CRMC Reform Proves to Be No Simple Task

This may not be the year. Again.

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

Photo by Will Collette

How do you fix a problem like a coastal regulatory agency?

It’s not just a riff on a Rodgers and Hammerstein number; the question is causing a divide within the General Assembly on how best to overhaul the Coastal Resources Management Council.

The agency, which claims jurisdiction over the hundreds of miles of Rhode Island coastline, regulates all development — homes, docks, boat ramps, offshore wind turbines — within 200 feet of the shore and 3 miles out to sea.

But calling the shots over those projects within CRMC is an infamous 10-member decision-making council, nine members of which are politically appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. They’re not required to have prior expertise or background in coastal policy, planning or management.

It’s an old-fashioned Rhode Island setup that’s led to some thorny criticisms of individual council members. In March, Gov. Dan McKee selected Barrington resident Mark Reuter, a podiatrist, to replace outgoing member Catherine Robinson Hall, a former Department of Environmental Management professor and marine policy professor. Advocates at the time noted the credential gap between the two.

This year in the General Assembly there are two different ideas about agency reform gaining steam as the session races toward a close, and their key difference is how they handle the council.

Bills S0775 and H5706 would abolish the council and hand over its powers to CRMC’s executive director. It’s similar to the way most other state agencies, including land-based counterpart DEM, handle final decision-making. The only political appointments would be regulated to an advisory panel that would give agency staff its input from time to time.

Competing legislation aims for less extensive structural reform. H6126, introduced by Rep. Alex Finkelman, D-Jamestown, instead whittles the council down to a more manageable seven members, six of whom will be appointed by the governor. The seventh member would be appointed by the state attorney general or otherwise designated (a function currently held by DEM in the current iteration of the council).

“Continuing with the council in any form will allow public testimony,” Finkelman told lawmakers during a House State Government and Elections Committee meeting in March. “Having staff just make decisions may not allow the public to weigh in on projects that are going on. It’s a factor I think we should consider.”

Finkelman’s legislation also puts qualifications on council members, specifying at least one member be an engineer, one a coastal biologist, and one be a representative from an environmental organization.

The legislation also says “current or past service on the Coastal Resources Management Council shall not disqualify an individual from reappointment pursuant to this subsection.”

H6126 has engendered a lot of opposition for such a small bill. Both McKee and Attorney General Peter Neronha submitted written comments to the committee this month outlining their opposition to the legislation.

The governor’s office objects to granting the attorney general appointment power, alleging it violates the governor’s powers as outlined in the state Constitution.

Neronha, meanwhile, wrote the bill failed to solve the problems presented by CRMC’s current appointed-council structure, and reiterated his support for H5706.

“In my office’s experience, and the experience of everyday Rhode Islanders, it is the unique and peculiar structure of CRMC that has resulted in challenges such as the inability or reluctance to fill open seats, inability to meet a quorum, years-long delays, back-room deals and blatant violations of law,” Neronha wrote. “None of these significant problems will be addressed by simply requiring that volunteer council members have certain professional backgrounds or qualifications.”

For advocates of CRMC reform, most of the criticism centers around the council, which is allowed to override professional staff, and has a history of making controversial decisions that later get tossed out by a state judge, or are contrary to the agency’s own policy.

Last year the council voted to consider a petition from the Quidnessett Country Club to legitimize a seawall illegally built on the property, despite the fact it flew in the face of agency regulations, and staff had been issuing fines against the club.

A larger day-to-day issue, which H6126 is aimed at nudging along, is the council’s quorum issues. Public bodies in Rhode Island, whether elected by voters or appointed by elected officials, require a minimum number of members to show up for a meeting in order to take any actions by vote.

For CRMC’s executive panel, the magic minimum number of members that need to show up to approve or deny projects is six. But a state governor hasn’t appointed a full slate of council members since 2019, and since then the council has struggled to achieve quorum, leading it to cancel meetings and delay final decisions on projects before the agency.

Mike Woods, chair of the New England chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, wrote in his testimony in support of H5706 that the council canceled almost 30% of its meetings last year.

“It is difficult to imagine any significant role in public service where consistently failing to show up or complete such a significant portion of the workload would be considered acceptable,” Woods wrote.

Environmental groups also voiced opposition to Finkelman’s quicker fix. Scott Travers, executive director of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association (RISAA), wrote the bill wouldn’t eliminate conflicts of interest, provide stronger accountability, or fix their concerns regarding aquaculture permitting.

Travers said RISAA was part of the study commission on CRMC reform in 2021 and 2022, and noted that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees every state’s coastal zone management program, had no problem with the agency’s structure, but instead expressed concerns that the council’s specific problems lay with being unable to meet quorum, delays in critical issues, and insufficient training for council members.

“We hope that CRMC deficiencies can be corrected [by] bills that eliminate the politically appointed council,” Travers wrote.

H6126 and all other CRMC reform bills have been held for further study, with no vote out of committee scheduled.