spectr17
12-23-2002, 12:34 AM
New Jersey is considering tax on saltwater fishermen
KIRK MOORE, Asbury Park Press
12/22/02
Long after the last beach umbrella is furled and the shutters rattle down on boardwalk shops, the fishermen are still out there.
Anglers plunk down $55 each to sail from Manasquan Inlet and spend 14 chilling December hours at sea, to take home a cooler full of blackfish and black sea bass reeled up from offshore shipwrecks. From Sandy Hook to Cape May, striped bass are the quarry for fishermen who prowl the beaches and ride small boats in churning rip currents, hoping for one last trophy.
All told, it's estimated recreational fishing each year contributes nearly $50 million in state taxes and $1.5 billion to New Jersey's economy.
Now, for the first time in a quarter century, recreational saltwater fishermen could be targeted with a license tax to help state government expand its budget. Even as the McGreevey administration wrestles with declining tax revenues and criticism over state spending, there is an ambitious idea afoot in Trenton to use new license money to more than double the size of New Jersey's marine fishing research and regulatory work force.
A nationally recognized research firm estimates a saltwater license for residents would cost $20.25 for residents and $31.50 for non-residents, based on what New Jersey charges freshwater anglers.
Advocates for a New Jersey saltwater fishing license say requiring anglers to pay annually for the privilege of wetting a hook could raise around $6 million, boost the state Division of Fish and Wildlife's marine fisheries budget by 170 percent, more than double the size of the agency's staff, fund a surge in ocean fish research -- and, perhaps, give the sport fishing community more political clout in Trenton.
But there's widespread caution, and some outright hostility to licensing on the waterfront. State wildlife officials have yet to offer a concrete proposal with a fee structure, but preliminary discussions have already stirred passions.
Licenses have been required of freshwater fishermen for years, and their fees pay for statewide stocking of streams and ponds with hatchery-raised trout. In saltwater, only clams and other shellfish are permanent residents; almost all finfish are migratory, and managed on a coastwide basis under regional, interstate plans.
"Why should we pay for a resource that is not stocked and maintained by the state? Last time I checked, the ocean hasn't been stocked since God did it the first time," said Tony Bogan at Bogan's Basin marina in Brielle, whose extended family has been prominent in the fishing party boat and charter boat industry for more than 80 years.
The influential Jersey Coast Anglers Association is sticking to its longtime position "that we would oppose a saltwater fishing license unless those funds were dedicated" to be spent only on fisheries work, said Thomas P. Fote, a Dover Township angler and legislative chairman for the statewide association of 75 fishing clubs.
Just a promise from state officials won't be enough, Fote added.
"First we'd need a constitutional amendment" to prevent state lawmakers from dipping into a saltwater license fund and spending it for other purposes, Fote said. On top of that, fishing groups should demand formation of a new commission to govern how that money would be spent, he said.
"This is not going to happen in the immediate future," Fote added. "It's not going to be in this legislative session, I can guarantee you that."
Within the Division of Fish and Wildlife, the Marine Fisheries Administration runs now on $3.5 million a year, which pays for a staff of 44. Division officials say it should have 108 workers, especially more biologists and law enforcement officers, and that would take an additional $5.9 million a year.
Their wish list runs from $215,000 for four new patrol boats, to $850,000 a year to create an accurate statistics program to count how many fish are caught in the state and make that information freely accessible to the public.
Fishermen roaming the beaches at the end of the fall striped bass season expressed mixed feelings about the license idea. While many said they'd like to see more state-funded research, they would hate to see a price put on access to a public resource.
"I'd be upset. I live on the water and I'm out here all the time," said Emil Chaky of Berkeley, as he waited for a striped bass to hit his baited hook in the surf off M Street in Seaside Park.
"It's a cheap sport when you think about it," Chaky said. "You can get out here for less than $100 in gear, and bait is relatively inexpensive."
Anglers and fishing-related businesses already do their share to support government management, said Brian Pasch, a fly-fishing charter captain, who was tending the counter at Betty and Nick's Bait and Tack-le shop in Seaside Park.
