NOAA law 'summit' under green influence

Its law enforcement system scarred by a damning Inspector General's report and audit, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is preparing a summit conference to begin fixing the system.

According to documents obtained by the Time, a carefully screened and selected corps of 25 advisors provided taped interviews of recommendations on how to proceed to the public policy mediator hired to organize the conference, planned for Aug. 3 in Washington, D.C.

But the inner circle was heavy with past and present associates of NOAA's high command and representatives of environmental groups — the core constituency of NOAA chief administrator Jane Lubchenco, who came to the government as former board vice chairwoman with the Environmental Defense Fund, and built her organization with people who traveled in the same circles.

Government law enforcement officials are also a well-represented sector in the advisory group.

But missing are any representatives of the Gloucester or New Bedford groundfishing fleet, where the protest emanated against the capricious actions launched from NOAA regional headquarters here.

Not only were active fishermen from the two hub ports left off the advisory panel, but only one industry lawyer, Eldon Greenberg, was named.

Although he is a respected figure, Greenberg has practiced in Washington since leaving NOAA where he had been general counsel, and has not been involved in the bitter legal combat that centered around the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, sparking calls for the inspector general's intervention early last year.

Neither Stephen Ouellette, Paul Muniz, nor Pamela Lafreniere — attorneys who together represent the bulk of fishermen and industry businesses that have long chafed under the legal battering of NOAA's police force and litigators — were asked to advise the agency how to fix its law enforcement system.

Ouellette, who practices in Gloucester, could not be reached Thursday for comment.

But Muniz — who lives in Gloucester and practices in Boston — and Lafreniere, who practices in New Bedford questioned the selection of the inner circle of advisors for the summit, which has been organized to be limited to invited participants.

Little representation

The Times has not been able to obtain a list of those invited to the one-day summit, to be held at the Hamilton Crowne Plaza Hotel.

"Looking at the list (of the core of advisors), it seems that the industry, fishermen and dealers, were dramatically underrepresented," said Muniz.

His client, the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, was targeted for fines and shutdown orders for a decade, since the business, the main platform for sale of fish from the Gulf of Maine, opened in downtown Gloucester, and fought successfully against the allegations.

NOAA suffered a series of embarrassing moments in the past year during its effort to shutter the auction based on the unproven claim of a technical violation of a past settlement.

In one instance, a federal judge in Boston last year severely chastised Andrew Cohen — the agent in charge of the Gloucester office's enforcement officers — for issuing a press release indicating the auction would be shut down over NOAA charges, and giving advance notice to The Boston Globe to make the supposed shutdown public. The previous auction case, however, was still in court on appeal, and neither Cohen nor any other NOAA officials could carry out any shutdown order.

The entire case was settled on favorable terms to the auction on the eve of a U.S. House oversight subcommittee hearing in Gloucester in March, when Commerce Inspector General Todd Zinser first testified about the free use of the Asset Forfeiture Fund by government agents and lawyers.

The revelation and another the next day in a second hearing in Washington that the NOAA police chief had ordered the shredding of a mass of documents led to the replacement of the chief Dale J. Jones. NOAA has adamantly refused to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests for details about Jones' status.

The IG's report, now backed by a subsequent outside audit, has spotlighted unfettered use by police agents and litigators of tens of millions of dollars in often-inflated fines they set and collected as penalties foisted on fishermen and fishing-related businesses.

Lafreniere said she believed the group selected to provide formative ideas for the summit was screened to keep out dissent and discomforting ideas.

'Dog-and-pony' show

"It's just like when a man can't get a date, they pay for it — they'll pay to fill the room," she said. "They might as well fill the room with schoolchildren, 'cause children know as much about law enforcement as the invited guests.

"They don't want to change," she said of NOAA officials. "When you hear what's wrong, you have to change. They don't want to hear what's wrong. This is a dog-and-pony show."

The Times has been unable to obtain a list of those invited to the one-day law enforcement reform summit itself to be held at the Hamilton Crowne Plaza Hotel. It is believed that Ouellette is on the list; Muniz and Lafreniere are not.

The Times, however, has obtained a copy of an e-mail from the facilitator hired to organize the summit meeting.

That e-mail, sent by Susan Podziba of Susan Podziba & Associates of Brookline. went to the 25 selected contributors to the conceptualization of the summit. At the Times' request, Podziba identified the people from their e-mail addresses.

Of the 25 advisors, nine are government officials in law enforcement and related specializations in the Coast Guard, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department and the like.

Enviro contingent

Also selected for extensive interviews about the approach for the summit were representatives of the Pew Charitable Trusts, Oceana and Earth Justice.

Pew's Environment Group has been among the most influential in the direction of fishing policy.

Podziba did not name the people who selected the core advisors, but said the final selections were made by "the leadership" — which presumably included Lubchenco, NOAA chief counsel Lois Schiffer, and fisheries administrator Eric Schwaab. Schiffer and Schwaab were appointed by Lubchenco earlier this year.

Also, attorney Ellen Sobbeck, named to the core group from the Interior Department, had been hired by Schiffer to be deputy attorney general for the environment and natural resources division when Schiffer was an assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration.

Vince O'Shea of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, where Schwaab also had been, previously was selected by Schwaab in March to help find a successor to the discredited NOAA police chief Jones.

Copy to agent Cohen

The e-mail leaked to the Times also indicated that Cohen — the lightning rod agent in charge of the Gloucester office — had received a copy as well.

Podziba said the routing to Cohen was a mistake; she said she meant to "cc" not Andy Cohen but Andy Winer, the former Obama presidential campaign chief in Hawaii who was appointed to direct NOAA's external affairs while the IG's investigation was in progress.

The agenda for the one-day summit includes an introductory presentation by Jay Shimshack, an economist now at Tulane University, who is scheduled to speak on "deterrence strategies."

Among Shimshack's many research papers are two that bear notice.

In 2008, he co-published a paper that reported the surprising finding that the benefits of ever more stringent enforcement are almost limitless. "Enforcement not only induces non-compliant plants to become compliant, it provokes many typically over-compliant plants to reduce discharges even further below their permitted levels," he and his co-authors wrote.

In 2007, Shimshack co-authored a piece that raised doubts about the value of government-required disclosure of carbon pollution results.

"If the marginal benefits of pollution abatement are larger at dirty firms than at clean firms, disclosure programs may induce inefficient abatement allocations," Schimshack wrote.

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464 or at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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