By Richard Gaines
A congressional subcommittee has set the date for its oversight hearing into a U.S. Inspector General's findings that a largely autonomous federal fisheries law enforcement agency has mistreated fishermen as if they were criminals, leading to a "dysfunctional" relationship between regulators and the regulated.
Chairwoman Madeleine Z. Bordallo, D-Guam, announced the hearing before the Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife will be March 3 at 2 p.m. in Washington; the hearing will be Webcast live on the committee's Web site.
Members of the staff of Commerce Department IG Todd Zinser and representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency which polices federal waters, are expected to appear.
Although NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco has announced a series of stopgap measures in response to key findings, the investigators have not commented publicly beyond the 26-page report, which noted that additional work and findings would be posted regarding important individual cases.
The only one cited by name in the report involved a decade-long NOAA effort to prove the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction guilty of illegal brokering.
The March 3 hearing date falls two days after the latest allegations against the Auction — a 59-count allegation with a NOAA-assessed penalty of a 120-day shutdown and a $335,200 fine — are scheduled for trial before administrative law judge Walter J. Brudzinski in Boston.
It also falls seven days after a Feb. 24 national protest of federal fishery policies that is expected to draw 2,000-3,000 fishermen to the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
The "United We Fish" event organizers have announced plans to focus on making the case with Congress for less rigid rebuilding deadlines for overfished stocks to ease job loss and economic harm to nation's ports.
Bordallo, who announced the hearing Tuesday, was acting on the request last Friday of Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., who represents the Outer Banks.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, has also agreed to have his panel hold hearings on the Inspector General's findings, and committee member and Cape Ann congressional Rep. John Tierney, D-Salem, has asked for those hearings to be in Gloucester. But no date for that hearing has been announced.
Over six months last year, teams from the office of Inspector General Todd Zinser conducted more than 200 interviews across the nation, but according to the report released last month, the problem behaviors were concentrated in the NOAA enforcement office in Gloucester, which polices the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions.
"The IG's findings are of serious concern to the fishing industry, members of Congress and all who care about the conservation and management of our nation's fisheries resources," said Bordallo. "We need a complete and open discussion of these findings and recommendations to ensure that the problems identified are fully addressed by NOAA as quickly as possible.
Key findings were that law enforcement agents were acting without supervision or standards, assessing high fines in a system that encourages settlements and gets to keep the fines which were held in a Forfeiture Fund Account and used by the agents without controls until Lubchenco's emergency orders issued after the IG's report was released.
The IG found that fines in the Northeast were 250 percent higher than the next highest region and about five times greater than the other four regions.
Lubchenco responded two weeks after the IG report was released Jan. 21. Along with transferring control of the forfeiture fund to NOAA general counsel Lois Schiffer, Lubchenco also directed reviews from higher levels of charging decisions, penalties and permit sanctions and settlements.
She also ordered a workforce analysis of the law enforcement staff which the IG noted was mostly criminal agents despite the fact that nearly all the cases were civil or administrative in nature.
Lubchenco ordered plans for a law enforcement summit to be held no later than June 30, she has called for strategies to improve data integrity and standardize procedures by March 21, and has ordered a plan ensure that "criminal procedures are not applied to civil offenses."
Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or via e-mail at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
