The Olsen Controversy Back Story

by Sandra Dinsmore

Norman H. Olsen’s unanimous appointment as Maine's Department of Marine Resources [DMR] commissioner back in January seemed propitious. That he had recently concluded an illustrious 25-year career in our country’s Foreign Service, came from a fishing family, and had started out as a lobster fisherman, boded well.

In mid-February, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) wanted to close the shrimp season early because the quota had been met though downeast Maine shrimping had just begun. Olsen voted to extend the season to the 28th, pleasing fishermen. Then, in early March, he spoke at the Fishermen’s Forum.

Fishermen who had been anxious to meet Olsen found themselves in shock when he suggested allowing the incidental lobster caught by draggers fishing more than 50 miles offshore to be landed in Portland or Port Clyde. (On August 3, Olsen stated via e-mail: “The issue has always been limited to incidental bycatch of lobsters caught more than 50 miles offshore, by boats operating the federal vessel monitoring system, which allows minute-to-minute monitoring of vessel location, abiding by the federal count limit on numbers per day and per trip, and abiding by Maine size limits, and landing them only at the Portland Fish Pier. And the boats would have to declare on the way out their intention to not fish within 50 miles and to take lobster bycatch, as well as to declare on the way in that they are carrying lobster and are steaming directly for Portland.”)

He explained further, “Landing at the Portland Fish Pier was to ensure that we kept tight control over landings. The vessels that would be fishing in those offshore waters would be landing at Portland because it’s the only port capable of handling both that size of vessel and the volumes of fish that they would catch. Any dragger caught anyplace else with lobsters on board would have been in violation.”

“It caused a terrible uproar,” Down East Lobstermen's Association [DELA] Executive Director Sheila Dassatt said of Olsen’s plan. “We fought that issue so adamantly.” When asked why there had been such strong reaction, Dassatt and other lobster fishermen who had been present said fishermen fear allowing draggers to get a foot in the door. Speaking for DELA members, Dassatt later explained, “The Maine lobstermen feel that by allowing the landing of the dragged by-catch lobsters, it could be the first step toward heading that way legally in the future. We understood that Norm had a big interest in trying to save the Portland Fish Exchange. With the landings that he (was) referring to, he said that it would create jobs at the Portland waterfront. We don’t have anything against Portland, but we went through all of these issues in 2007 with the LD 170 hearing.” (LD 170 was a bill to allow the landing of lobster by means other than conventional trap.)

Dassatt said she and other DELA officers met with Olsen right after his presentation and the two hours of Q & A that followed to explain how their members feel about draggers.

“He came in very upset because the fishermen were upset with him,” Dassatt said, adding that the DELA officers told him their members are “adamantly opposed” to the landing of drag-caught lobster in Maine.

“When we told him that dragged lobster had been banned in Maine since 1961,” she said, “He said he didn’t know that, and we felt he had a lot to learn about Maine since he had been gone.”

But mostly, those present seemed surprised at Olsen’s demeanor, his manner. Lemieux, who had been on the hiring committee, said Olsen talked about being very good at solving confrontational problems and dealing with large numbers of people. But, Lemieux said, “I didn’t see that at all. He would build a wall—If there was an issue he was interested in, like the drag-caught lobsters, it didn’t matter that you would give him all these points. ... In a sense,” he said, Olsen, “closed off, and he was adamant that was what he wanted.” Lemieux said fishermen were against the issues Olsen was for: landing drag-caught lobster, transferable lobster licenses, and landing shrimp at Portland only.

Some fishermen felt things went downhill from then on. Not long after the Forum, Dassatt said a Hancock County member called the DELA because of the way Olsen felt about drag-caught lobster. “He upset (the fishermen) with his attitude,” she said. “He has a way about him, that they just didn’t care for the way he was carrying.” The fisherman told Dassatt he and several others got together and wrote Governor LePage, listing those three major concerns.

“We didn’t ask him to fire the guy,” said Brooklin fisherman and boat-builder Wade Dow, one of those involved. And then Dow explained the letter was the result of, “A collection of a lot of different conversations with a different bunch of us. It was a summary of a lot of concerns.”

The fishermen made several copies of the letter, Dow said, explaining, “We sent them down east. We sent one to Stonington. A lot of these went out to lobster places and fish stores, and some of the guys downeast took them around door to door. There were several (copies), and they all came back, and the boys took them up to Augusta.” Asked how many signed it, Dow said, “Probably in excess of a hundred.”

The letter was dated March 16. A month later, on April 22, LePage wrote Olsen a hand-written note asking him to review the fishermen’s three concerns and provide him with talking points, “So I may answer the concerns from the administration’s standpoint.” (LePage's press secretary, Adrienne Bennett, sent several documents from LePage to Olsen, including memos and 25 of the signed letters from fishermen. One noted he’d fished 40 years, another, 47.)

