Salmon is the epicenter of the livelihoods of thousands of people in the Pacific Northwest, and therefore contention can come up surrounding the regulation of the fish. Indeed, and come this January a proposal to change how much it will cost to fish will come to a head.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has proposed an initiative called "Washington's Wild Future: A Partnership for Fish and Wildlife" (wdfw.wa.gov/wildfuture) as part of the upcoming 2017-19 Washington state budget cycle. Among the policies, it calls for increasing the commercial fishing license fees. The proposed fees would generate close to $4 million in revenue per year, with $700,000 of that coming from license fee changes. Much of the policies in the initiative were modeled after Oregon and Alaska regulation.
Essentially, the new legislation would increase the commercial license fee for residential fishermen by an average of 17 percent and decrease the non-resident license fee by 3 percent – something the WDFW calls “equalizing” the fees. For example, a Puget Sound Gillnetting Licenses for salmon currently costs $585 for residential commercial fishers and $890 for non-residents. The proposed change would make the fee $750 for residents and non-residents alike. Moreover, a purse seine license for residents is currently $735, non-residents $1190. The fee would be “equalized” at $750.
In addition, all crew members – except family members – would need to purchase a license ($101 annual). A Fish Dealer Licenses, a license needed to broker and process seafood, would go up from $355 to $550. Buyers who procure fish from harvesters would need a Wholesale Fish Buyer’s Endorsement, which would go up from $200 to $275. In addition, commercial fishers who do direct marketing and sales would need to also buy a Limited Fish Seller’s Endorsement ($175) when buying their other licenses.
So as whole the fees are going up for resident fishers, and among those residents, the higher rates and fees stand to hurt smalltime fishing operations the most, businesses like Loki Fish Company of West Seattle.
Pete Knutson, owner and founder of Loki has been gillnetting for salmon in Puget Sound since 1979. Today he and his family offer their products at Seattle farmers markets and specialty stores through direct marketing – one of which is the Ballard Farmers Market. This means Loki would need to purchase all the new licenses in the initiative proposal, which will hurt their bottom line.
Knutson believes the new proposal taxes residential, small operation gillnetters disproportionally and favors large purse seiners and non-residential operations.
He pointed out that according Dock Street Broker’s 2015 assessment of west coast Puget Sound seiners; there are about 80 purse seine permits. As of 2015 Trident Seafoods owned seven of these permits, which are valued at about $200,000 each. Gillnet permits are valued at about $25,000.
“So the department would charge a billion dollar corporation the same permit renewal fee as a small boat fisherman. … Outrageous,” said Knutson.
“Of course, also escalating the cost of being a wholesale fish dealer… discriminates against the small buyers, like Loki that we need in the fishery to encourage innovation and maintain competition. For the big companies, it’s nothing.”
Knutson also believes that the amount of fish taken from the public resource should be proportional to the taxes and fees a fisher pays.
“WDFW permit renewal fees do not recognize proportionality. For example, a resident gillnet permit renewal is $585 whereas a resident purse seine renewal fee is $735. This is grossly disproportionate to the harvest of the two fisheries, since the average purse permit harvests a public resource value five times greater than that of the comparable Puget Sound gillnet permit holder.”
Alaska uses a similar model where commercial fishing permit renewal fees are directly tied to the value of the fishing permit – an indicator of how much seafood is taken from the public pool.
“This is a principle also recognized by the State of Alaska: it yearly readjusts fishery permit renewal fees based upon the relative harvest value of the fishery. … Why should a non-resident, who doesn’t pay in to the state’s general fund as do residents, not be charged extra so they’re not riding on the backs of residents?”
Knutson help draft a formal letter from the Puget Sound Harvesters Association opposing the initiative to the WDFW. They point out that the Department of Ecology Waste Water and Stormwater uses a similar fee structure for businesses.
“Department of Ecology calibrates its fees according to industry size and use. … We are opposed to license fee increases as currently proposed. We believe that users should be assessed in proportion to the benefit, which they receive from harvesting a public resource.”
Knutson is frustrated with other aspects of the commission and its policies too; one being how the commission is geographically represented instead of by population.
