Patrick, I respect you and think of you as a friend but I work for and have worked in the past for municipal and the state govt. Right now I get paid by three towns and one school district.
The reason we have the fisheries situation we now have is because of mis management, lobbys of the commercial fisheries and political cronieisms.
Your dreaming if you think that a license and it's associated fees will ever fix this mess. I see what the state promises and what it actually does and it's affect on childrens education, thier welfare and the programs that monies from tax revenues go to or have been earmarked for by legislation. Programs and services vital to that cause, once thought to be off limits and at times proposed and forwarded as such, are now fair game for the governor to plunder under emergency executive powers. Bussing, health care and health education, special education, nurses in schools, after school programs for disadvantaged kids and many others once funded by the state have seen huge cuts due to the governor asking for and being given executive emergency powers.
If you think that programs for fisheries management, research and enforcement will be held above all other state and municipal funded programs as untouchable while education and other essential services are felled by the governors budget cutting axe, your being mislead and misleading others into the same train of thought.
I have no other agenda than common sense. I beleive strongly that the marine fisheries of this state need help but to think that the revenue from licenses will remain in the sole possession and purview of the Div of Marine fisheries your wrong.
I live it every day, I deal with notifications weekly of what was supposedly untouchable funding being taken completely away or drastically cut to buoy up the states ailing coffers.
As a lobbyist for this you cerrtainly are going at it with a huge amount of passion. I know how many meetings and such you attend and the places you go and you obviously beleive that your right.
You are right, a license is coming, it's enevitable and politicians will support it, it draws in another segment of thier voting or potential voting constituency, something they all could use come election day.
But mark my words, the day will come when the revenue brought in by this will be attached by the governor by special executive emergency powers and all we will get is a burden of a license with no real enforcement, it will affect all the mom and pop tackle shops whose main business was not the sale of VanStals, custom rods and high end plugs but by the guy who buys a box of seaworms some hooks and simple weights to fish off of a bridge or pier or those who want to take thier kid out on the jetty a couple times while on vacation. A license for saltwater will deter a lot of that and that margin will make or break tackle shops already living on the edge.
I am against it, I am against it being forced down our throats to fund a mis managed state agency with a horrible track record in cod, flounder and other speicies management and most of all a realist after 20 odd years of intimately seeing how the state works and how funding comes and goes.
Clean house at these agencies, get real managers outside of the influence of special interests be it commercial or recreational fisherman, set new regualtions and have them enforced outside of the 9 to 5 workday.
It stinks, period.
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