Accusing the Obama administration of paying no more than lip service to an economic crisis of its own making in the New England groundfishing industry, an alliance of Massachusetts' lawmakers Wednesday asked for the help of Congressional leaders to leverage responsive action.
A bipartisan group asked the Senate and House to link approval of part of the Obama administration's fisheries budget to a requested emergency order that would raise fishermen's catch limits and relieve a growing economic crisis at the coast.
Fishery scientists in Massachusetts have reported that two-thirds of the fleet has been deactivated by the low allocations that distributed in shares last May.
They also noted that profits from the new system were concentrated in a small number of winners' businesses.
Action on an omnibus budget bill — including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's $50 million request to help implement catch shares — is expected in the Senate before the end of the year. The bill has not yet been approved by the House.
The letter sent Wednesday by Sens. John Kerry and Scott Brown and Congressmen John Tierney, Barney Frank and Bill Delahunt to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear the administration had given no sign it is responding to research presented by the state showing that the new catch share policy for the New England groundfishery centered in Gloucester and New Bedford had created an economic crisis.
Kerry, Tierney, Frank and Delahunt are Democrats, Brown is a Republican.
After months of legal research and discussions, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke wrote to Gov. Deval Patrick on Oct. 14 concurring that the Magnsuson-Stevens Act gave him authority to issue "an emergency regulation to revise catch limits whenever there is both sufficient economic and sound scientific data" supporting the action.
Patrick and the delegation, however, have expressed surprise and disappointment that Locke had not responded to the filing of research generated by state and academic fisheries scientists — including Steve Cadrin of the University of Massachusetts and the federal fisheries science center at Woods Hole.
Despite all the talking, the letter said, the discussions "appear to have led to little more than speeches and broken promises."
Monica Allen, spokeswoman for federal fisheries, said Wednesday that the administration would respond "soon."
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.