In May, when Olsen came to Stonington for a “meet and greet,“ like Dassatt and Lemieux, Stonington Town Manager Kathleen Billings-Pezaris said she ran into that same kind of “wall” when she tried to find out if Olsen planned to keep the four Area Biologists who cover the state for the Municipal Shellfish Program, noting the biologist who had covered southern Maine had retired. She said, “Mr. Olsen would not answer my question. He said, ‘You’re not hearing me. I’m going to concentrate on water quality.’” To Billings-Pezaris, as she later said, “It did not appear to me that he had an understanding of even what a municipal shellfish program was, what it did, or anything about it, and that includes the water quality part of it.”

Olsen, she said, pointed his finger at her and accused her of not understanding something she’d worked on for years. And she said she wasn’t the only woman Olsen insulted that day. Another woman, Billings-Pezaris said, “was trying to ask some questions, and he was really rude to her, and said, ‘What is your question anyway?’ He was basically evasive with her and didn’t answer her question.” Although Billings-Pezaris said she e-mailed Olsen repeatedly, sending copies to the governor, she said, “I never did get an answer on it.” She said she still doesn’t know where the Municipal Shellfish Program stands.

Asked if what had been written about his confrontation with Billings-Pezaris was correct, Olsen e-mailed, “There’s not much point in me engaging in this sort of he said-she said.” He then wrote, “Her question was specifically about what I intended to do with the municipal shellfish program and the water quality program and I told her that I would not know until we completed the DMR top-to-bottom review. She did not want to accept that I was still investigating both programs.” (Olsen did not respond to a request for names of several who shared his views until the story had been written and was due.)

At Stonington, though, Deer Isle fisherman Leroy Bridges said he didn’t think he got much of an answer from Olsen. He said, “I mentioned the best thing he could do for us is push that exemption line off to the 3-mile line. And I got resistance.” He said of Olsen, “He even said, himself, that he thought that made absolute sense, but then he started getting all wishy-washy and (gave me) a bunch of jargon, that I couldn’t make out what he was saying.” Bridges added, “I didn’t think he was being clear and transparent.”

After asking for a meeting in early May, Olsen wrote he had to wait till late June to meet with LePage, who, according to Olsen’s resignation statement, rejected every one of his “initiatives.” Shortly thereafter, LePage’s Chief of Staff and Chief of Boards & Commissions told Olsen, he wrote, “To do whatever necessary to stop the complaints,” or else, so to speak. Olsen wrote that he felt he was essentially being shunned and prohibited from attending meetings. When an all-agency DMR review Olsen initiated began on July 1, he wrote that DMR staff members, “Found common cause in attacking” him.

DELA officers, after waiting a month for an appointment, sat down with the governor July 7 to discuss their hopes and concerns. They came away, Dassatt said, feeling that the governor really listened to them. “In conversation with Commissioner Olsen,” she said, “he sounded as if he was listening, but he didn’t hear.”

On July 20, Olsen requested LePage’s support, but said LePage, while agreeing with his ideas, said he would wait till after Labor Day to see if Olsen had turned around things with the fishermen. Left twisting in the wind, so to speak, not knowing whether he would still have a job after Labor Day, Olsen said he felt he had no alternative. Therefore, later that day, Olsen sent LePage his resignation. He also sent to various publications a 4-page statement listing his background and aims, and accusing the governor and his senior team of cutting him off from meetings and information, and of “Pacifying special interest groups rather than responsibly managing Maine’s marine resources for the benefit of the entire state.” (Read Olsen’s 4-page statement at fishermensvoice.com)

Asked Governor LePage’s perspective on what went wrong, his press secretary, Adrienne Bennett wrote that because “the resignation of Mr. Olsen was a surprise to the Governor” she could not answer the question. She did add, “The Governor and others were working with Mr. Olsen on a numbers of initiatives at the time of resignation and those efforts continue.” She also attached a series of 36 documents from the governor’s office pertaining to Olsen, among them, 25 letters from fishermen.

A Stonington fisherman who met Olsen at a whale issues meeting seemed to sum up fishermen’s general pros and cons when he said he thought Olsen, “Reflected the rather combative style of the governor.” He continued, “He didn’t strike me at all as a diplomat in manner or speech, saying basically that he wasn’t afraid to go toe to toe with the feds or whale people.” The fisherman added, “There was no reason for him to act primarily as a diplomat, since his job was to be a commissioner, which requires a different mindset.” To Olsen’s credit, he said he thought Olsen, “was certainly trying to be more pro-active in his approach toward industry issues than his predecessor.” He concluded, “Anyone in such a complex job has only so much time to be effective and so many bridges to burn. When you start using a flamethrower right off the bat, I guess this is the result.”

Dow, though, thinks something good did come out of this experience. “The one thing that amazes me about this whole procedure right from the concept of this letter to the resignation, is that for once there was quite a large amount of fishermen agreed. That is the part that is almost unbelievable. It was almost a unanimous feeling amongst the lobster associations and the members and the warden’s service and anybody who had anything to do with [commercial] fishing. It wasn't just a handful of us fishermen.”