"They already get so much from us. If you add up all the 6 per-cent sales tax they get from us, these mom-and-pop shops, the taxes on boat fuel, the excise taxes (on tackle)," Pasch said. "The only way I could ever sup-port it is if it was dedicated to the recreational sector."
Fisherman Dominic Bottigli-ero, who had brought in a pair of stripers that day, agreed with Pasch. "If they put it back into the sector, that would be OK," he said.
But both men added they are skeptical that state officials and legislators could maintain the fiscal discipline to keep license taxes separate from the overall state budget.
"If it goes into the general fund," Pasch said, "I could nev-er, ever agree to that."Old plan dead in the water
The last plan for a state saltwa-ter license died in the mid-1970s in the face of opposition from fishermen. A couple of federal license proposals met the same fate in the 1980s.
The new proposal is a project of Robert McDowell, the outgoing state fish and wildlife director, who is taking the political heat during the last year of his ca-reer in an attempt to leave a bigger state marine fisheries program as his legacy.
At a Nov. 12 meeting in Toms River, McDowell presented a "funding needs assessment" that was prepared in January for members of the state Marine Fisheries Council, a board that reviews and signs off on any changes to fishing policies and regulations.
The Division of Fish and Wild-life calculates that the pursuit of saltwater fish for sport con-tributes $1.5 billion to the state's economy, plus $590 mil-lion from the commercial sea-food industry, after spinoffs in-cluding taxes and economic multiplying factors are ac-counted for. An example of an economic multiplying factor would be a tip a fisherman left at a local restaurant, which was then spent by the waitress somewhere else in the local economy.
By those measures, New Jersey has the fifth-biggest fisheries industry on the Atlantic coast, but ranks near the bottom in state government funding of fisheries work, McDowell told leaders of recreational fishing groups.
In April, a consultant's report prepared for the Northeast As-sociation of Fish and Wildlife Agencies outlined how states from New Jersey to Maine might raise revenue for marine fisheries management, particu-larly through license taxes.
The report, by Southwick Asso-ciates of Fernandina Beach, Fla., showed that recreational fishing is so popular in New Jersey that the state potentially could realize far more revenue with licensing than any of its neighbors -- up $9.15 million a year, assuming a license tax of $20.25 for residents and $31.50 for non-residents.
Southwick, a firm that special-izes in natural resource and outdoor recreation economics, projected license prices for the various states based on what they already charge freshwater anglers. Even with its exten-sive coastline, Maine would place a distant second with about $2.7 million in potential license revenue. Despite its leg-endary Long Island fishing grounds, New York State might raise just $2.57 million, the con-sultants projected.
McDowell publicly floated the notion of a saltwater license in the May 2002 issue of the state Fish and Wildlife Digest, the thrice-a-year compendium of regulations for fishing and hunting. In a column asking "Who Will Pay?" McDowell wrote that New Jersey ranks third among Atlantic states in the economic importance of its recreational fishery.
But the state is 12th out of 14 when it comes to state tax dol-lars appropriated for fisheries management, he added.
"As fisheries research becomes more essential and increasing-ly complex, the cost will go up," McDowell wrote. "Whether rev-enues are generated by fishing license fees or through tax dol-lars, saltwater sport anglers must be willing to pick up a major portion of the tab to pay for marine fisheries research and management."
Fishermen pay
Critics contend fishermen al-ready pay a lot of taxes -- $49.3 million to the state alone in sales and other tax, according to estimates that Southwick prepared for the Division of Fish and Wildlife.
On top of that, fishermen pay federal excise taxes on boat fuel and fishing tackle that in turn is doled out to state fisheries programs, said Ray Bogan, a captain and lawyer for United Boatmen of NY/NJ, a party and charter boat industry group. That's why the state division has undertaken a soft sell of feeling out leaders in the recre-ational community, Bogan said.
"They recognize that if they come out with a salt water li-cense proposal, it will cause even more controversy," Bogan said. Party and charter boat captains "feel there should be truth in advertising," he added. "It's a tax."
Commercial netting and crab-bing licenses, plus licenses re-quired of recreational crabbers who use commercial type traps, bring in $174,000 a year. The remainder of each bureau's funding is made up with annu-al federal grants under cooper-ative state-federal management programs.
