I think the one aspect of representative government that upsets citizen voters the most is we elect politicians to represent us wisely — hey, sometimes folks want laws passed that aren’t good ideas, and our politicians must make the final call — but too often they ignore us when we’re in the right because we ain’t got the cash to change their minds.
What? You’re surprised money talks and everything else walks in Raleigh? The founding fathers didn’t set it up that way? Well, yeah.
Take, for instance, two fairly big deals under consideration in the 2009 General Assembly — the redfish/speckled trout gamefish bill (H918) that’s stuck in the House Committee on Aquaculture and Marine Resources, and the proposed changes in game-and-fish regulations being held up by protests to the legislature’s Rules Review Committee.
What’s been the response of our elected/appointed “honorables” to those two problems? From this vantage point, it looks like: “Ignore ’em, and maybe they’ll go away.” Which makes about as much sense as driving off a cliff because you know the fall won’t hurt — but ignoring the landing.
Let’s take the redfish/speckled trout bill first. Even though Rep. Tim Spear (D-Chowan, Dare, Hyde, Washington) indicated that Dean Phillips of the Coastal Fisheries Reform Group wasn’t accurate in saying Spear would hold up the bill, guess what? Spear has held up the bill in his committee. He relented early on and actually held a hearing in which two speakers got three minutes to talk in support of the bill, then a representative of a commercial fisheries group and a Dare County commissioner got three minutes to speak against it. Then, Dr. Louis Daniel of the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries got 15 minutes to explain why his agency can’t manage specks and reds as gamefish.
Reds and specks, strangely enough, already are classified as gamefish by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Committee. If these fish reach inland waters, they can’t be sold. What sense is it to have fish managed by different rules in the same state? What, the Commission’s biologists are more knowledgeable with regards to specks and reds than the DMF’s?
The CFRG has asked Rep. Joe Hackney (D-Orange), the house speaker, and Gov. Beverly Perdue to move the bill out of Spear’s committee to the Finance Committee, where it normally would go for a second hearing. If received favorably, it would go to the house for a full hearing and vote.
We pretty much know why the bill’s being held up — money. Spear, who is from the coast, has a lot of constituents who are commercial fishermen. We also suspect that Marc Basnight (D-Dare), the president pro temp of the state senate, doesn’t want to deal with the issue.
As for the stymied game-and-fish proposals, Joe Deluca, counsel for the legislature’s Rules Review Committee, said the proposed changes — Sunday bow-hunting, using bonus deer tags at military reservations, doing away with the daily bag limit on deer, having an extra week of muzzleloader season and extending the Northwestern gun season to Jan. 1 — could be put into effect this fall as permanent rules. The Commission knows, too, that 40,000 sportsmen commented on the proposals, so public review is finished.
But the Commission is simply ignoring the temporary rule card in its hand, refusing to play it. And once again, sportsmen are being ill-served.
Be the first to comment