson said. “Deer are regularly moved around facilities within the state.”?

Unlike the surveillance zone in West Kentucky, the department will not require hunters in the new three-county zone to bring harvested deer to stations to test for CWD. Because deer hunters harvest a high number of deer in the three counties, Robinson told the commission, the department hopes to get deer samples to test for CWD through other voluntary methods.?

Board again approves contract for department chief following complaint

Before voting on the surveillance zone, the commission also unanimously voted with no discussion to approve a new four-year contract for the department’s chief executive Storm for a second time in as many meetings. The action followed a complaint from a sportsman alleging the first time the commission approved the contract in August violated the state Open Meetings Act.?

The vote to approve Storm’s personal service contract took place after the commission met for a little over 15 minutes in executive session closed to the public to discuss the contract.?

The commission during a regular meeting in August had unanimously approved a motion without mentioning Storm’s name to give him another four-year contract, sparking a complaint that the vagueness of the motion violated the state Open Meetings Act. Brian Mackey, a Hardin County farmer, sportsman and former member of the nine-member commission, alleged in his complaint to the commission that the board also erroneously used an exception in the Open Meetings Act to discuss Storm’s contract in closed session.?

An opinion from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office said the department didn’t violate the Open Meetings Act by using the exception and that the AG had been informed the commission planned to clarify the “somewhat ambiguous” August motion in its next meeting.

KDFWR spokesperson Lisa Jackson in an email said along with making a change to the contract regarding Storm’s health insurance, the commission’s approval Tuesday “clarified their intent to approve the contract and reappoint Commissioner Storm.”?

“Some constituents were confused by the wording of the prior motion on the contract,” Jackson said.

Mackey in a Lantern interview said he was disappointed in the opinion from the attorney general’s office, arguing the department needed to be transparent “because that’s one of the issues this agency’s had for some time.”?

“And to keep all this stuff in the dark is not how you clean up transparency,” Mackey said.

Who serves on the nine-member commission, which has the power to hire or fire a KDFWR commissioner, had been a point of contention between some sportsmen and the GOP-controlled Kentucky Senate. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Storm have previously clashed on a number of issues, including the length of Storm’s contract and executive branch oversight of procurement and conservation easements at the department.

Beshear told reporters in March that state senators — who can confirm or deny appointments made by the governor to the commission —? had to “stop protecting leadership of what I think is the most corrupt part of state government.”

Storm on Tuesday told the Lantern he wished Beshear “had a greater love for what we do here” but that he did not have “any ill feelings toward him.”?

“It’s a tough job that I have, and to coexist sometimes there’s difficulty, but I think we can move on. And we have,” Storm said. “I’d like to hope that in the future that you know his comments are about other entities that aren’t doing good work, because I really do believe in what we’re doing here.”?

“The department’s far bigger than any commissioner, and so a lot of times when you have a successful run, it’s because people are doing good work,” Storm said.?