Commercial fishing boats land-ed 171 million pounds of sea-food worth $107 million in 2000, according to statistics compiled by the National Marine Fisher-ies Service. By value, around 60 percent of the commercial catch is shellfish, and most of that is surf clams and ocean quahogs, big ocean clams that are the main ingredient in canned clam chowder.
Meanwhile, commercial fisher-men have not yet been ap-proached by state officials about any potential increases in existing commercial taxes or new licenses, said Nils Stolpe of the Garden State Seafood As-sociation, an industry group. Its leaders have not yet dis-cussed or taken a position on the recreational license idea, he said.
Anglers waiting
The New Jersey chapter of the Recreational Fishing Alliance has yet to take a formal stand on the license idea, and the group is waiting to see a con-crete proposal from the state, said Michael Doebley of the al-liance.
Licensing "is a state-by-state is-sue" for the group's anglers, Doebley said. "In some states, you could not pry the license out of their hands," he said. "In other states, they want nothing to do with it."
Doebley, the associate legisla-tive director for the alliance, is a veteran of the successful 2001 recreational campaign to ban industrial menhaden fishing from state waters, a long-sought goal of sport fishing clubs. He doesn't agree with license supporters who say li-censing anglers will give them more clout in Trenton.
"I don't buy into that argument that a license gives you more political power," Doebley said. "Political power comes from getting organized and cam-paigning," he said.
Any licensing will be a hard sell to the skeptical party and charter boat fishing industry, said Tony Bogan.
"Most of the people I have talked to are against it to start," Bogan said. From there, opin-ions diffuse through various factions of the fishing commu-nity, with "the catch-and-re-lease guys, the dedicated surf fishermen" most likely to sup-port a license if they feel as-sured the money will be spent on better management and re-search, Bogan said.
But that selling point is a weak one in Bogan's eyes. New Jer-sey freshwater fishing license taxes support a massive trout hatchery and annual statewide stocking program that puts those fish into streams and ponds. Most saltwater species migrate in and out of state wa-ters, Bogan said.
The allocation of fish between recreational and commercial fishing -- always a touchy mat-ter in the fishing community -- will invariably come into the license debate too. According to estimates based on state and federal data, there are 841,000 recreational anglers in New Jersey and about 1,600 commer-cial fishing enterprises, most of them small, single boat owner-operators.
For example, the annual catch of summer flounder, a popular flatfish also called fluke, is de-marcated at 60 percent for com-mercial fishermen and 40 per-cent for recreational fishermen, under current regu-lations.
Skeptics take that fishery as an example, Doebly said, and ask "why should I pay for 100 per-cent of the research when I'm only getting 40 percent of the resource?"
The fleet of big boats that takes sport fishermen to sea for hire includes some of licensing's more vocal critics.
"We feel the charter boat indus-try would be the least affected," lawyer Ray Bogan said, be-cause proponents of a license have suggested the fleet's cus-tomers could be covered by li-censes issued to captains. But professional captains as a group still oppose licensing "be-cause we are so massively taxed already."
"Is anyone naive enough to think that the recreational fish-erman, who takes at most 50 percent of marine resources, is not going to pay 95 percent of the costs?" Bogan asked. "Don't think for a minute that we won't have a striped bass stamp, that we won't have a fluke stamp."
Bogan said licensing could be the last straw for casual and low-income fishermen, "who have already been disenfran-chised" by minimum size limits and other management rules.
"Now are we going to say, 'Oh yeah, that will be $25 for your license too?' " Bogan asked.
"When I first got involved, a man or woman could go down to the beach and fish, and all they had to worry about was a size limit for striped bass and a minimum size for summer flounder," Fote said.
While those regulations have proliferated, it will be a long time before anglers are ready to accept a license system, Fote said.
"There are all these questions that have to be addressed, and it's going to be a long process," he said.
N.J. Division of Fish and Wild-life: www.njfishandwildlife.com.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: http://www.floridacon-servation.org.
Jersey Coast Anglers Association:http://www.jca.org.
Wallop-Breaux funding history:http://www.restorewildlife.org.
