DFG SantaBarbara MLPA Meeting

http://www.cal-span.org/Broadcast/CFG.asx

Live feed.

Cheers, Don

Best Goat F- quote of the day.:laughing3: '' Fish know when they are safe''.

Don

RIP spearfishing and fishing Laguna. My boy and I are very sad.:angry5:

Sincerely Don Paul

Closing Waters to Sportfishing in Southern California Denies Public’s Right to Access Public Waters
California Fish and Game Commission ignores numerous legal concerns by approving MPA regulations

Sacramento, CA – December 15, 2010 – Despite ongoing legal concerns, the California Fish and Game Commission (FGC) voted 3-2 to approve a wide-ranging array of marine protected areas (MPAs), essentially no-fishing zones, along the southern California coast. In its latest effort to implement the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), the commission’s vote indefinitely closes approximately 12 percent of southern California’s ocean to recreational fishing – including many of the state’s best recreational fishing areas.

“It’s beyond comprehension that the commission would go through with approving these regulations given the serious flaws in the process,” said Bob Fletcher of the Sportfishing Association of California and former Chief Deputy Director of the California Department of Fish and Game. “The commission obviously had no desire to assure that a fair, open, objective and legally conducted process was in place before such a vote occurred. This vote leaves little doubt that the MLPA has is based on political agendas instead of the needs of California’s citizens and natural resources.”

The Partnership for Sustainable Oceans (PSO), which represents recreational fishing and boating interests in California, has been actively engaged in the MLPA process since the North Central Coast phase. The PSO has voiced its concerns regarding the numerous flaws and a lack of transparency in the process. One of the PSO’s members, United Anglers of Southern California (UASC), has retained legal representation to investigate the legality of the MLPA process.

During the December 15, commission meeting, the PSO’s attorneys presented to the commission the numerous examples of defects in the rulemaking process, including many flaws that were discovered after reviewing MLPA planning documents that have only recently become public.

On October 1, 2010, a California Superior Court ruled that two MLPA planning groups – the Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF) and Master Plan Team , also known as the Science Advisory Team, are state agencies and therefore compelled by California’s Public Records Act to share information that they were withholding from public view. These groups would not respond to a Public Records Act request, incorrectly claiming they were not state agencies. In light of a PSO review of the documents provided to date, the commission was presented several notable findings prior to their vote, including evidence that the BRTF held numerous scheduled, agendized meetings which were closed to the public.

Other notable flaws and concerns with the MLPA process that were not taken into consideration by the commission include:

- Lack of funding for the necessary monitoring and enforcement of MPA regulations – a $40 million annual price tag.
- Negative economic impact of closures to saltwater recreational fishing, which contributes $2.3 billion to California’s economy annually and supports nearly 20,000 jobs.
- Major flaws in the environmental analysis of the impacts of the proposed South Coast regulations.
- Inconsistent and shifting guidelines throughout the process.

“The MLPA attempts to resolve a fisheries ‘crisis’ that simply does not exist. As a result of decades of successful traditional fisheries management, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, there is not one marine fish stock currently experiencing overfishing in California’s waters,” said Gordon Robertson, Vice President of the American Sportfishing Association, a PSO member. “Simply put: fisheries management in California is working and the MPAs are not necessary.”

“While we are deeply disturbed that the commission would go forward with approving these regulations, the process is not over yet,” noted John Riordan, Board Member of UASC. “The PSO legal effort is working to protect the interests of recreational anglers and is making significant progress. I urge all anglers and anyone concerned with the MLPA to visit http://www.oceanaccessprotectionfund.org and make a donation to help the fight against this flawed process in the courts.”
__________________

The Waterman's Alliance and United Anglers are other groups fighting that need our support if this is to be over turned or revisited.

Don Paul

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ua8T3qlbuvg

I would like to thank my Cali guys for keeping their cool in these days of death to some of our cherished hunting grounds. The next phase of this Goat-F under way FWIW.
United Anglers and our fine Waterman's Alliance have the ball rolling, let the battle begin.
Cheers, Don

If the court agrees that the lawsuit has merit, the closures will likely be delayed.

