NEW BEDFORD — Jan. 15, 2011 — Mayor Scott Lang says the "rule-making" process in the federal fisheries regulatory system is as "corrupt" as its New England law enforcement branch was revealed to be.
And he predicted Thursday night that corruption, alleged to emanate from "inside baseball" played by government officials and environmental giants such as the Environmental Defense Fund, will be exposed in "the light of day," targeted in part by a lawsuit filed by the cities of New Bedford and Gloucester and a wide range of commercial fishing interests.
Lang issued the corruption allegation — reprising a potentially explosive element in the looming lawsuit against the federal government — after scientists at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth critiqued as wrong and misinformed the reasoning behind a decision that denies the groundfishing industry based here and Gloucester relief from regulatory constraints and direct economic aid.
One of the critics was Steve Cadrin, who helped write the report used as the basis for the request and serves as the chairman of the New England Fishery Management Council's Science and Statistical Committee.
Lang and industry representatives from Gloucester and New Bedford — along with Congressman Barney Frank and scientists from UMass-Dartmouth's School of Marine Science and Technology — all denounced the decision outlined by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke in brief letters to the governor and congressman. Locke's rejection was accompanied by a separate letter to Patrick by Eric Schwaab, the federal government's top fisheries official, explaining aspects of Locke's decision in detail. But those at Thursday's gathering painted Locke's and Schwaab's case as factually ignorant.
Patrick was represented at the meeting by Rick Sullivan, a former mayor of Westfield and the new secretary of energy and environmental affairs, as well as Mary Griffin and Paul Diodati, top officials in the state Division of Marine Fisheries.
"Certain fights are worth fighting," said Sullivan. "This is one of them."
Hours earlier in Boston, on behalf of the governor, Attorney General Martha Coakley released a legal memorandum and request to U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel to allow the commonwealth to join the lawsuit filed last summer by the Gloucester, New Bedford and fishing interests all along the Atlantic Coast.
Lang has been outspoken in linking the Environmental Defense Fund and other groups' agendas to the actions of the council, an arm of the federal government made up of part-time members rooted in various elements of the industry and state government officials.
Lang obtained thousands of documents in a Freedom of Information Act filing last year, but was denied hundreds of others for disputed reasons in an effort to show that NOAA and its environmental allies had conspired to trample rights in a race to give EDF and other groups the catch share system they had lobbied for.
The Conservation Law Foundation has filed a memorandum with Judge Zobel urging her to bar the discovery motion sought by the plaintiffs, and to keep the correspondence between the government and environmental groups shielded from the public.
Before Lang spoke, three UMass-Dartmouth scientists, including Cadrin, deconstructed the letters from Locke and Schwaab that laid out the reasoning behind the rejection of governor's case for identifying a man-made, government-driven fisheries failure, and for emergency action that would include increased catch limits and direct economic aid.
Cadrin challenged much of the argument in the letters from Locke and Schwaab as factually and conceptually incorrect.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.