The commission was formulated after the passing of Referendum 45 in 1995. It is made up of nine members who serve six-year terms. The governor appoints them, later the senate votes to approve them. Of the nine, three members must reside east of the Cascade Mountains Range, three from the west and three from anywhere in the state but no two members from the same county. The nine counties holding members include Chelan, King, Whatcom, Skagit, Asotin, Okanogan, Kitsap, Spokane and Pacific.
“It’s undemocratic in structure and is non-proportional to population,” Knutson wrote to the Ballard News-Tribune.
Knutson has gone so far as to say that the because of the way the commission is formed, its representation is biased toward the interests of sport fishing.
“It mandated (1995 referendum) a geographical representation system biased against the state’s population centers in Western Washington. Rather than insulate natural resource policy from politics, the commission structure created a new layer of patronage and special interest (sport fishing), further removing public policy from accountability.”
According to WDFW, they held a listening and workshop period from September of 2015 to August of 2016 in locations all over the state, the closest to Seattle being Mill Creek.
Another issue some gillnetters have voiced is that there is no one from their community and business among the commission, and incidentally the initiative has the greatest impact on them. Knutson pointed out in an article he wrote for Cross Cut in 2013 that not a single commercial fisherman nor any representative from the food industry, sits on the nine-member Fish and Wildlife Commission. The fishing and food industry account for 15,000 jobs in the Seattle area alone, according to 2013 study by the Economic Development Council of Seattle and King County and the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County.
Another issue is who’s actually sitting on the commission, especially for King County.
The King County representative is Robert “Bob” Kehoe, an attorney. Kehoe works as Executive Director of the Purse Seine Vessel Owners’ Association. The organization started in 1936 in order to support the interests of Puget Sound purse seiners, however their current agenda extends well beyond the state of Washington. From the PSVOA website: “Today, we represent membership interests along the West Coast and throughout Alaska.”
PSVOA has over 300 member, which includes such industry companies as Trident Seafoods, Ocean Beauty Seafoods LLC, Alaska Glacier Seafoods Inc., Alaska General Seafoods, as well as other interested parties, including Columbia Bank, Banner Bank, Ballard Oil, Ballard Industrial, Fred Wahl Marine Construction, Inc. (Oregon), Hammer & Wikan, Inc. (Alaska), Hoonah Cold Storage (Alaska), Marine Surveyors of Southeast Alaska, Norcoast Marine Surveyors, Inc. (Alaska), Piston & Rudder Service, Inc. (Alaska).
According to the PSVOA website, before becoming the executive director of the PSVOA in 2009, Kehoe was the group’s general counsel and “was responsible for defending legal claims arising out of the three vessel insurance pools managed by PSVOA.” These pools include Seine Vessels Reserve, Bristol Bay Reserve and Southeast Alaska Fishermen’s Alliance Reserve.
Kehoe is also currently a member of the Executive Committee of the United Fishermen of Alaska .
Kehoe was appointed to the commission by Governor Inslee in 2015.
Knutson said that in February of 2015 Kehoe sat in on deliberations with department personnel, which they believe would benefit his group(s) at the expense of the small boat gillnetters. The PSHA wrote a formal letter to the WDFW commission protesting this alleged abuse, and asked Kehoe to recuse himself from deliberations for policies when he may have financial interests, mainly during the North Falcon Process (NFP).
The NFP is an annual meeting where state and federal officials join tribes, representatives from the commercial fishing industries, private fishers and other stakeholders to discuss and negotiate the harvesting season for salmon and allotments.
Public records show Kehoe brought the letter to the attention of the Washington State Executive Ethics Board. They decided it was not a breach of ethics for Kehoe to sit in on the meetings as long as he states his interests, refrains from voting and discussing policies and to not influence other members of the commission to vote in favor of policy that would benefit him.
Kehoe responded with a letter stating he would proceed with attending the NFP as the Executive Director of the PSVOA while also serving as a commission member.
The initiative has been presented to Governor Inslee for consideration for the 2017 budget.
Look to the Ballard News-Tribune as this story develops.
