Saving Seafood

ALASKA: State Rep. Stutes moves for disaster declaration for pink salmon

September 1, 2016 — Wheels are already in motion to provide two measures of relief for Alaska’s pink salmon industry, which is reeling from the lowest harvest since the late 1970s.

Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, began the process last week to have the Walker Administration declare the pink salmon season a disaster, which would allow access to federal relief funds.

Pinks are Alaska’s highest volume salmon fishery and hundreds of fishermen depend on the fish to boost their overall catches and paychecks. So far the statewide harvest has reached just 36 million humpies out of a preseason forecast of 90 million. That compares to a catch of 190 million pinks last summer.

“This is the worst salmon year in nearly 40 years, and that’s huge,” she said. “It doesn’t just affect the fishermen; it’s a trickle-down effect on the cannery workers, the processors, and nearly all businesses in the community. It’s a disaster, there’s no other way to describe it.”

Stutes, who chairs the House fisheries committee and is known as a straight talker, said she has gotten very positive response from the state Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development.

“They are on it and already moving forward,” Stutes said.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Court sides with state, dismisses lawsuit challenging Gov. Walker order

July 25, 2016 — A Juneau Superior Court judge has sided with the state, dismissing a lawsuit that challenged Gov. Bill Walker’s administrative order to reorganize the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Commission, an autonomous state agency that’s been under fire the past few years.

“… the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the matter. At this current time, any alleged conflict between the (administrative order) and the CFEC is purely hypothetical,” Judge Louis Menendez wrote in a decision Thursday and sent to attorneys representing the plaintiffs and the state Friday.

Administrative Order 279, issued in February, would transfer functions of the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. CFEC was established in 1973 by the Alaska Legislature to limit how many people can participate in the state’s commercial fisheries.

Commercial fisherman and lobbyist Robert Thorstenson Jr. and commercial fishing trade organization United Fishermen of Alaska filed a lawsuit against Walker and the state calling the administrative order invalid.

The plaintiffs claimed the order “unconstitutionally takes authority from the Alaska Legislature to amend statutes and policies related to the operation and management of the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission.”

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

AL BURCH: Governor should recognize value of Alaska groundfish industry

July 25, 2016 — My brother and I were some of the pioneers of the trawl fishery here in Kodiak. We started from scratch when the United States claimed a 200-mile zone. I remember the foreign fleets off our shores, and once they were replaced by U.S. vessels like ours, I remember how the trawl fishery for pollock and cod helped put the town back on its feet after the collapse of the crab and shrimp fisheries in the late 1970s. I am proud of the fact that the fishery I helped pioneer now supports a year-round fishing economy here in Kodiak.

Although I am retired now, I continue to follow how the fishery is run. And I am concerned.

In the past, when we were struggling to build the fishery, the state of Alaska was on our side. We worked hard together to build a fishery that was managed by scientific principles and research, with no overfishing. We pioneered putting observers on U.S. vessels, and unlike a lot of other fisheries here in Alaska we have had observers for roughly 30 years. We worked alongside the state and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to meet conservation and management challenges together, to ensure practical solutions that ensured an economically sustainable fishery for Kodiak and other Alaska coastal towns.

But now it seems that the state of Alaska is not concerned about the impacts of its decisions on the hard-working participants in this fishery and communities like mine that are dependent on groundfish.

Read the full opinion piece at Alaska Dispatch News

ALASKA: State to argue for dismissal of suit over governor’s commercial fisheries order

July 19, 2016 — JUNEAU, Alaska — A judge is set to hear arguments in a case brought by the Alaska Department of Law that seeks the dismissal of a lawsuit against the state regarding the management of the state’s commercial fisheries.

The case is scheduled to go before Juneau Superior Court Judge Louis Menendez on Tuesday, according to The Juneau Empire.

At the center of a case is an administrative order issued by Gov. Bill Walker in February that calls for several functions of the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission to be transferred to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Walker’s administration has said moving administrative and research functions, like licensing and permitting, to Fish and Game could save the state more than $1.3 million a year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

ALASKA: North Pacific Fishery Managment Council appointments approved, AP changes upcoming

June 30, 2016 — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced the appointments of Buck Laukitis and Theresa Peterson to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council June 27, further strengthening Gov. Bill Walker’s fisheries management position on preserving local fisheries participation in coastal Alaska.