Kirk Moore: (732) 557-5728
KIRK MOORE, Asbury Park Press
12/22/02
Long after the last beach umbrella is furled and the shutters rattle down on boardwalk shops, the fishermen are still out there.
Anglers plunk down $55 each to sail from Manasquan Inlet and spend 14 chilling December hours at sea, to take home a cooler full of blackfish and black sea bass reeled up from offshore shipwrecks. From Sandy Hook to Cape May, striped bass are the quarry for fishermen who prowl the beaches and ride small boats in churning rip currents, hoping for one last trophy.
All told, it's estimated recreational fishing each year contributes nearly $50 million in state taxes and $1.5 billion to New Jersey's economy.
Now, for the first time in a quarter century, recreational saltwater fishermen could be targeted with a license tax to help state government expand its budget. Even as the McGreevey administration wrestles with declining tax revenues and criticism over state spending, there is an ambitious idea afoot in Trenton to use new license money to more than double the size of New Jersey's marine fishing research and regulatory work force.
A nationally recognized research firm estimates a saltwater license for residents would cost $20.25 for residents and $31.50 for non-residents, based on what New Jersey charges freshwater anglers.
Advocates for a New Jersey saltwater fishing license say requiring anglers to pay annually for the privilege of wetting a hook could raise around $6 million, boost the state Division of Fish and Wildlife's marine fisheries budget by 170 percent, more than double the size of the agency's staff, fund a surge in ocean fish research -- and, perhaps, give the sport fishing community more political clout in Trenton.
But there's widespread caution, and some outright hostility to licensing on the waterfront. State wildlife officials have yet to offer a concrete proposal with a fee structure, but preliminary discussions have already stirred passions.
Licenses have been required of freshwater fishermen for years, and their fees pay for statewide stocking of streams and ponds with hatchery-raised trout. In saltwater, only clams and other shellfish are permanent residents; almost all finfish are migratory, and managed on a coastwide basis under regional, interstate plans.
"Why should we pay for a resource that is not stocked and maintained by the state? Last time I checked, the ocean hasn't been stocked since God did it the first time," said Tony Bogan at Bogan's Basin marina in Brielle, whose extended family has been prominent in the fishing party boat and charter boat industry for more than 80 years.
The influential Jersey Coast Anglers Association is sticking to its longtime position "that we would oppose a saltwater fishing license unless those funds were dedicated" to be spent only on fisheries work, said Thomas P. Fote, a Dover Township angler and legislative chairman for the statewide association of 75 fishing clubs.
Just a promise from state officials won't be enough, Fote added.
"First we'd need a constitutional amendment" to prevent state lawmakers from dipping into a saltwater license fund and spending it for other purposes, Fote said. On top of that, fishing groups should demand formation of a new commission to govern how that money would be spent, he said.
"This is not going to happen in the immediate future," Fote added. "It's not going to be in this legislative session, I can guarantee you that."
Within the Division of Fish and Wildlife, the Marine Fisheries Administration runs now on $3.5 million a year, which pays for a staff of 44. Division officials say it should have 108 workers, especially more biologists and law enforcement officers, and that would take an additional $5.9 million a year.
Their wish list runs from $215,000 for four new patrol boats, to $850,000 a year to create an accurate statistics program to count how many fish are caught in the state and make that information freely accessible to the public.
Fishermen roaming the beaches at the end of the fall striped bass season expressed mixed feelings about the license idea. While many said they'd like to see more state-funded research, they would hate to see a price put on access to a public resource.
"I'd be upset. I live on the water and I'm out here all the time," said Emil Chaky of Berkeley, as he waited for a striped bass to hit his baited hook in the surf off M Street in Seaside Park.
"It's a cheap sport when you think about it," Chaky said. "You can get out here for less than $100 in gear, and bait is relatively inexpensive."
Anglers and fishing-related businesses already do their share to support government management, said Brian Pasch, a fly-fishing charter captain, who was tending the counter at Betty and Nick's Bait and Tack-le shop in Seaside Park.