Anglers Fight Back Against Unlawful Marine Closures
Recreational fishing groups file lawsuit to invalidate regulations that unnecessarily deny access to public waters

January 27, 2011 - Sacramento, CA - Member organizations of the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans (PSO), which represents California’s recreational fishing and boating community, have filed a lawsuit in the San Diego County Superior Court seeking to set aside regulations established by the California Fish and Game Commission in connection with the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). The commission approved regulations for the North Central and South Coast study regions in August 2009 and December 2010, respectively, establishing marine protected areas – essentially no-fishing zones – in large areas of the state’s coastal waters. The lawsuit, filed by United Anglers of Southern California, Coastside Fishing Club and Robert C. Fletcher, cites a lack of statutory authority for adopting the regulations, and, in the case of the South Coast regulations, numerous violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in the commission's environmental review of the regulations.

"From the outset, it was clear that the MLPA process was set up to reach a predetermined outcome under the fiction of an allegedly open and transparent process," said Bob Fletcher, former president of the Sportfishing Association of California. "In a rush to establish regulations based on political timelines and a pre-determined agenda, the Fish and Game Commission has ignored the legal requirements it must follow."

Most notably, the petition states that:

* The commission does not have the statutory authority to adopt, modify or delete marine protected areas under the MLPA's main rulemaking provisions until it has approved a final Master Plan for the state. The final Master Plan has yet to be written or approved.
* The other statutory authorities that the commission relies on do not provide the commission with the authority it needs to adopt these MPAs.
* The privately-funded "MLPA Initiative" process has been conducted in a manner inconsistent with the process the state legislature directed in the MLPA, and meetings held by MLPA planning groups that should have been open meetings were closed to the public.
* The South Coast study region regulations were adopted on the basis of an environmental review process that is in violation of CEQA.

"Our concerns were presented to the commission prior to its December 2010 vote to approve regulations for the South Coast," Fletcher further said. "Ignoring the information before them, the commission went forward with approving regulations to close 116 square miles of southern California’s coastal waters to recreational fishing. Many of the best sportfishing areas are included in the closures. These closures don't just disappoint the fishermen – they take away jobs and income for many California small businesses along the coast and elsewhere. Particularly concerning are the flaws in a regulatory process that has been fueled with private money from special interests. The end result of this process has been a rush by the commission to adopt regulations without the authority it has to have to adopt them, and without a proper review of the environmental consequences of what they're doing. That should be a concern for all Californians, whether they fish for fun or for a living, or whether they've never been fishing at all."

"Much of the best fishing areas are now closed under the MLPA process," noted Dan Wolford, Science Director for the Coastside Fishing Club. "Anglers in the North Central region are now suffering because of excessive, unnecessary closures that we believe were improperly established. We find it extremely concerning that anglers, who are the original conservationists, are being taken off the water through a seriously flawed process, while the real threats to the health of our ocean, such as contaminated stormwater runoff and industrial pollutants, are allowed to continue unabated."

The petition is the second lawsuit involving the MLPA by members of the PSO. In May 2010, Fletcher filed suit against the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force and Master Plan Team – also known as the Science Advisory Team – for failing to respond to a Public Records Act request, as state agencies are required to do. These groups claimed that they were not required to make their records available to the public on the ground that they are not "state agencies." Last October, a California Superior Court ruled that the Blue Ribbon Task Force and the Science Advisory Team are indeed state agencies and therefore are compelled by California’s Public Records Act to share information that they were withholding from public view.

"The good intentions of the MLPA have been derailed by private interests and political motivations," said Fletcher. "We urge anglers, outdoors enthusiasts and anyone who supports good government and the public’s right to know what its government is doing, to visit www.oceanaccessprotectionfund.org and donate what they can to help us to continue to fight this flawed process in the courts."

Going forward with the MLPA lawsuit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_04BC1acA

More Goat F-ck.

Monday, February 07, 2011
SECRET MLPA MEETINGS REVEALED
SACRAMENTO – Meeting agendas and emails uncovered by a successful Public Records Act lawsuit demonstrate what skeptical members of the public have long suspected. The Marine Life Protection Act Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force pervasively and routinely met behind closed doors while directing the privately funded marine closure process.

“Public meetings of the BRTF have been an elaborately staged kabuki performance choreographed and rehearsed down to the last detail, even to the crafting of motions in scheduled private meetings held before the so-called public meetings of the BRTF. Clearly this has not been the ‘most open and transparent process ever’ as it has so often been described,” Partnership of Sustainable Oceans representative George Osborn testified during the February 2nd meeting of the California Fish and Game Commission.

Earlier that day, the commission was formally served with the PSO lawsuit seeking to invalidate MPAs approved for the South and North-Central Coast study regions. The new lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court alleges violations of the state Administrative Procedures Act and the California Environmental Quality Act among other violations of law.