The nominations will go into effect Aug. 11. Governors submit nominations to the Commerce Department, which must then be approved by the secretary.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is the most economically powerful of eight regional councils that oversee federal fisheries between three and 200 miles off the U.S. coast. As of 2014, the North Pacific region accounts for 65 percent of the nation’s total seafood harvest value, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports.

Peterson and Laukitis replace Duncan Fields and David Long, respectively. Fields, a Kodiak attorney and fisherman, finished his third three-year term in June 2016, the maximum terms allowed consecutively under the U.S. fisheries governing regulation, the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

Long, a Wasilla resident and Bering Sea groundfish fisherman, served one three-year term and was not reappointed though he did submit his name for consideration.

Peterson and Laukitis will fill two of six designated Alaska seats on the 11-member body.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Council convenes in Kodiak with Gulf catch shares in focus

June 2, 2016 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in Kodiak from June 6-14 to hear a discussion paper that has enraged the trawl industry since late 2015.

Two proposals are engineered to prevent harmful impacts such as the job losses and high cost of entry that have occurred under previous such programs in halibut and crab.

This is an official state position, and the North Pacific council holds a six-member majority of the 11-member body that governs federal Alaska waters.

Gov. Bill Walker’s administration prioritizes coastal communities’ economic prospects during the state’s oil-driven financial calamity. Part of that stance concerns keeping the fishing industry, the state’s largest private employer, in Alaskan fishermen’s hands.

“The greatest challenge facing fishery managers and communities to date has been how to adequately protect communities and working fishermen from the effects of fisheries privatization, notably excessive consolidation and concentration of fishing privileges, crew job loss, rising entry costs, absentee ownership of quota and high leasing fees, and the flight of fishing rights and wealth from fishery dependent communities,” the council’s discussion paper reads. “Collectively, these impacts are altering and in some cases severing the connection between Alaska coastal communities and fisheries.”

For years, the council has mulled over a regulations to install catch shares in the Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries. Mainly trawlers go after this fishery, which includes pollock, a midwater fish, and species such as Pacific cod and arrowtooth flounder, which are bottom, or pelagic, fish.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Lawmakers rewrite fisheries tax bill

April 8, 2016 — JUNEAU, Alaska — A House fisheries committee advanced a rewrite of Gov. Bill Walker’s fisheries tax bill on Tuesday, diverting half of the potential revenue into a seafood marketing fund.

The bill, one of six proposed taxes on industries from Walker, could raise an additional $18 million in revenue by adding a 1-percent tax increase to portions of the commercial fishing industry.

The new language requires that one-half of the tax increase be deposited into a newly created Alaska Seafood Marketing Fund. The Legislature also is given the option to appropriate the marketing fund to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

Seafood marketing has been an ongoing fight in the Legislature. Both the House and the Senate cut the marketing institute’s budget in their respective versions of the state operating budget. Lawmakers said they wanted to see the institute become self-sustaining, with the Senate declaring that it wanted to see a plan by 2017 on how the institute would wean itself off of the general fund by 2019. The operating budget has yet to be finalized.

After the committee voted to move the bill to House Finance, chair Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, asked for an update from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Alaska Department of Revenue on taxing issues raised during public testimony on the bill.

See the full story at Homer News

ALASKA: Fishing groups voice opposition to CFEC reorganization

April 7, 2016 — Following an April 4 hearing that drew unanimous opposition from fishing groups, the House Resources Committee held a bill that would make statutory changes to the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission.

The bill is a relatively simple administrative fix, but sits in a tangle created by an administrative order by Gov. Bill Walker that has attracted criticism over its legality, a legislative audit of the agency, and opposition from fishermen.

Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, introduced the bill, but drastically scaled down the original version introduced last year to simply meet the needs of a 2015 legislative audit recommending some of the changes directed by Walker’s order.

Now, the bill’s main elements address administrative fixes: moving the CFEC commissioners to part-time pay and changing CFEC employees’ statutory designations.

“It changes (commissioners) from being on a monthly rate to a daily rate,” summarized Stutes’ staffer Reid Harris.

It also changes CFEC employees’ designation from “exempt” to “classified,” another statutory change.

“This bill is drafted to the recommendations of the audit,” Harris said.

