Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Saltwater legislation getting fishy
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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The Wild Life blog
As bills make their way through the General Assembly, a nifty Web site allows citizens of the commonwealth to track the progress of the legislation.
A relatively non-controversial bill can make it through the process and end up on the governor's desk in 20 steps or so.
Take House Bill 1283.
The proposal makes it legal for Virginians to keep antlers shed by white-tailed deer. (Yes, it is currently illegal, not that you'd ever end up in court for picking up sheds.)
It took that bill 18 steps to get through the House and the Senate and to Governor Bob McDonnell, who has signed the legislation.
Senate Bill 668 clearly isn't non-controversial.
As of Monday afternoon, the bill had 35 status updates and it's not over yet.
That's probably not a record, but it is for the outdoors-related bills I've been watching for the past decade or so.
The bill addresses an issue with Virginia's saltwater fishing licenses, and how those licenses relate to a new federal registry of saltwater fishermen.
In short -- if that's possible with this jumbled issue -- the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association is looking to get a better handle on saltwater anglers.
In states where the saltwater fishermen fall under a wide license net, that's pretty easy. The feds can reach fishermen for surveys and such through the license database maintained by the state.
But in states such as Virginia, where many saltwater anglers don't need licenses because of exemptions, it's a different issue.
To account for those non-licensed anglers, such as fishermen aboard boats whose owners have a special license that covers everyone in the boat, the NOAA created a national registry, which became mandatory starting this year.
Registration is fairly easy and, at least for this year, free.
But federal officials say that next year they're going to start charging a registration fee of between $15 and $25.
Even if you buy a license, and many saltwater anglers in Virginia already do, you'd also be on the hook for the additional federal fee.
So along came Senate Bill 668, which would eliminate those exemptions and eliminate the need for Virginia anglers to register with the feds and pay that fee.
Yes, it would require some fishermen who currently don't buy licenses to buy licenses. But that $12.50 license would still likely cost less than the federal registration fee.
A no-brainer, right?
Uh, no.
Some of our elected leaders in Richmond aren't happy with the idea of the feds trying to pull this kind of power play.
Hence, an amendment to the bill that basically says Virginia wants to thumb its nose at the feds.
The amendment is a bit wordy so I won't post it verbatim here. (For that, see my Wild Life blog at roanoke.com.)
The gist is that it will put in the hands of buyers of a Virginia saltwater fishing license a written statement that says the federal government "pressured" the General Assembly to remove license exemptions, but the General Assembly declined.
The warning goes on to say that while Virginia law enforcement authorities won't be ticketing offenders who don't have a federal "license," those offenders could get nicked by the Coast Guard or other federal authorities.
The House passed the amended bill by a vote of 81 to 15.
What we're talking about here is a game of chicken between federal authorities and some Virginia legislators.
Except those legislators, unless they are fishermen, aren't the ones who stand to get a hefty fine if the Coast Guard finds them in non-compliance.
There was some grumbling in the Senate when the bill was getting started but the Senate eventually passed it on a vote of 29 to 11.
The vote wasn't as close when the amended bill came back. This time the Senate rejected it soundly,
38-2.
So now the matter goes in front of a conference committee featuring members from both chambers.
They will have to move fast to get this settled in time for decisive action before the General Assembly wraps up on Saturday.
