Your Director is selling the Management plan, and has his legal man, Mike Grossman to give reasons why thy negotiations needed to be secret! He says that the court mandated that the mediations be confidential. He stressed that it is "GOOD" that these agreements were reached in secret!

Larry Carpenter, Deputy Director of the Commission, just BLASTED Director Unsworth on the lack of transparency during the construction of the Mangt. Plan. The Commission had near NO knowledge of the negotiations and details! Thank you Commissioner Carpenter for stating the obvious, that the Director is out of control!

Unsworth needs to go!!!

Email Mike Grossman, have him send where "court mandated be confidential" is found....... If he refuses then a PDR needs to be started. WDFW hides behind "no open to the public meetings" on anything to do with tribal and WDFW meetings.

Some on here know that there is mitigation for salmon and steelhead on the Wynoochee River. There is a fund that has $2.4+ million to cover costs. THIS FUND IS ABOUT 25 YEARS OLD, and still not 1 fish has been raised from these funds. There are people, sportsmen, that have tried to get answers as to the problems between WDFW and QIN but we aren't allow to attend any meetings.

So you know, myself and others have made presentations at Commission meetings........Commission said "tried of hearing about this Wynoochee mitigation get it done", still not done and we(sportsmen) don't know why...cause we can't attend, get minutes, get anything from the parties.

Now WDFW has gone into hiding, more so than past years.....many times won't even answer Emails......grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I'm done with this Wynoochee mitigation battle.....to old to fight the fight, anymore.

Perfect. Out of over 25 only three people spoke anything at all about transparency and secret meetings running our fisheries.

Soooo many more spoke about the Heavens sake wildlife rehab program.

So, unless we see a great increase in people coming forward this evening and tomorrow, it is pretty clear that nobody cares enough to come out from behind the keyboard and make a difference.

Are you trying to make enemies out of people who should/could be your allies? Because that's a really stupid way to go about drumming up support for the cause.

Yes, for heaven's sake.....way, way too much drivel about Heaven's Sake Wildlife - but that is another story.

Commission was way behind schedule so they cancelled the additional input on crab. With the information provided by the AG's representative further explaining the Chinook Management Plan most of my questions were answered. However, that did not eliminate my concerns about details of the plan.

The Plan was actually touted by the AG rep as an improvement to NOF as it now has judicial oversight. We'll see on that.

What was of interest was Commissioner Carpenter taking strong exception to the Department having not included the Commission in the development of the Plan. Since most of my prepared comments were OBE by that time I focused on supporting Commissioner Carpenter's comments and opining that the Commission (my Commission and your Commission) was established by Initiative with a primary duty of developing policy. By not including the Commission in development of the Plan (essentially policy as it covers 10 years) the Department essentially undermined the Commission's role and responsibilities and marginalized its stakeholders.

I was able to finish up within my 3 minutes by saying that even if the Plan provides for a better NOF process it does not eliminate the need to make the NOF process a public process - even if that is limited to a live feed.

Hope more folks are able to attend and offer their comments on this very important (critical) issue. And if you aren't able to attend in person send the Commission your thoughts: commission@dfw.wa.gov.

Again, thanks Larry B for your strong comments. I am at the Commission meeting now, and will be here to close today, and Tomorrow. If you can make it, make it! We have momentum like no other time. The departments exclusion of the Commission was a blunder. We can affect change. We can get these secret meetings ended.

All the Commission has to do is include it into the language of the policy, and then ALL meetings are then covered under the Open Meetings Act.

Be here tonight (5:00) or tomorrow morning by 7:30, sign in to speak. Follow Larry B's example and BE HEARD!

I will be speaking this evening, and again tomorrow. See you there!

Just watched it on TVW....

https://www.tvw.org/watch/?eventID=2017121022

Cue up 1:20:30 to watch Carpenter's rebuke.

Unsworth's response? Not so much as an acknowledgment of Carpenter's concerns. ZERO... NADA... ZILCH! Just complete DEFLECTION!

"We have two OTHER items on the Directors Report. They're in the written document...." as he went on to stumble on the syntax of the "progress made on the pound-net project" and the Dungeness crab harvest report, calling on two of his managers in the audience to field questions from the public about those issues during the break, and stumbling further on the names of those managers.

Gee? Was it Dan or Bob or Rob or Rod? Whatever!

WEAK, Unsworth.... very WEAK!

Strong testimony LarryB!

Cue it up at 2:01:55, folks.

Thanks (I think....). Maybe those other folks had me working on my outrage.

Not a whole lot of guys here at the Commssion meeting this morning...

This is the chance to put action to words.

Lookin BETTER.....



Every seat in the house taken!