Both recommendations enable Walker’s order, which folded CFEC duties into the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Walker’s order mandated the CFEC to fold some of its duties into the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Committee Chair Refuses to Advance Alaska Governor’s Fisheries Tax Hike

February 24, 2016 — Commercial fisheries may see taxes increase, but only if other resource industries do, too.

Under a budgetary thundercloud, Gov. Bill Walker is trying to squeeze funding from any source. A commercial fisheries tax bump, part of nine such bills in the Legislature, has slowed to a crawl in committee as fishermen decry it.

Fishermen, and House Fisheries Committee chair Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, fear Walker’s tax plan could disproportionately pinpoint the commercial fishing industry while other resource taxes die.

Stutes said during a Feb. 23 committee hearing that she’ll hold the bill in committee until further study.

“I have some reservations about passing this bill out of committee,” said Stutes. “I’ve been seeing a lot of the other resource tax bills faltering. I’m going to hold this in committee until I’m comfortable that the fishing industry is not being singled out. I would like this committee to assimilate and digest what they’ve heard.”

United Fishermen of Alaska, the state’s largest fishing industry group, brooked little opposition to the bill during a February meeting, but cracks appeared once Stutes opened the committee to public comment. The committee heard from fisherman that the tax plan seemed poorly thought out.

Richie Davis, a representative for the Seafood Producers Cooperative, said the tax bump is proof that either the Walker’s administration doesn’t fully grasp the social and economic aspects of the fishing industry, or “or somebody is using Alaska’s fiscal crisis as a springboard to cripple our industry.”

1 percent across the board

House Bill 251 would levy a 1 percent increase on commercial fisheries taxes. Current rates range from 1 percent to 5 percent, depending on the category.

Comment from two separate hearings on Feb. 18 and Feb. 23 called the tax plan too simple, too rushed, and too ignorant of the other resource taxes in the state. A 1 percent across-the-board raise, fishermen said, ignores the industry’s nuances and unique challenges.

The fisheries tax schedule is one of the more complex in Alaska tax code. The fisheries business tax and fisheries resource landings tax sprawl across different categories and sectors.

The state levies a fishery business tax and a fisheries resource landing tax, which distinguish between established fisheries and developing fisheries, each with different rates for floating processors, salmon canneries, and shore based processors.

The 1 percent tax rate increase doesn’t make enough distinctions, industry said.

“The approach HB 251 takes is quite frankly oversimplified,” said Vince O’Shea, vice president of Pacific Seafood Processors Association.

O’Shea, along with Icicle Seafoods representative Kris Norosz, pointed out that a 1 percent increase could conceivably work for some sectors but would stress salmon canneries, which are glutted with oversupply and having trouble profiting at the current 4.5 percent cannery rate.

“There hasn’t been quite enough analysis on the proposed action,” said Norosz. “I’m not quite sure how we got to this.”

Ken Alper, director of the state’s Department of Revenue Tax Division, said the 1 percent tax rate bump aims to bridge the gap between the state’s spending on fisheries management and its revenue.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Fishermen, lawmakers weigh in on proposed fish tax increase

February 18, 2016 — JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Fishing industry and lawmakers on Thursday puzzled over the origins of a proposed one percent tax increase in fisheries business taxes and fishery resource landing taxes.

During a hearing on the bill by the House fisheries committee, fishermen testified that they did not understand the origins of the increase. It is expected to raise $18 million in new revenue for the state annually, according to the Department of Revenue. It is one of six proposed industry taxes from Gov. Bill Walker, including increases to mining, motor fuels, alcohol and tobacco taxes.

“Are you telling me that a group of people got behind closed doors and pulled out the dart and the dart board and the dart landed on that increase? Is that what you’re saying?” Rep. Bob Herron, D-Bethel, said after he asked fishermen if they understood how the increases had been calculated. Each said they did not.

In its current form, the bill increases by one percent three different tax rates within the Fisheries Business Tax structure, a tax on direct marketers and the tax on floating processors. It also increases the Fisheries Landing Tax.

The director of the department’s Tax Division, Ken Alper, said he could provide the committee with the model used to determine the proposed tax rate, but he said there had not been a formal study. Leadership in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game was consulted when developing the new tax, Alper said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at San Francisco Chronicle