Your efforts to get funding included/increased in the disaster relief package are wonderful guys, but always pay attention to the big picture – send comments to your OWN HOUSE MEMBERS first and foremost. Call your own HOUSE member directly when you have an interest in seeing legislation addressed. If you’re NOT in Mr. Frelinghuysen’s district, he probably won’t pay much attention to your request.
Americans need to know that they should feel comfortable calling their own HOUSE members when there is something of interest to them – that’s what we should also be doing with our ongoing group efforts to fix the federal fisheries law as well!!! If you believe that fishing is a RIGHT as opposed to a PRIVILEGE (which can be rescinded or taken away at someone else’s discretion), then remember that you have a MEMBER OF CONGRESS who is there to represent you!
If you’re in Mr. LoBiondo’s district, or Mr. Runyan’s, or Mr. Pallone’s (even Mr. Sires) along the coastal district, your individual phone call always makes an impact. Feel free to email me directly if you need any information about your representative.
Please note that Mr. Pallone has put forth an amendment to H.R. 152 which is being debated right now in the House Rules Committee to increase funding for the federal fisheries disaster specifically for NY & NJ. Mr. Runyan and Mr. Bishop (NY) have also put forth amendments to H.R. 152 to ensure that funding for Sandy with regard to the federal fisheries disaster are included in the final package for NY/NJ.
It's 6:20 p.m. - if you want to watch the rules process, visit
http://rules.house.gov/Legislation/hearings_details.aspx?NewsID=1003
In terms of marinas, tackle shops, for-hire captains and many other recreational fishing business owners, we’re easily talking about ‘uninsurable’ losses resulting from physical and economic damage in excess of the $150 million damage figure originally included in the U.S. Senate legislation for disaster relief - $5 million divvied up between both NY/NJ comms and recs is a slap in the face, for sure (and the whole debate about ‘pork’ in terms of fisheries disasters nationwide was a lot of political grandstanding.)
My (our) thanks to Mr. Pallone for his amendment to increase the fisheries disaster funding to $50 million in his amendment…it’s a small figure, but certainly a better starting point than the figure included by Mr. Frelinghuysen for fisheries. I would also hope that the $150 million in regional ocean partnership grants for coastal states impacted by Hurricane Sandy can also be duly applied to disaster relief along the coast as opposed to any executive order ‘policy’ directives. Hard to imagine $150 million for bureaucracy and just $5 million for affected stakeholders – hope I’m reading that wrong.
PLEASE ALWAYS REMEMBER & DON’T EVER FORGET, get your House member’s phone number in Washington DC and feel free to use it - anytime!!! That's YOUR phone they're using in DC - you own it, you can certainly RING IT!!!!
By the way, for those who were curious, following Katrina, the Magnuson-Stevens Act authorized Congress to pay $17.5 million a year for FIVE years towards the afflicted fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico. It's a different economy and a different Congress for sure, but the precedent is there for our NY/NJ fishermen to hold some type of optimism. 
