Over the last decade, roughly $400 million that should have been spent on fishing industry projects — as mandated by the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act of 1954 — was instead diverted into the operating budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to government figures.
In Fiscal 2010, the Department of Commerce was obligated under the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act of 1954 and later modifications, to spend $68 million on "fishing industry projects" from an allocation of $113.4 million in tariffs paid to U.S. Customs Service on imported seafood and ocean products.
Instead, only $8 million went to the prescribed purposed, said Gary Reisner, CFO for NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service. The rest of the revenue from tariffs was used for NOAA operations.)
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.