July 22, 2013 — Regardless of whatever financial aid package emerges from these appropriation talks — geared toward the next federal fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1 and runs through the following September — it is other provisions within the same bill that set the stage for several positive steps forward.
It’s too early to tell whether all or any of the long-overdue economic disaster aid for the Northeast and other groundfisheries, forced by NOAA’s own actions into a state of recognized “economic disaster,” holds up through the fiscal 2014 federal budget process.
And while the $150 million in disaster aid approved through a key U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee and the full committee itself is justified, it’s also easy to see other senators and leaders in the Republican-controlled House picking apart that dollar figure, especially in these times of spending “sequestration.”
But regardless of whatever financial aid package emerges from these appropriation talks — geared toward the next federal fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1 and runs through the following September — it is other provisions within the same bill that set the stage for several positive steps forward.
And while a provision aimed at shutting down NOAA’s 200-job Northeast Regional headquarters in Gloucester (see news story, Page 1) should throw up a number of very different economic red flags here, requirements for NOAA to charter fishing boats to carry out fish stock assessments, mandates for the agency to cover the cost of all on-board monitors under its own poorly-managed and wasteful program, and an order to steer a percentage of seafood import tariff revenues toward community-based efforts to modernize fishing fleets are precisely the steps that should be forthcoming from Congress — and, in fact, should have been tied to NOAA’s budget contingencies long ago. So we can only hope they get the broad-based support on both the House and Senate floors that they deserve.
None of these ideas, of course, are new.
Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times