Fines of LI fisherman face review

Under intense public and political pressure, the U.S. commerce secretary agreed Wednesday to allow a special master to review stiff fines levied on fishermen and the fishing industry on Long Island and the Northeast by overzealous federal enforcement officers.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke also said his agency would standardize penalties, ending a system under which fishermen in the Northeast were sometimes fined twice as much as violators in other parts of the country.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who had pushed Locke on the issue, said it was "a big victory after a very long campaign."

Schumer said the commerce sub-agency that enforces fisheries law, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "stonewalled us at every step."

The inspector general of the Commerce Department said in a report last year that enforcement agents had abused their power by pursuing excessive charges and fines against fishermen, all but forcing them to settle their cases.

The Commerce Department also said it will do a full audit of the what critics call a "slush fund" of fines paid by the fishing industry that government workers had used to buy cars -- sometimes for personal use -- and finance official trips abroad not normally eligible for reimbursement.

A fish distributor who said he was run out of business by NOAA agents, Warren Kremin of Manhattan's Joseph H. Carter Co., welcomed the new federal review.

"If the review says the fines should stand, I can accept that," Carter, who estimated he paid $1 million in fines and legal fees, said. "At least I will know that it was looked at fairly."

Locke said appeals must be postmarked by May 6 and could be filed by anyone who was penalized between March 17, 1994, and Feb. 3, 2010.

An agency spokesman said later that it could not provide figures on the number of people or companies who would be eligible to appeal, but estimated it would be "in the thousands" nationwide.

A spokesman for Schumer said at least four people had approached them for help, but he expected that number to grow "now that the window has been opened."