The documents are the fruits of a successful Public Records Act lawsuit brought last year by United Anglers of Southern California and Robert C. Fletcher, former DFG Chief Deputy Director and past president of the Sportfishing Association of California. Sources say they represent only a tiny fraction of the materials ordered for release when the court determined the BRTF is a state agency, most of which have yet to be produced.

Spanning from April 2007 to November 2009, the documents demonstrate that the MLPA process was directed from high within the executive branch of state government. Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman is implicated in a briefing on managing the public process. The same emailed agenda dated April 7, 2007 advises BRTF members to “give your own notes verbally and throw them away after,” a secretive strategy for limiting “discoverable” material, denying the public a record of the BRTF’s closed-door actions.

BRTF “briefing meetings” were held on April 2007, November 3, 2008, December 10, 2008, February 25, 2009, and October 20, 21 and 22, 2009. The sessions preceded scheduled public meetings in places such as MLPAI executive director Ken Wiseman’s hotel parlor suite and the Santa Barbara home of then-BRTF chair Don Benninghoven. That meeting included a dinner with Chrisman and Fish and Game commissioner Richard Rogers, another frequent defender of the MLPA as a model public planning process.

As a member of a state commission, Rogers should have known the briefings were suspect. The state’s Bagley-Keene open meetings law clearly prohibits private meetings of a panel majority, even those limited to briefings. BRTF members and some commissioners such as Rogers regularly asserted the BRTF was not subject to Bagley-Keene, but claimed BRTF members voluntarily abided by it.

They did a miserable job. Emails authored by Meg Caldwell and Jane Pisano suggest the BRTF went far beyond briefings. They deliberated during their private sessions. In an email dated June 2, 2009, Pisano wrote “I feel strongly that we need to meet privately before the public meeting (either on the phone or in person).”

In late October 2009 as the South Coast process neared its end and the development of the BRTF’s own proposed set of Marine Protected Area closures known as the Integrated Preferred Alternative, MLPAI program manager Melissa Miller-Henson authored an email referencing a boardroom dinner “allowing the group to talk with Dr. Pisano about her perspective before she departs” a multi-day session early.

Similarly, in a request for more private time for BRTF members, Caldwell wrote “we can digest it in our own rooms, or conversation with one another, or in conversations with staff.”

At times, the emails delve deep into complex details. A February 2009 Caldwell email recommends bringing in an expert to consult on legal-jurisdictional issues between the state and the US Department of Defense over the question of MPAs at military use areas. “I’m free to talk by cell phone pretty much any time this weekend,” Caldwell added. Bagley-Keene expressly prohibits serial meetings such as these.

The public record also supports the notion that the BRTF deliberated behind closed doors. In an unguarded moment at the beginning of the November 10, 2009 BRTF meeting, then-chair Cathy Reheis-Boyd said “we’ve got task force members running on empty after three nights of about three hours sleep.” At that meeting, MPA plans developed by the three Regional Stakeholder Groups suddenly became Options A and B, literally overnight and without action in the public eye.

During a joint BRTF / Fish and Game Commission hearing on December 9, 2009, commissioner Dan Richards asked Wiseman if the BRTF held private meetings. Reheis-Boyd fielded the question, testifying on record that “[we] certainly do not make any decisions behind closed doors. It’s against our policy. We don’t do that, we don’t stand for that and we haven’t participated in that period.”

Reheis-Boyd acknowledged the group met for meals. “During that time if a member has a question they can ask a question of staff, certainly they can ask and have it answered so they could inform themselves. We do not deliberate and we do not make decisions at any of those meetings,” she added.

The documents prove otherwise, shining a revealing light into the secretive inner workings of the MLPAI, a process the PSO’s Fletcher characterized as the most corrupt and conflicted he’s encountered during decades of public service.

Video of PSO representative Osborn’s commission testimony is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_04BC1acA.

Video of Reheis-Boyd’s denial can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHxA14wBvDs.

MLPA records prove BRTF commonly met in secret

MLPA SECRECY EXPOSED – Emails uncovered by the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans show the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force pervasively and routinely met behind closed doors. In this example, BRTF member Meg Caldwell demands a scheduled public meeting be delayed to allow more time to meet privately in the members’ own hotel rooms.
Posted By Bradley On 02/07/2011 At 8:22 PM Comments.