We had some excellent testimony! Thank you to all who were able to attend and who gave such powerful testimony. It is clear that the message was received. It is now in the hands of our Commission to take the necessary action to bring full and open meetings to our fisheries and allow us to again be a fair and equal partner in the conservation and recovery of our salmon.

It will be seen if Director Unsworth will be allowed to continue to disregard the largest group of stewards and the Commission who represents us.

Excellent public turnout covering a range of subjects. It's tough when your personal interests include the NOF transparency issue, proposed regulation simplification, the PS salmon management plan, the Skagit River, and you only have 3 minutes. Having been involved with the Skagit management plan for over 4 years, I had to use this opportunity to help get it over the finish line. Fortunately other speakers are hitting the PS salmon 10-year plan, regulation simplification, and transparency. No one of us can cover it all. Thanks to everyone who could show up.

Fishing rule simplification concerns

Show the panfish on the major east side lakes some love.... do not roll back bag limits

Steelhead conservation... liberalizing rules to harvest "trout" is a direct hit to steelhead as resident rainbows are really just steelhead that forgo anadromy, a HUGELY important part of the totality of the mykiss gene pool. Also lots of opposition to roll back mandatory HATCH steel retention


Bass guys OPPOSE elimination of bass limits in flowing waters. Will only add unintended confusion, complexity, and ruin bass fishing as we know it today

Trout caught on bait should count toward bag limit whether kept or released.

Lots of opposition to chumming lakes

Here it is LIVE....

https://www.tvw.org/watch/?eventID=2017121025

Here is the link to Grossman's explanation why mediation was placed in confidentially: [url=www.tvw.org/watch/?clientID=9375922947&eventID=2017121022&eventID=2017121022&startStreamAt=3746&autoStartStream=true]www.tvw.org/watch/?clientID=9375922947&a...tartStream=true[/url]

Seems to mean the judge ordered mediation, and I guess at that time the State gets to decide if it want to go forward under court ordered mediation or not. Doesn't mean they have too, but I also don't know who runs the show, the State Attorney General, who is a statewide elected official, the governor, who is a statewide attorney general, or the Commission, who are appointed by the governor. If the SAG runs the decision to enter in the mediation or not, then yes, the question should be directed at them. But essentially the way I understand it explained here in this clip is that its sealed to the court until the final outcome is released. The simple question is who had the authority, and then who made the decision to enter into that type of negotiation going forward for the state of WA....

Let's assume that we had a judge who made a good decision. Confidential negotiations between two equal sides should work. But, while we know whose interest the Tribes represented, just whose interest did WDFW support?

WDFW needs to explain WHY this is a good deal for the recs. Or, tell us who they are working for.

This post was edited due to additional information being provided by Mr. Mike Grossman


Mr. Grossman provided me with a very detailed email that was sent due to several questions I asked about the "Confidentiality" of the mediation.

Here’s the text…

(6) Confidentiality. Except as otherwise required by law or agreed by the litigants, or otherwise provided by this rule, all ADR proceedings under this rule, including communications, statements, disclosures and representations made by any party, attorney or other participant in the course of such proceeding, shall, in all respects, be confidential, and shall not be reported, recorded, placed in evidence, disclosed to anyone not a party to the litigation, made known to the trial court or jury, or construed for any purpose as an admission or declaration against interest. No party shall be bound by anything done or said during such proceedings unless a settlement or other agreement is reached.


He added:
"You will immediately observe that confidentiality is mandated, unless the litigants agree otherwise. Now, go back to the motion of the Requesting Parties, above. DOJ and the Tribes were clear they wanted to stick with, and conduct the mediation, in accordance with the normal confidentiality provisions. In other words, because there was no agreement by them to conduct mediation without the normal confidentiality parameter, confidentiality was the default rule. And thus the Court-ordered mediation employed the normal confidentiality rule.

That said, we did manage, by agreement, to loosen confidentiality in one respect. We obtained agreement with the Requesting Parties that communications with NOAA would not be confidential. And we obtained a modification to the court ordered confidentiality making that intention clear…"

It is interesting to note that there was a process to elect to NOT have the mediation be "Confidential" and that they agreed to loosen the confidentiality to include NOAA, but not the Commission.

Kinda makes it look like they intentional wanted to keep the Commission in the dark, huh? Just saying...


Mike Grossman just emailed me and explained that the confidentiality DID NOT restrict Director Unsworth from sharing information with the Commission.

So, since it appears Mike, you or someone is paying attention to the social media blogs, perhaps we can simplify things and have you answer any questions here on out. That way, we get the facts correct! Thanks...

I guess the Attorney General's Office now runs the department. I'm lost in all the rhetoric. Who requested the mediation? I apologize for not being there today. I'm under the weather so to speak.