"They already get so much from us. If you add up all the 6 per-cent sales tax they get from us, these mom-and-pop shops, the taxes on boat fuel, the excise taxes (on tackle)," Pasch said. "The only way I could ever sup-port it is if it was dedicated to the recreational sector."
Fisherman Dominic Bottigli-ero, who had brought in a pair of stripers that day, agreed with Pasch. "If they put it back into the sector, that would be OK," he said.
But both men added they are skeptical that state officials and legislators could maintain the fiscal discipline to keep license taxes separate from the overall state budget.
"If it goes into the general fund," Pasch said, "I could nev-er, ever agree to that."Old plan dead in the water
The last plan for a state saltwa-ter license died in the mid-1970s in the face of opposition from fishermen. A couple of federal license proposals met the same fate in the 1980s.
The new proposal is a project of Robert McDowell, the outgoing state fish and wildlife director, who is taking the political heat during the last year of his ca-reer in an attempt to leave a bigger state marine fisheries program as his legacy.
At a Nov. 12 meeting in Toms River, McDowell presented a "funding needs assessment" that was prepared in January for members of the state Marine Fisheries Council, a board that reviews and signs off on any changes to fishing policies and regulations.
The Division of Fish and Wild-life calculates that the pursuit of saltwater fish for sport con-tributes $1.5 billion to the state's economy, plus $590 mil-lion from the commercial sea-food industry, after spinoffs in-cluding taxes and economic multiplying factors are ac-counted for. An example of an economic multiplying factor would be a tip a fisherman left at a local restaurant, which was then spent by the waitress somewhere else in the local economy.
By those measures, New Jersey has the fifth-biggest fisheries industry on the Atlantic coast, but ranks near the bottom in state government funding of fisheries work, McDowell told leaders of recreational fishing groups.
In April, a consultant's report prepared for the Northeast As-sociation of Fish and Wildlife Agencies outlined how states from New Jersey to Maine might raise revenue for marine fisheries management, particu-larly through license taxes.
The report, by Southwick Asso-ciates of Fernandina Beach, Fla., showed that recreational fishing is so popular in New Jersey that the state potentially could realize far more revenue with licensing than any of its neighbors -- up $9.15 million a year, assuming a license tax of $20.25 for residents and $31.50 for non-residents.
Southwick, a firm that special-izes in natural resource and outdoor recreation economics, projected license prices for the various states based on what they already charge freshwater anglers. Even with its exten-sive coastline, Maine would place a distant second with about $2.7 million in potential license revenue. Despite its leg-endary Long Island fishing grounds, New York State might raise just $2.57 million, the con-sultants projected.
McDowell publicly floated the notion of a saltwater license in the May 2002 issue of the state Fish and Wildlife Digest, the thrice-a-year compendium of regulations for fishing and hunting. In a column asking "Who Will Pay?" McDowell wrote that New Jersey ranks third among Atlantic states in the economic importance of its recreational fishery.
But the state is 12th out of 14 when it comes to state tax dol-lars appropriated for fisheries management, he added.
"As fisheries research becomes more essential and increasing-ly complex, the cost will go up," McDowell wrote. "Whether rev-enues are generated by fishing license fees or through tax dol-lars, saltwater sport anglers must be willing to pick up a major portion of the tab to pay for marine fisheries research and management."
Fishermen pay
Critics contend fishermen al-ready pay a lot of taxes -- $49.3 million to the state alone in sales and other tax, according to estimates that Southwick prepared for the Division of Fish and Wildlife.
On top of that, fishermen pay federal excise taxes on boat fuel and fishing tackle that in turn is doled out to state fisheries programs, said Ray Bogan, a captain and lawyer for United Boatmen of NY/NJ, a party and charter boat industry group. That's why the state division has undertaken a soft sell of feeling out leaders in the recre-ational community, Bogan said.
"They recognize that if they come out with a salt water li-cense proposal, it will cause even more controversy," Bogan said. Party and charter boat captains "feel there should be truth in advertising," he added. "It's a tax."
Commercial netting and crab-bing licenses, plus licenses re-quired of recreational crabbers who use commercial type traps, bring in $174,000 a year. The remainder of each bureau's funding is made up with annu-al federal grants under cooper-ative state-federal management programs.