Laguna Beach Independent

Marine Hearings Buoyed by Nonprofits

Anglers sue to block fishing ban

By Ted Reckas | LB Indy

Expanded marine protections for Southern California were recently finalized after months of debate, but fishermen that oppose the outcome maintain the process was tainted because of a little known fact: the hearings were largely funded by non-profits that support marine sanctuaries.

Five non-profits, including one based in Laguna Beach, donated a total of $20 million to see the drafting process to completion since the state legislature never budgeted adequate funding for the marine-protection law, which was enacted in 1999.

Meanwhile, recreational fishermen continue to fund litigation and lobbying to roll back the new regulations, which could go into effect as soon as April. The new rules will broaden marine protected areas that bar commercial and recreational fishermen from some prized fishing grounds, including most of Laguna Beach’s shoreline, a favorite of spear-fishermen and lobster-hunters for decades.

David Myers, owner of Dana Point’s Jig Stop Tackle and leader of the southern California recreational fishing group United Anglers, maintains that MLPA funding by environmental supporters is a conflict of interest.

“Since the process was rigged from the beginning, the fact is this is what the government wanted, and created the process to achieve it. We are working after the fact here, because it was totally controlled,” Myers said.

Others involved with the legal process refute his contention.

“They wanted the law implemented and were willing to put up $20 million to ensure that we had a public process and everyone was heard. That’s good public policy,” said Ken Wiseman, director of the MLPA Initiative, the public-private partnership appointed by state officials to implement the law.

“Private philanthropic foundations were only involved on the condition that there would be a rigorous public process and serious scientific involvement, and deadlines. They would have no say at all over the direct decision-making,” said Michael Mantel, a partner in Sacramento’s Resources Legacy Fund law firm, appointed by state officials to handle funding of the Marine Life Protection Act.

Four months before broader marine protections were finalized in December, lobbyist George Osborn, hired by four recreational fishing groups, pressed their case in person with gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, who expressed sympathy to their cause.

Last May in Sacramento’s Superior Court, Robert C. Fletcher, then president of Sportfishing Association of California, successfully sued three state agencies overseeing MLPA regulations in order to obtain their internal communications. Fletcher alleged Fish and Game staff were conducting closed-door meetings in what is mandated as a public process.

Wiseman denies the contention, saying some committee members talked over a meal while traveling, but all meetings involving decision-making were held in public. Wiseman dismisses Fletcher’s move as an attempt to derail a process he opposes. Fletcher says the judge’s finding in his favor is evidence his contention is correct.

Even so, Wiseman does admit there is an agenda: implement the law even if the state is broke.

“(The funders) are certainly pro-MLPA; that’s why they put up the money. They are conservationists and fishermen. Yes, they wanted the law implemented, just as the PSO wanted it stopped. Now, not able to convince people their program is the only one that’s right, they do this,” Wiseman said of the lawsuit

The group responsible for shaping the protected areas was made up of appointees named by directors of the state Department of Natural Resources and Fish and Game Department and included Fletcher. “If they wanted a predetermined outcome they wouldn’t put someone like Fletcher on the RSG (regional stakeholder group). But they did,” Wiseman said.

Because the cash-strapped state has ceded underwriting of some public business to such public-private partnerships, the process, at the very least, creates the appearance of a conflict of interest by the funders, a situation others say is likely to flourish as the state’s fiscal crises continues.

“This is not uncommon. It has been done in the health care and educations fields. Striped bass regulations and hunting regulations are all funded by fishing and hunting interests,” explained Mantel. “The important thing is transparency, full disclosure, and the decision-making be retained by public officials.

“As the budget crisis gets more severe, there will be more looking for public-private partnerships,” he added.

Others echo his sentiment.

“There is only going to be more stuff that the state is supposed to do and not have the resources to do, and that discussion is going to be taking place more and more,” said Chris Decardi, program director for the Packard Foundation, which contributed $8.2 million to fund MLPA hearings.

The Laguna Beach-based Marisla Foundation founded by Getty Oil heiress Anne Getty Earhart, which supports environmental causes as well as physical, mental, and financial health for women, gave another $3 million over several years, according to the Resources Legacy Fund. The most recent tax records show Marisla donated $12 million in 2008 to 50 causes, including $1.1 million towards the MLPA. A foundation spokeswoman declined comment.

Remaining MLPA funders were the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which donated $7.4 million, the Keith Campbell Foundation’s $1.2 million, and the Annenberg Foundation’s $200,000.

