In a moment of increasing partisan tension, U.S. Sens. John Kerry and Scott Brown on Wednesday and Thursday filed their own bills aimed at correcting specific and systemic wrongs in the misuse of federal law enforcement authority against members of the New England fishing community.
A Democrat, Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has been a righthand helper to President Obama, filed the more limited bill a day ahead of Brown. Kerry's bill would repay legal fees to a precise class of victims of miscarriages of justice — those to whom Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke offered reparations for the harm done on the May day a public apology was also issued for past wrongs by NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco.
Filed less than 24 hours after Kerry's, Brown's bill would remove the Asset Forfeiture Fund from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where, according to the Commerce Department Inspector General, it was filled with nearly $100 million in fines from fishermen, many of them improperly high, and used without controls for improper purposes by officials in the federal fisheries law enforcement system.
The Brown bill, like the Kerry bill, allows the reimbursement of legal costs to fishermen whose improper fines were reimbursed in the retrospection by Locke based on the findings of a special judicial master.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.