No Legislative Control of Private MLPA Initiative Process

No Legislative Control of Private MLPA Initiative Process

by John Lewallen, Mendocino Sea Vegetable Company, Philo, CA

A few days ago I heard Assemblyman Wes Chesbro explain to Paul Hansen on KZYX news that the California State Legislature has no oversight whatever over the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAI) process. Chesbro said the legislature lost effective oversight with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) involving the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation and the State Natural Resources Agency. This MOU privatized the process of setting up new Marine Protected Areas in California’s public ocean waters and intertidal zone, Chesbro said.

Meanwhile, the MLPAI team insists that it is carrying out the will of the California Legislature, as expressed in the Marine Life Protection Act of 1999. The MLPAI team, all employees of the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, use the authority of the legislative mandate to carry out the will of their employers.

The State of California has no funds to review the work of the private MLPAI process. The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation funds the MLPAI process, and can end all funding at any time, for any reason, on forty days’ notice.

Our government has unleashed a consortium of corporations on people who sustainably take food from the ocean and intertidal zone of California. The Legislature keeps avoiding its responsibility to protect us from private interests taking over public fisheries regulation.

I read last week in the Mendocino Beacon that an estimated 29,000 people in Mendocino County live with food insecurity, not sure we can get enough to eat. This is time to support and listen to the wisdom of ocean food providers in the community.

We need leaders as bold as Northern California’s sovereign tribal nations who are demanding government-to-government talks before any changes are made by the MLPAI in sovereign ocean food-gathering which has sustained their peoples and cultures for centuries.