[Broad Bill]

The one thing I heard repeatedly from Mike Plaia, Advisory Panel Member who happened to be a complete tool, and select Members from ASMFC, MAFMC and NJ Marine Fisheries is the power is at the Federal level, not the state level. Quotas are set by NMFS, the states are given regulatory options relative to the stock assessment based on data the North East Fisheries Science Center provides.

By the time the original quota is set and options are provided to the states, the states including ASMFC and MAFMC are limited in authority to either choose from those options or propose alternate options that meet conservation equivalency standards. In other words the federal government has the power of setting quotas and the states are limited to choosing regulations in support of those allocations. So in other words the key decisions are made at the federal level and not the state level so whoever the governor ends up being is going to have in my opinion very little impact on the recreational fishing community.

Department of Commerce, NOAA and NMFS is where change needs to occur and I believe if there's ever a chance to protect the spawn, take year round pressure off his fishery especially during winter months or adopt policy changes to address the insane levels of commercial discard waste, those decisions will also need to be made at the federal level. It's possible ASMFC and MAFMC would have more say in closed seasons similar to what is happening with striped bass right now but I still believe the federal government would be required to have final say in decisions of that nature. I don't know how much clout Governors have in the fisheries management process.