Mayors Kirk, Lang blast Locke, NOAA in interview

The mayors of the region's two leading fishing ports Wednesday said a special master's report on miscarriages of justice by federal fisheries law enforcers described an "un-American" system that presumed guilt, and seemed consistent with a disrespectful view of fishermen they said permeates high levels of the agency.

"The penalties were shakedowns," said Mayor Scott Lang of New Bedford.

"The coercion was remarkable," added Mayor Carolyn Kirk of Gloucester. "It's unimaginable that this could be happening in America."

"Normally," Lang added, "people go to jail, but here they get transferred to a better climate."

In a joint interview with the Times, taped Wednesday for broadcast today at 10:15 a.m. on WBSM-AM, 1420, (and WBSM.com outside of the New Bedford metropolitan area), the mayors were in agreement that the response by US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco was superficial, insincere and unlikely to bring about meaningful reform.

That will be done by Congress, said Lang, who pointed to a US Senate subcommittee hearing scheduled for Boston's Faneuil Hall on June 20 as the starting point.

"Congress will be able to open up the hood on this, shine a light and take a good look," said Lang. "Until then, there won't be any real reform. This agency thinks they get a cut, they stitch it up, it's the same body politic."

Lubchenco led an entourage to Gloucester last Tuesday to meet with fishermen, issue an apology for failings of the law enforcement system, discuss a suit of reforms and announce the decision to return $649,527 in fines levied against elements of the commercial fishing industry which had its start here in the 17th century.

The fines had been deposited in the Asset Forfeiture Fund, through which passed nearly $100 million during a four and a half year period through June 2009, according to a report to Locke and Lubchenco by the Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser, which found gross abuse of the fund, and nearly $50 million unaccounted for.

But Locke, who at the time was in another state, joined Lubchenco via telephone in a tightly controlled, joint news conference and said he found no reason to hold any of the law enforcement personnel — agents or litigators — accountable or punished for trampling the rights of fishermen and shoreside businesses.

Instead, Locke, who has been nominated by President Obama to be ambassador to China, said the whole system was to blame. Many of the agents and lawyers involved have been granted transfers.

Dale J. Jones Jr., who was director of law enforcement at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 1999 through March 2010 was reassigned after Zinser testified to Congress that he organized a document shredding during the IG's investigation.

Only six questions were allowed in the Locke-Lubchenco news conference which was held before the release of the redacted 236 page report to Locke by the special master, retired US District Judge Charles B. Swartwood III.

He documented countless affronts to the American justice system including cases motivated by money explaining unjustifiable fines, an unauthorized entry to a Gloucester fishing business, intimidation of a potential defense witness in NOAA's effort to extract fines from a one-time New Bedford fisherman, a knowingly falsified affidavit for a search warrant and selective prosecution.

The interview was conducted from Gloucester City Hall with Lang in New Bedford City Hall after both mayors, who have forged a strong alliance, had read through the lengthy case narratives in Swartwood's report.

Kirk said it was clear to her that in many places Swartwood was highlighting efforts by NOAA agents and lawyers to coerce excessive fines.

"Power and money is to NOAA what greed was to Bernie Madoff," said Kirk. "They are powerful motivators in a climate without supervision, lack of consistency, no checks and balances. It was ripe for exploitation."

Both mayors said they could not imagine how true reform could occur while the agents of the corruption — employees of the Office of Law Enforcement and the Office of General Counsel for Enforcement and Litigation — went unpunished.

"What they're doing is embedding these people into other departments," Lang said. "Instead of cutting them out, they're moving them around, whitewashing what they did, rationalizing."

Lang, a lawyer, who previously has alleged that the rule-making process at the New England Regional Fishery Management Council, the Northeast Regional office of NOAA and national headquarters in Silver Spring, MD was as corrupt as the law enforcement division, said "I believe people in regulation knew exactly what the law enforcement was doing. There were no fire walls between the tremendous fines and the further consolidating of the industry," which is the expressed aim of NOAA administrator Lubchenco.

She came to office determined to institute a new economic system in the commercial fishing industry, one that triggers radical consolidation replacing the traditional small boat, owner-on-board model with a modern system of catch share trading between allocated players in a limited access system.

As part of its fiscal 2011 Continuing Budget Resolution, Congress earlier this spring voted to bar spending on new catch share systems in the Atlantic and Gulf fisheries through the end of the fiscal year, but in response Lubchenco drew in grants from the Congressionally created non-profit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and other foundations to fund future catch share systems.

A business consultant, Kirk scoffed at Locke's decision to rid the agency of its law enforcement evils by upgraded training, and "wholesale changes to policies that governor the way enforcement cases are investigated, charged and resolved," as Locke put it in his memorandum responding to Swartwood's report.

She described the announced response as "papering it over. We've implemented this and done that." Those changes need to be tested in operation. Any good company or organization that goes through reinvention has to tear apart policies and put them together in a new way.

"That's why I thought the recommendations were very, very superficial terms: training will solve it, new policies will solve it, better regulations will solve it, people will go away and will solve it."

Their attitude is: We're going to weather this storm," said Lang. "I don't know anyone advocating for the fisherman who says now we're satisfied."

The Senate Subcommittee hearing in Boston next month, organized by Chairman Thomas R. Carper, a Delaware Demoratc, and Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the ranking Republican, has invited Lubchenco and IG Todd Zinser as well as members of the fishermen and advocates, whose identities have not yet been made public.

Zinser has accepted the invitation but Lubchenco has not yet confirmed that she will.

Local News

Search Results

Discussion

Site Map

Contact Us