The companion bill, SB 5884, is out there as well.

http://app.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=5844&year=2015

Please ask your legislators for support.
800.562.6000 Call and leave a message.

If anyone here is a regular reader of the Aberdeen Daily World, would you keep us posted on any letters, or opinion pieces, that support or thwart the passage of HB1660/SB5884. I've used up most of my free visits to their website. I'd be especially interested if Brian Blake responds to the Pike, Irvin, Patterson opinion piece.

In the meantime, I'll check the local library to see if it carries the Aberdeen paper. Thanks.

Why is CCA's legislator of the year not promoting the Senate bill? He isn't a sponsor.
What is Puget Sound Angler's stance on the bill?

Regardless of what any organization says about Sen. Pearson, he is on my suspect list after not confirming Chair Wecker of the F&W Commission last year. Whether Sen. Pearson follows in the footsteps of Blake’s outrageous innuendos, will be seen, and I'm sure dealt with accordingly.

CedarR,

The Daily World's site management is easy to bypass when accessing from a desktop computer. Just click on the "X" in the upper right hand corner of the green "buy a subscription" pop-up as soon as it appears and you will be able to read the story unobstructed. Hope this helped.

Puget Sound Angler's stance?

I have been a volunteer since my service days. I believe it is time to change from the harvest at any cost mindset.

How many legislative politico's do we have on this board? Can someone clarify the fate of this bill?

So OK... Blake blocks this bill from ever being deliberated in the House and it never sees the light of day in that chamber. Does that render it DOA?

Or does sit still have a fighting chance originating in the Senate?

I read this page...

http://leg.wa.gov/legislature/Pages/Overview.aspx

.... and it's still not clear as to whether the Senate bill, if passed, would survive once it "moves" to the opposite chamber (the House). Could Blake's committee hold the Senate bill hostage once it moves to the House?

Here is the process a bill must take using a bill that passed last year.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=5956&year=2013

It goes through both houses. It can get blocked anywhere along the way. It may pass the senate but get hung up in the house. Many bills take multiple years to pass. The one above took two sessions.

Reading that bill history, its clear to me it had to get thru committee in each chamber.

If Blake blocks the bill from ever having a public hearing in his committee, it's pretty much DOA.

That is correct. Pearson could also block the bill by not giving it a hearing.

I still think the biggest reason nothing like this ever passes is that the opposition can legitimately argue that, no matter how the harvest pie is divided (short of closing sport fisheries altogether), the sport fishing dollars will continue to flow. As long as there's opportunity, we buy our licenses, like clockwork. Meanwhile, legislators continue to collect contributions from the commercial lobby. Indeed, we let them have their cake and eat it too.

If we want the status quo to change, we have three options:

1. Stop buying licenses. One year ought to do the trick.
2. Start supporting campaigns.
3. Keep fishing, but also start supporting campaigns.

Any one of those options will have the desired effect. Unfortunately, the second coming of Christ is more likely to occur during our lifetimes than any of those things. If we were organized as one interest and each kicked in $5, we'd probably be able to out-lobby the commercials, but, lest we forget, sport fishers getting organized is the least likely scenario of all.

Yes, my understanding is if passed in the senate chamber it would be assigned to committee in the house chamber, and that committee would be the Natural Resource committee that Rep. Blake is the chair of.
The possible positive outcome could be the press received on the bill subject itself and at the same time letting Blakes constituents in district 19 figure out at next election if he is really representing them or his deep pocketed cronies out of King Co.

From my seat that is not going to happen. Rep Blake represents a rural region as a whole he does a fairly descent job. He is not Sid or Lynn but does his best to help ALL the rural folks. The thing is prior to 09 the locals and commercials tolerated each other to a reasonable degree. After 2010 with the implementation of that management plan ( but not adopted by the Commission ) all hell broke loose starting with the so called Commercial "dip in fishery " So the travelers got nailed in the 2T Rec fishery first followed by in river as the agency ramped up netting to harvest hatchery Chinook. This was followed by the absolute collapse of the natural spawners which were on the ropes to start with.

The thing that I have trouble with most is HSRG was adopted and became law in 2010. The management in the Willapa violated about every directive in HSRG but our former Director pretty much refused to address the issue until legally he was forced to with a court settlement.

So from Rep Blake's view he is looking at a huge mess that the agency created, his constituents did not want and the Commercials ( some of them ) are his constituents also. The thought that the voters of Southern Grays Harbor and Pacific Counties are going to become enraged over this little mess is more than a bit of a reach. It is a fisheries management issue brought on by WDF&W's unbelievably poor choices that now must be rectified and the harvesters both Rec & Commercials will pay the price as the staff that made these decisions move on to the next issue without consequences.

Blake had a very close election in 2010 with more convincing outcomes in the past two elections since then.

Former Sen. Jacobsen with heavy commercial backing who tried to gut the commission as he put it in 2009, rode into the sunset without King Co. falling into the abyss. Most don't miss him if they remember him at all.

I really doubt district 19 would miss Blake either.

I can only hope some other candidate beats him at election time.

Here is the operative thinking from the opinion of Mark Cedargreen in the above editorial link:

Third, I would propose a more sensible alternative to a sport fishing priority policy. I have been party to many endeavors where the allocation combatants have joined together to work toward increasing the size of the “pie” rather that battling over diminishing opportunity. The success of a campaign to produce more resource, which is an attainable goal, is maximized when fishery resource harvesters unite to enhance the resource for everyone as opposed to the strife of an allocation battle. Higher resource abundance tends to dampen debate over who gets to catch it. I’ve always wondered how the outcome of a quest to fully fund fish production, engaged in by those who are usually at odds with each other, would be received by those who control the purse strings. Maybe we’ll never know.

I find it interesting that people seem to forget failed approaches from the past. For instance, this was exactly the approach that was taken after US v. Washington. Instead of actually trying to control harvest as defined by the court, the answer was to "raise the pie" so that the existing sport and commercial non-Indian fishery would remain the same as well as accommodate the new Indian fishery. Raising the pie, in the late 1970's and today simply meant/means increasing hatchery production without concern for impact on natural populations. To make this seem sensible of course, we had to write off a bunch of natural populations based on the fact they they could not, on their own, provide the amount of harvest that we all needed.

It seems to me that we tried Mr. Cedargreen's approach once to get ourselves out of a hole that we dug for ourselves. I don't think we need to try it again.

Thanks for sharing that article.

That seems to be a pretty centrally positioned opinion of what the situation really is. Mark has been there, and done that, and has taken an active role in salmon and other coastal fisheries management over the year. Thoughts?

The Puget Sound Anglers are going to remain neutral on this bill. Some Chapters are for it and some against.

Mark is always well reasoned in his thoughts but one should remember this, much like the previous Director he is part of the fisheries establishment. Additionally one can and many do make the case that as a voting member of PFMC he is part of the problem. PFMC approved the Chehalis Chinook reduced escapement goals that the QIN requested. Not for conservation but rather to facilitate harvest. PFMC like WDF&W is about maximum harvest and particularly ocean intercept harvest. So Mark's thoughts should not be surprising as from PFMC to WA, BC, AK, OR, & Ca it is all about marine harvest which as a charter boat operator is where the driver for him is. Now bay fishers & inriver are the add on for what PFMC has left to fight over. Nothing new here.