Mr. Wise informed the Council that current laws governing eligibility for commercial foodfish, lobster, and crab licenses sunset on 31 Demember 2003. The State Legislature will deal with this issue in the 2003 session; any recommendations of the Council on this subject need to be given to the DEC/Legislature in the Fall of 2002.

Mr. Colvin reminded the Council that, after the commercial license moratorium was first imposed by the Legislature a number of years ago, a joint task force was established involving DEC staff and number of Councilors to prepare short-term and long-term recommendations on issues associated with commercial licensing. These recommendations were then reviewed and accepted by the full Council, which forwarded them to DEC. The Department then submitted a program bill to the Legislature that adopted most of these recommendations. A similar process was followed in the revision/renewal of these laws three years later.

The Council decided to follow the same approach in developing recommendations to DEC and the Legislature for renewal/revision of these commercial licensing laws for 2004. DEC will distribute the original DEC/Council commercial licensing report to the Council as a point of reference and departure for its upcoming discussion. The following Councilors volunteered to serve on the joint Council/DEC commercial licensing eligibility work group: John Davi; Joe McBride; T.J. Jordan; Dean Yaxa; Bill Wise. At its 19 March 2002 meeting, the full Council will discuss commercial licensing laws for the purpose of identifying for the work group the specific issues that the group should address in its report and the rough timetable it should follow.