Enough of the "listening." Enough of the rhetoric. Enough of the declarations that yet another private meeting is "a good first step". It is long past time for officials at NOAA to end the talking and listening, and actually do something about it.
Rogue agents need to be fired. Fishermen need to be compensated for disproportionate fines. Those already driven out of business by unfair sanctions should be compensated as well.
It was more than a year ago that NOAA head Jane Lubchenco acknowledged at her confirmation hearings that NOAA's enforcement agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, had lost the respect of the industry, and that its regional offices had a "seriously dysfunctional relationship" with the New England ground-fishing industry.
It was more than a year ago that she promised to repair that relationship. And now, it's been three months since a scathing preliminary report by U.S. Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser confirmed complaints by fishermen and by the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction that NOAA enforcement agents had abused their authority with vindictive and disproportionate enforcement against the Gloucester and New England fleets and others in the Northeast.
In the wake of that audit, Dale J. Jones, chief of the federal government's ocean police force, was removed. But Lubchenco still won't even say if he was fired, allowed to retire or is still working in another capacity for NOAA.
His temporary replacement is Alan Risenhoover, a man with no law enforcement experience. And Risenhoover, in town Monday for a private meeting with Mayor Carolyn Kirk, state Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester and other officials and attorneys, emerged from the closed-door talks to say the meeting was "a good first step" in healing the relationship between the fishermen and their regulators.
First step? What more do fishery officials need to take action? This sounds like a doctor who keeps telling the patient, "I feel your pain," but refuses to provide any remedy for it — and really won't even acknowledge clear remedies exist.
Mayor Kirk said she was pleased that, while she and others delivered a "very unpleasant message" to Risenhoover, he "seemed to listen with an open mind."
The truth is, she should not have been pleased — no one from Gloucester or New England should be.
At this point, feel-good visits such as this simply amount to more stalling.
Read the complete editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times.