CDQ Groups Hand Off Review to State
Tuesday, November 06 2012
The community development quota program was supposed to infuse Western Alaska villages with money from the Bering Sea fisheries. Twenty years after it started, the program’s coming under the microscope for the first time.
All six CDQ groups handed in self-evaluations to the state by Tuesday afternoon. The groups had to judge their success at bringing more jobs and economic opportunities to their member villages.
This review was mandated by Congress in 2006, but it’s been up to the state of Alaska to run it. State commerce liaison Crystal Koeneman says the CDQ reports are now headed to a team of reviewers -- three people from the departments of commerce, labor, and fish and game. They’ll remove any information that’s too sensitive, and then release the rest to the public.
The review panel will make a final call on the success of the CDQ groups in late December. If a group is underperforming, the federal government could cut the fishing quotas.
Shawn Dochtermann on Tuesday, November 13 2012:
So the CDQ groups get to evaluate themselves without an outside group looking in, kind of like letting the foxes tell you it's okay to be in the hen house. Plus the state will remove sensitive information for quotas that really are owned by the public.....this makes no sense if we all own it and they get to use it for their public villages what could be judged sensitive? We the people of Alaska and the US should be able to look at the fully disclosed documents about the financials of every penny of the CDQ groups. Otherwise, the veil that hides the information could be corrupt. Another Ted Stevens cover up of who's getting what out of end run legislative program. Crab Rationalization is no different and the NPFMC and NOAA/NMFS are complicit in no allowing the documents on the financials of all the crab harvest quota holders to be collected which violates MSA and other federal laws. I can prove it too!