The Marine Resources Committee of the Maine legislature is not considered to be a powerful committee, in the sense that the Appropriations Committee, with its authority over expenditures, is powerful. But to its members and the people they represent — fishermen and others involved with Maine’s working waterfronts — Marine Resources is the most important and powerful committee of all, dealing with the complexity of Maine’s many marine resources and the complicated scientific, management and sociological issues that affect fishermen.
Despite this, six of the 13 members on this session’s Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resources have no background in fisheries at all, in part due to term limits. However, those lacking experience appear to compensate with passion and enthusiasm.
“More and more we are seeing how term limits hurt what we can accomplish in the legislature. This year, we invited committee members to the Fishermen’s Forum so that they could become acquainted with fisheries issues,” said committee co-chair Rep. Leila Percy (D-Phippsburg). “We even invited the committee members to the International Boston Seafood Show” held in Boston, March 12-15.
“It was eye-opening. We learned how important marketing is,” said Percy. An entertainer and former public school teacher, Percy was one of those who knew little about fisheries when she joined the committee last session. She made it her business to learn everything she could, since “around 60 percent of my constituents are involved with fisheries, boatbuilding, trap building or something marine related.”
This session, she co-chairs the committee with Senator Dennis Damon of Hancock County, a fourth generation fisherman, teacher, coach, small business owner and municipal office holder. As a fisherman, Damon harvested lobsters, clams and went dragging for groundfish and shrimp. As a teacher, Damon once developed and taught a course called The Maine Fisherman.
“My whole family are fishermen — my brothers, my grandfather, my great-grandfather,” said Damon, explaining why he chose to join the committee. “I felt I might have a handle on fishing and its importance to the community.”
Also, Damon was appointed in 2003 as one of Maine’s three representatives to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a body that manages many fisheries including Maine lobster. Rep. Jeff Kaelin (R-Winterport) and Rep. Harold Ian Emery, (R-Cutler), also have fishing backgrounds. Emery is an urchin harvester. Kaelin is a former fisherman who also served as a staff member in Washington, D.C. for U.S. Sen. William Cohen and the U.S. House of Representatives’ Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, then served as the Executive Director of the Maine Sardine Council from 1986 to 2000.
Last session, the committee’s work led to the creation of a task force on aquaculture’s role in the state, which came up with landmark recommendations to the Legislature for future handling of fish farming issues. The committee’s work also established two projects to test a bay management approach to fisheries.
Issues currently facing the committee include changing the season for recreational scallop diving and urchin management. This session, the committee won’t limit its purview to direct fisheries issues. Members are faced with the encroachment of other major state problems on fishermen, namely high coastal taxes and the high cost of coastal property, both of which threaten to drive fishermen from their homes and fishing businesses from the docks.
Fishermen are fortunate that dealing with property tax inequities is “one of my passions,” said Percy. And Damon was a member of a short-lived joint committee on tax reform.
Similar issues affect Maine’s family farms, so the Marine Resources Committee, in an unprecedented move, held a joint meeting March 21 with the Joint Standing Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry to discuss a potential bond issue that would provide funding to help the fishing and farming communities. “People in rural working industries don’t have a large voice, because they’re always off working,” said Percy, who dubbed the bond “surf and turf.”
“We’re seeing a crossover now, between farmers and fishermen, that’s building momentum… if a number of people all come together and try, we may protect working waterfronts, farms, accomplish property tax reform… it’s a real effort,” she said.
Maine’s legislators usually serve on two committees, which often meet at the same time. At this first meeting between Marine Resources and Agriculture, several members were absent because their other committees also were meeting. Sen. Mary Black Andrews (R-York District 1), a retired nurse, said she didn’t seek the committee, she was “put on it. But it impacts our area. We’re losing our waterfront.”
Black Andrews and Sen. Nancy Sullivan, (D-York), from opposite sides of the aisle and opposite ends of York County, often agree on issues that affect their working constituents. “The split is more often Downeast and Southern Maine than Republican and Democrat,” said Sullivan. “Biddeford Pool was once a quiet little fishing village, now there’s not one fisherman living in Biddeford Pool… everything there is being bought up for trophy homes.”
The proposed bond would help fishermen and farmers buy land quickly, to save it from being developed away from its traditional use. The original proposal called for $30 million, reduced to $20 million, with $12 million earmarked for coastal purchases. Former lawmaker and Marine Resources committee member David Etnier, now Deputy Commissioner of Marine Resources, answered committee questions, concentrating on the bond feature that would pay the seller for half the difference between the actual value and the appraised development value. Buyers would have to match the money.
Etnier said the Department of Marine Resources would prefer a smaller amount in the bond to start, in order “to do the program right” rather than return two years later to report the funds had not been expended.
Percy recalled a wharf in Boothbay that came up for sale last year with a price tag of more than $800,000. “The owner gave fishermen six weeks to buy it. They came within $150,000. They could have saved it if we had had the money then to buy it.”
With only 25 miles of Maine’s coastline public and costs rising exponentially — some of the wharves currently for sale are priced up to $8 million — several committee members termed the situation “a crisis” that needs to be dealt with immediately. But in the end, the two committees voted along party lines. Members unanimously supported the bond in concept, but eight Democrats voted for the $20 million figure and seven Republicans voted against it, supporting a zero dollar amount.