Last month, Gov. Paul LePage appointed Patrick Keliher as the new commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, nearly six months after the fiery resignation of the previous commissioner, Norman Olsen. Mr. Keliher’s appointment wasn’t surprising; he’s been deputy commissioner since 2007 and acting commissioner since Mr. Olsen’s July 20th departure, and may represent reassuring continuity after his predecessor’s short and rocky tenure.
But why did Olsen leave, and what, if anything, did his resignation signal about Gov. LePage’s marine policies going forward?
Olsen didn’t go quietly. He issued a statement with his resignation blasting the governor for being “more interested in pacifying special interest groups than in responsibly managing Maine’s marine resources for the benefit of the entire state,” an undertaking he would have no part in. LePage, he said, had barred him from meetings with lobster fishermen, then turned on him at their behest. The governor had allegedly ordered him to cease efforts to help the Portland-based groundfishing fleet because “Portland was against him” and he would “not work with that city.” The results of an embarrassing internal audit of the department had led some Department of Marine Resources (DMR) staff to also attack him, Olsen said, and a gubernatorial aid had ordered him to appease unnamed fishing interests who had complained about his approach.
The governor’s staff, in turn, denied many of the accusations, insisting Olsen had not been cut out of meetings or ordered to abandon Portland; Olsen’s handpicked investigators would continue their DMR audit without interference. The governor hadn’t caved to the lobster industry, although he had warned Olsen he was mishandling relations with key stakeholder groups. “The governor was concerned about the many complaints that his office had received about Olsen, in particular [regarding] his inability to communicate effectively with important constituencies,” spokesperson Adrienne Bennett said. “For a policy maker to be successful, it is not enough to simply create the correct policy, it is necessary to build public support for the policy.”
So what really happened?
This summer, I explored the issue for Down East magazine, interviewing many of the parties involved and reviewing the initial set of documents the administration chose to turn over in response to a public records request. These offered a window into how the LePage administration understands marine issues and suggested Olsen’s departure was largely the result of his having tangled with the most numerous and outspoken of his stakeholders: lobstermen.
Internal memos suggested LePage and his natural resources advisor, Carlisle McLean, knew little to nothing about fisheries and marine issues when they took office. They appear to have spent much of their first months in office learning the basics, querying Olsen and industry officials on such basic facts as where Maine territorial waters end (three miles), and how far out U.S. federal jurisdiction extends (200 miles), or how the lobster fishery is managed (in regional zones). Nonetheless, the governor devoted considerable time to marine issues during the spring and early summer of 2011, and Olsen was allowed to attend most—but not all—of the relevant meetings.
LePage appears to have wanted to be “pro-industry,” but was still learning that, in fisheries, giving one segment of the industry what they want sometimes runs one afoul of another segment. When fishermen began complaining about Olsen’s remarks—particularly his willingness, when questioned, to express support for allowing trawlers to land some lobsters accidentally caught in their nets when over 50 miles from shore—the governor started worrying. “Is Norm moving too fast?” the governor asked McLean in a June 2 memo.
The short answer appears to be yes, at least in regards to issues dear to lobstermen. The Maine Lobster Promotion Council, Olsen had reported in a May 8 memo, was “ineffective” and “a waste of money,” largely because its board is constituted in such a way that ensures most members will have no expertise in seafood marketing and promotion. He proposed reducing the (oversized) shrimp fleet in a manner disadvantageous to seasonal, small-boat shrimpers in eastern Maine, most of whom are lobstermen the rest of the year. Most contentiously, perhaps, was his assertion that children from traditional lobstering families should have no special dibs on obtaining new (and extremely scarce) lobster licenses. “The lobsters are a public resource, so how is it that a select group of people gets to get their kids into a program that slides them right in and everyone else has to wait for someone to die?” Olsen asked me. “It’s a system that’s become hereditary.”
Documents suggest that the vast majority of complaints that reached the governor came from members and associates of the Down East Lobstermen’s Association, and not least because of his opposition to their request to give lobstering families special consideration. “It’s not much different from a family farm, where when the patriarch of the family retires, it gets passed on to the sons, who helped him with harvesting,” DELA executive director Sheila Dassatt said. “Olsen was very strongly against this and didn’t always agree with how much of the lobster industry felt.”
Harassed by angry constituents, Olsen says LePage lashed out at him in meetings in May and June. After being given “a typical gruff scolding about working with Portland,” he sent a memo to McLean asking for the governor to clarify his position on May 28, and the governor’s schedule confirms that their June 27 meeting was “to discuss and get approval for this effort.” The documents released by the governor’s office are silent on what LePage’s orders were—and the governor’s office dodged the question last month when offered a chance to clarify—but Portland mayor Nick Mavodones confirmed that Olsen suddenly dropped out of the picture, after having been active in efforts to assist the groundfishery.
The two sides still have alternate explanations for what this scuffle was about. Olsen told me last month that his efforts did not include allowing trawlers to land lobster bycatch, a policy he says he had to talk the governor out of pursuing immediately; “I cautioned him to take it slowly, because I thought the more education we could give, the better it would all turn out.”
Ms. Bennett says the situation was precisely the opposite. Lobster bycatch was “the issue” Olsen was “working directly on with Portland area stakeholders” and it was, he, not LePage, who wished to move aggressively on the issue. “Governor LePage and Mr. Olsen were lined up on this from a public policy perspective,” she said. “The Governor wished to proceed more cautiously perhaps so as to assure complete input and that all other impediments were addressed first.”
Since writing the Down East piece, I’ve also obtained a few more documents from the governor’s office. These show that LePage did, in fact, refuse to let Olsen attend a meeting he held with the Maine Lobstermen’s Association on July 11. The DMR commissioner had to send e-mails to McLean begging for basic information on the positions the governor may have taken on key policy issues on the agenda, including lobster bycatch and license transferability. “I don’t know why he would prevent the head of the marine resources regulatory agency to sit in on meetings between him and constituents on regulatory matters,” Olsen said.
I’d reported that LePage had squelched Olsen’s plans to reform the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, but Olsen says the governor supported him on this, but that a legislative committee didn’t endorse the required statutory changes in time to act.
The silver lining in the whole affair: the governor has gone on record in support of Portland, and met with Mavodones to smooth things over, and Bennett says Keliher has been actively working with the Portland Fish Exchange and city leaders on groundfish issues. If nothing else, last year’s storm should make the new commissioner’s job a little bit easier.
Colin Woodard is the author of four books including The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier and American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. He can be found in Portland and at colinwoodard.com