September 4, 2020 — Federal regulators have disputed Maine’s plan to distribute $20 million in coronavirus relief to the state seafood industry by saying that individual recipients, not the fishery as a whole, must demonstrate a 35 percent revenue loss this past spring before they can qualify for assistance, officials said Thursday.
Maine Commissioner of Marine Resources Patrick Keliher had said on Tuesday that after some frustrating delays, state and federal officials were nearing agreement on exactly how to allocate the funds, by the end of October, from the federal CARES Act.
But newly-announced regulations are delaying the dispersal of funds, he said.
Maine has been in line to get $20 million, the fifth-highest amount of money out of the 31 states to receive fishing-industry bailout funding, since the allocation was first announced in May, but disputes over how to distribute the funds have slowed its dispersal.