Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk and New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang have filed notice of their intent to appeal U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel's June 30 ruling rejecting challenges to the Department of Commerce's "Amendment 16" fisheries regulatory framework and its controversial "catch shares" management system imposed for New England in May 2010.
The mayor and their cities are among 30 plaintiffs from the fishing community who are challenging Amendment 16, claiming the implementation of the current system violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
On appeal, the plaintiffs will continue to argue that, in drafting and implementing Amendment 16, NOAA improperly created a system that was — in all but name — a Limited Access Privilege permit system, but that ignored the Magnuson-Stevens Act's requirement of a referendum before the enactment of a quota system, according to SavingSeafood.Com, a leading online fisheries news service.
"We all know the saying 'a rose by any other name would smell as sweet' from Shakespeare. That's what NOAA and the Council did," said Kirk. "They built a system that would have triggered a referendum if they had called it what it is. But the Council knew they couldn't win a referendum. So they renamed it.
"Then the crafty NOAA lawyers wrote an interpretation of the law that tiptoed around the clear meaning of the Amendment Congressman Frank inserted requiring a referendum," she added. "That's how we ended up with this system, but this system does not smell like roses."
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