The Marine Life Protection Act called for the creation of a network of marine protected areas across the state’s entire 1100-mile coastline as well as research, public outreach, and ongoing monitoring of regulated areas. Enforcement responsibility was delegated to multiple agencies, including wildlife and parks officials. Then Gov. Gray Davis signed the law but allocated no funding, saying the law’s promoters needed to raise funds on their own to implement it.

They may want to start a legal fund as well. Fletcher, along with United Anglers of Southern California and Coast Side Fishing Club, again went to court to halt the new sanctuaries. In a lawsuit filed last month in San Diego Superior Court, they claim the Fish and Game Commission has finalized regulations prematurely as it has not satisfied an MLPA requirement to establish a master plan for rolling out marine protected areas.

Don

Company: Sportfishingreport.com
February 21, 2011

South Coast fishing closures may be delayed
by Rich Holland

Has lawsuit delayed South Coast MLPA closures?
Newspaper article traces money that funded the corrupt process
Nobody on either side of the lawsuit is talking, but the California Fish and Game Commission has not yet forwarded the package of fishing closures along the South Coast to the Office of Administrative Law.

The Department of Fish and Game's Jordan Traverso said late last week that the F&G Commission had not sent the regulatory package to Office of Administrative Law (OAL) but will "in a month or so." The commission approved an array of fishing closures from Point Conception to the Mexican border and including the Channel Island on Dec. 15, 2010.

Before those closures can become law, the regulations must be scrutinized and approved by the OAL. The OAL process can take place as quickly as 30 days, although governmental blackout days caused by the budget crisis have caused delays in recent years.

But the OAL cannot act until it receives documentation from the governing body responsible for crafting the regulations, in this case the Fish and Game Commission. The commission, however, is named in a lawsuit filed by Robert Fletcher, United Anglers of Southern California, the Coastside Fishing Club and the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans that cites a lack of statutory authority for adopting the regulations, and, in the case of the South Coast regulations, numerous violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in the commission's environmental review of the regulations. The suit also seeks to overturn the closures along the North Coast already in the books as regulation

The Department of Fish and Game has a policy of not comment on litigation while it is underway and representatives of the fishing groups have also declined comment. Whether the lawsuit will delay the South Closures even more or even derail the closures completely is impossible to say at this time without further input. If the OAL does receive the package in "a month or so" the closures could go into effect as soon as May.

The Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative process that created closure zones is also under fire, with a previous lawsuit by Fletcher resulting in the court stating that bodies appointed by then-Governor Schwarzenegger and his agency heads were in fact governmental agencies and subject to state laws regarding public meetings. The judge ordered that all documents and communications between the Blue Ribbon Task Force, Science Advisory Team and the Department of Fish and Game and the Resources Agency be provided to Fletcher et al. These documents helped trigger the latest lawsuit and could be the basis for further legal action.

In an article by the Fish Sniffer's Dan Bacher, the PSO's George Osborn was quoted as saying the documents revealed much evidence of close-door dealing. “After reviewing the documents turned over to us, which previously the BRTF had improperly withheld from the public, we now have evidence, indicating that the public meetings of the BRTF have been an elaborately staged Kabuki performance choreographed and rehearsed down to the last detail, even to the crafting of motions, in scheduled private meetings held before the so-called public meetings of the BRTF," said Osborn. "Clearly, this has not been the most open and transparent process, as it has so often been described.”

Bacher also repeated the findings of an investigative piece by Ted Reckas in the Laguna Beach Independent published on February 11 that detailed the private money that funded the program to create a network of "marine protected areas" on the California coast.

“Five non-profits, including one based in Laguna Beach, donated a total of $20 million to see the drafting process to completion since the state legislature never budgeted adequate funding for the marine-protection law, which was enacted in 1999,” noted Reckas in his article, “Marine Hearings Buoyed by Nonprofits” http://www.lbindy.com/2011/02/11/mar...-by-nonprofits.

The money was given to the process by the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, (which Bacher calls "a shadowy organization that North Coast environmental leader John Lewallen describes as a 'money laundering operation' for corporate money") in return for a timetable of predetermined results (memorandum of understanding) signed off on by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Resources Agency director, Mike Chrisman.

The David and Lucillle Packard Foundation contributed $8.2 million to fund MLPA hearings, according to Reckas. Julie E. Packard, the executive director and founder of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the foundation. In the Central Coast project, the first of the MLPA project areas, large swathes of the coastline and waters offshore and adjacent to Monterey were closed to fishing.