Commercial fishing boats land-ed 171 million pounds of sea-food worth $107 million in 2000, according to statistics compiled by the National Marine Fisher-ies Service. By value, around 60 percent of the commercial catch is shellfish, and most of that is surf clams and ocean quahogs, big ocean clams that are the main ingredient in canned clam chowder.
Meanwhile, commercial fisher-men have not yet been ap-proached by state officials about any potential increases in existing commercial taxes or new licenses, said Nils Stolpe of the Garden State Seafood As-sociation, an industry group. Its leaders have not yet dis-cussed or taken a position on the recreational license idea, he said.
Anglers waiting
The New Jersey chapter of the Recreational Fishing Alliance has yet to take a formal stand on the license idea, and the group is waiting to see a con-crete proposal from the state, said Michael Doebley of the al-liance.
Licensing "is a state-by-state is-sue" for the group's anglers, Doebley said. "In some states, you could not pry the license out of their hands," he said. "In other states, they want nothing to do with it."
Doebley, the associate legisla-tive director for the alliance, is a veteran of the successful 2001 recreational campaign to ban industrial menhaden fishing from state waters, a long-sought goal of sport fishing clubs. He doesn't agree with license supporters who say li-censing anglers will give them more clout in Trenton.
"I don't buy into that argument that a license gives you more political power," Doebley said. "Political power comes from getting organized and cam-paigning," he said.
Any licensing will be a hard sell to the skeptical party and charter boat fishing industry, said Tony Bogan.
"Most of the people I have talked to are against it to start," Bogan said. From there, opin-ions diffuse through various factions of the fishing commu-nity, with "the catch-and-re-lease guys, the dedicated surf fishermen" most likely to sup-port a license if they feel as-sured the money will be spent on better management and re-search, Bogan said.
But that selling point is a weak one in Bogan's eyes. New Jer-sey freshwater fishing license taxes support a massive trout hatchery and annual statewide stocking program that puts those fish into streams and ponds. Most saltwater species migrate in and out of state wa-ters, Bogan said.
The allocation of fish between recreational and commercial fishing -- always a touchy mat-ter in the fishing community -- will invariably come into the license debate too. According to estimates based on state and federal data, there are 841,000 recreational anglers in New Jersey and about 1,600 commer-cial fishing enterprises, most of them small, single boat owner-operators.
For example, the annual catch of summer flounder, a popular flatfish also called fluke, is de-marcated at 60 percent for com-mercial fishermen and 40 per-cent for recreational fishermen, under current regu-lations.
Skeptics take that fishery as an example, Doebly said, and ask "why should I pay for 100 per-cent of the research when I'm only getting 40 percent of the resource?"
The fleet of big boats that takes sport fishermen to sea for hire includes some of licensing's more vocal critics.
"We feel the charter boat indus-try would be the least affected," lawyer Ray Bogan said, be-cause proponents of a license have suggested the fleet's cus-tomers could be covered by li-censes issued to captains. But professional captains as a group still oppose licensing "be-cause we are so massively taxed already."
"Is anyone naive enough to think that the recreational fish-erman, who takes at most 50 percent of marine resources, is not going to pay 95 percent of the costs?" Bogan asked. "Don't think for a minute that we won't have a striped bass stamp, that we won't have a fluke stamp."
Bogan said licensing could be the last straw for casual and low-income fishermen, "who have already been disenfran-chised" by minimum size limits and other management rules.
"Now are we going to say, 'Oh yeah, that will be $25 for your license too?' " Bogan asked.
"When I first got involved, a man or woman could go down to the beach and fish, and all they had to worry about was a size limit for striped bass and a minimum size for summer flounder," Fote said.
While those regulations have proliferated, it will be a long time before anglers are ready to accept a license system, Fote said.
"There are all these questions that have to be addressed, and it's going to be a long process," he said.
N.J. Division of Fish and Wild-life: www.njfishandwildlife.com.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: http://www.floridacon-servation.org.
Jersey Coast Anglers Association:http://www.jca.org.
Wallop-Breaux funding history:http://www.restorewildlife.org.
Kirk Moore: (732) 557-5728