Cuomo hits hold button on commercial fishing license reform plan
By Mark Harrington[email protected] @MHarringtonNews Updated August 29, 2019 3:39 PM
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday said the state would “hit the pause button” on a planned overhaul of the commercial fishing licensing system, saying regulators need more information and input to get it right.
The state two years ago hired an outside expert to review the system for issuing commercial fishing permits and come up with a list of recommendations for fixing a system many fishermen criticize as broken. Among the recommendations of consultant George Lapointe was requiring fishermen to show three years of income of $15,000 or more to qualify for their licenses.
Opposition to the recommendation was widespread in hearings last week and when they were first introduced in May.
Cuomo said the state will do more work.
“We're going to hit the pause button here on this because … we need more information,” Cuomo said on a Long Island News Radio with Jay Oliver Thursday.
Cuomo referenced the notion of taking away licenses specifically.
“One of the ideas was to reissue the commercial licenses, basically, from the smaller operators to larger operators,” he said. “In other words, if you didn't have more than $15,000 in income, as a commercial fishing license, you would lose that commercial license so that it would go to someone who could catch more, generating more income. Yeah, but, you're then taking a license from the little guy and giving it to the bigger guys.”
Cuomo added, “My head and heart always are
simpatico to the little guy.”
The state will “have to figure it out, but we have not yet figured it out,” he said. “And that's why until we study this, and we understand it, and we have a full public discussion, we're not going to be doing anything. So nothing's going to happen fast; it requires more thought, more discussion.”
That’s a relief to fishermen and state legislators who attended hearings and expressed concerns about taking away licenses.
John German, a commercial fisherman from Brookhaven who fishes out of Mt. Sinai Harbor, said he welcomed Cuomo decision to put the reform effort on hold. “I think we ought to take a little more time and get it right,” said German, 72, who is president of the Long Island Sound Lobstermen’s Association.
He said he supported the idea of making room in the fishery for younger fishermen, but with a caveat.
“I’d like to see some younger guys get in but not at the expense of the older guys,” he said.
Assemb. Fred Thiele (I-Sag Harbor), whose longtime work on fishing issues led to the plan for reform, said he agreed with Cuomo that the proposal to make income a requirement for keeping licenses was “problematic.”
“In general, I favor utilizing a carrot not a stick to reduce latent licenses,” Thiele said, referring to licenses that are long held but not actively used. The state found that around a third of the 950 food-fish licenses issued in the state are not actively fished.
Thiele said he’d rather see “incentives to surrender a license … a rule that takes the license away.”
Thiele suggested a license buyback program by the state, something Lapointe said he left out because there was no identified funding for it.
“The issue is how to pay for it,” Thiele said, adding that he’s floated the idea that offshore wind companies subsidize it as “part of the cost of doing business” in the state.
Cuomo in his radio remarks also said the state won’t regulate its way to reform, but rather through legislation.
“I want to go through the legislative process, and really understand this, because it will affect people's lives, he said. " … a lot of these commercial licenses have been in the family for decades, and they basically get passed down through the generations.”
