Series of "secret" meetings drove MLPA
George Osborn of the Partnership of Sustainable Oceans presented documents to the Fish and Game Commission that proved closures of along the California coastline were designed in a series of meetings closed to the public. He chose the public comment period on the North Coast Marine Life Protection Act Iniitative project at a meeting this past week to present the evidence.

The documents -- retrieved from the Department of Fish and Game thanks to a successful lawsuit filed by Robert Fletcher -- are the basis of another lawsuit that was formally presented to the commission earlier in the day during executive session.

At the promptings of Commissioner Dan Richards, Osborn was able to ennumerate instances noted in the documents that showed the Blue Ribbon Task Force regularly engaged in formal "briefing meetings" in places such as Chairman Don Benninghoven Santa Barbara home and the hotel suite of MLPA Executive Director Ken Wiseman. The meetings ranged from 1 1/2 to 3 hours.

The documents were mainly taken from the e-mail records of Susan Ashcraft, who as a public employee was enjoined to provide documentation required by the first lawsuit. Wiseman and the MLPA I-Team and Science Advisory Team members have been slow to comply, if they have complied at all, yet comments contained in Ashcraft's papers show that the Resource Legacy Fund Foundation and the Science Team often took advantage of the secret meetings to provide direction to the process.

The records also show a "private" 3-hour meeting between the BRTF and Fish and Game Commission members before the public meeting the next day and show that commissioners and officials such as Richard Rogers and then- Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman also frequented the BRTF briefing meetings.

To many observers of what was proclaimed high and wide as "an open and transparent process" it is apparent that no real work of significance was ever done in the public eye by the BRTF and the group just went through the motions to create an image of public process.

Rich Holland's Roundup