The Laguna Beach-based Marisla Foundation, founded by Getty Oil heiress Anne Getty Earhart, gave $3 million to the MLPA over several years, according to the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation. "The most recent tax records show Marisla donated $12 million in 2008 to 50 causes, including $1.1 million towards the MLPA. A foundation spokeswoman declined comment," noted Reckas. The entire coastline of the City of Laguna was designated a no-fishing area under the auspices of the MLPA South Coast project.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation donated $7.4 million. Gordon and Betty Moore are the founders of the Foundation, and Gordon also serves as chairman of the board. Gordon Moore is co-founder of Intel Corporation and Chairman Emeritus of the Corporation's Board of Directors. Prior to Intel, Gordon co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957.

The Keith Campbell Foundation’s contributed $1.2 million to the MLPA Initiative. D. Keith Campbell founded Campbell and Company in 1972, and currently serves as Chairman of its Board of Directors. Campbell and Company is now one of the largest derivative investment managers in the world. Finally, Reckas noted the Annenberg Foundation contributed $200,000. The Annenberg Foundation is a private foundation established in 1989. It is the successor corporation to the Annenberg School at Radnor, Pennsylvania founded in 1958 by Walter H. Annenberg.

MLPA officials contend that the private funding of a public process is "good public policy."

“They wanted the law implemented and were willing to put up $20 million to ensure that we had a public process and everyone was heard. That’s good public policy,” Ken Wiseman, executive director of the MLPA Initiative, told Reckas.

Bacher noted that fishermen, seaweed harvesters and grassroots environmentalists contend that the MLPA process was rigged from the start and that funding a public process with private funding is a huge conflict of interest.

Bacher said MLPA critics, including fishermen, environmentalists and Indian Tribal members, have charged the initiative with corruption, conflicts of interest and institutional racism since Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger privatized the initiative in 2004 by directing the Resources Agency and Department of Fish and Game to sign the MOU with the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation.

He noted the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force groups that implemented the law are dominated by oil industry, real estate, marina development and other corporate interests. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, served as chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast and on the task forces for the North Central Coast and North Coast.

MLPA opponents, Bacher said, also slam the MLPA process for setting up marine protected areas that fail to protect the ocean from water pollution, oil spills and drilling, military testing, wave energy projects, corporate aquaculture and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering.

Rich Holland

NOT SO FAST: SOUTH COAST MLPA IMPLEMENTATION SLOWED BY RED TAPE
SACRAMENTO - Take a deep breath. South Coast Marine Life Protection Act closures that were on track to become the law of the land by early spring appear to be going nowhere fast. The implementation date is anyone's guess, although it appears increasingly likely we'll enjoy fishing our South Coast waters through the end of the year.

Like everything else associated with the four letters MLPA, pinning down the implementation date is complicated and messy.

According to California Fish and Game Commission Deputy Executive Director Adrianna Shea, the regulatory file will likely remain under review for a minimum of 30 days before it is forwarded to the state Office of Administrative Law.

Once it reaches the OAP, that agency will have 30 days for its own review - provided the state's dismal economic condition and Friday furloughs don't further slow the process. That eventual occurrence will start yet another 30-day clock, this one at the California Secretary of State's office.

Those adept at simple arithmetic can calculate the earliest potential closure date. It's somewhere in late May. But not so fast - that's the beginning of ocean fishing prime time. Shea said the commission prefers to avoid mid-season closures.

That explains Shea’s February 17 testimony before the Joint Legislative Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture chaired by Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro of Arcata . There, she cited a likely January 1, 2012 implementation date. Today, she said it could be pushed back further to March 1 if a California Lobster and Trap Fish Association request is approved. A closure in the midst of lobster season would cause havoc.

In other MLPA news, Ted Reckas of the Laguna Beach Independent uncovered the private funding that fueled the MLPA's reincarnation. His investigative story, published February 11, details $20 million sourced from environmental groups and managed by the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation. The sums and sources Reckas revealed:

Packard Foundation, $8.2 million
Marisla Foundation, $3 million
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, $7.4 million
Keith Campbell Foundation, $1.2 million
Annenberg Foundation, $200,000

Given the outcome that's left most anglers enraged, and recently uncovered documents that show the MLPA South Coast Blue Ribbon Task Force frequently conducted its work in cozy, secret meetings, that $20 million in private funding bought tremendous influence. Remember, MLPA Initiative staff funded directly by the RLFF oversaw the planning process down to the finest detail, including manipulating (MLPAI staffers called it facilitating) the Regional Stakeholder Group.
Posted By Bradley On 02/22/2011 At 5:17 PM Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)