Enough is enough. There is no need, no place for any more talk.
Jane Lubchenco's tenure as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is an ongoing, unmitigated disaster. And if any part of the Obama administration — right up to the president himself — is to have any credibility in addressing the shameful, government-driven campaign to stomp down the fishing industry, it simply has as no choice but to let her to go.
It is now blatantly obvious there is no working with her to resolve any of the issues she once vowed to fix, any of the openly corrupt actions she has allowed to continue — and essentially endorsed — under her so-called "leadership."
She has made promises that have not been kept. And she remains clearly bent on only one thing — doing the bidding of the Environmental Defense Fund she once served as board vice chairwoman and further cutting the already skeletal fishing fleets of Gloucester and other New England and American ports — despite clear evidence that most fish stocks are rebounding.
Despite her promise to deal with the rogue fishing enforcement arm in the National Marine Fisheries Service, she has protected and continued to enable it.
Yes, Dale Jones, the NOAA law enforcement director for the past decade, was removed from that post in the spring after a scathing report by Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser and an outside audit showed vindictive and disproportionate enforcement of fishing regulations, rampant abuse of a $92 million Asset Forfeiture Fund and document shredding during the audit.
Yet, months later, Jones remains sinfully on the payroll, collecting his $150,000 salary plus benefits while Lubchenco considers an "appropriate" place to reassign him. Here's one: How about working the commissary in a federal prison? That may be the only choice if he and his thug agents are ever brought to justice for the actions they've carried out against fishermen, their families and fishing communities?
Remember that Lubchenco wouldn't even say what Jones' status was until she was pressured by members of Congress. But apparently paying him doesn't mean keeping track of him.
Jones sent out a letter saying he was going to be leading a "global fisheries enforcement training workshop" in Mozambique next month, calling himself the "international chairman" of the Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Network — a group he founded at NOAA.
This — according to a NOAA spokeswoman — was incorrect. Connie Barclay said Jones would not be leading the workshop, nor is he still the head of the MCSN. Those were "oversights" that were being corrected, she said. Yet the numbers to call for the conference still rang at NOAA enforcement offices last week.
Look, Lubchenco has persistently ignored calls from state and federal elected officials to launch the needed criminal investigation into Jones' misconduct.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, state Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, and Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante, D-Gloucester, wrote that the misuse of the asset forfeiture fund was in "contravention of clearly statutory limits," and they added that its availability to NOAA agents to buy virtually anything they wanted without oversight, "has created perverse incentives to encourage the imposition of unjust fines and impoundments against fishermen ..."
The response from Lubchenco? She went ahead with a one-day "summit" in Washington, D.C. focused on "developing forward-looking strategies to advance ... enforcement."
In short, she has shown nothing but disdain for state and federal lawmakers, fishermen and American taxpayers alike. And one can argue she shows no respect for the president's own "jobs" agenda by simply pushing one of her own — the "catch share" manifesto of her EDF allies, a policy she acknowledges will cut a "sizable fraction" of America's fishing fleets. That's driving fishermen out of work, and driving countless small businesses out of the industry.
The bottom line is this: Lubchenco's deception regarding Jones' status, her protection of him and gross mishandling of his status is the last straw. It shows she has no intention of reforming or fixing anything — including documented criminal behavior by those under her command.
That's not leadership. It's an open affront to every American taxpayer from Gloucester to the Alaska's Bering Sea. She has to go — now.
