5 AAC 96.625 - Joint board petition policy
(a) Under
AS
44.62.220, an interested person may petition
an agency, including the Boards of Fisheries and Game, for the adoption,
amendment, or repeal of a regulation. The petition must clearly and concisely
state the substance or nature of the regulation, amendment, or repeal
requested, the reason for the request, and must reference the agency's
authority to take the requested action. Within 30 days after receiving a
petition, a board will deny the petition in writing, or schedule the matter for
public hearing under
AS
44.62.190-44.62.210,
which require that any agency publish legal notice describing the proposed
change and solicit comment for 30 days before taking action.
AS
44.62.230 also provides that if the petition
is for an emergency regulation, and the agency finds that an emergency exists,
the agency may submit the regulation to the lieutenant governor immediately
after making the finding of emergency and putting the regulation into proper
form.
(b) Fish and game regulations
are adopted by the Alaska Board of Fisheries and the Alaska Board of Game.
Annually, the boards solicit regulation changes through regulatory proposals
described in 5 AAC 96.610(a). Several hundred proposed changes are usually
submitted to each board annually. The Department of Fish and Game compiles the
proposals and mails them to all fish and game advisory committees and to other
interested individuals.
(c) Copies
of all proposals are available at local Department of Fish and Game offices and
on the boards support section's website. When the proposal books are available,
the advisory committees hold public meetings in the communities and regions
they represent, to gather local comment on the proposed changes. Finally, the
boards convene public meetings, which have lasted as long as six weeks, taking
department staff reports, public comment, and advisory committee reports before
voting in public session on the proposed changes.
(d) The public has come to rely on this
regularly scheduled participatory process as the basis for changing fish and
game regulations. Commercial fishermen, processors, guides, trappers, hunters,
sport fishermen, subsistence fishermen, and others plan business and
recreational ventures around the outcome of these public meetings.
(e) The Boards of Fisheries and Game
recognize the importance of public participation in developing management
regulations, and recognize that public reliance on the predictability of the
normal board process is a critical element in regulatory changes. The boards
find that petitions received under (a) of this section can detrimentally
circumvent this process and that an adequate and more reasonable opportunity
for public participation is provided by regularly scheduled meetings.
(f) The Boards of Fisheries and Game
recognize that in rare instances circumstances may require regulatory changes
outside the process described in (b) - (d) of this section.It is the policy of
the boards that a petition will be denied and not scheduled for hearing unless
the problem outlined in the petition justifies a finding of emergency under AS
44.62.250(a). In accordance with state policy expressed in AS 44.62.270,
emergencies will be held to a minimum and are rarely found to exist. Except for
petitions dealing with subsistence hunting or subsistence fishing, an emergency
is an unforeseen, unexpected event that either threatens a fish or game
resource, or an unforeseen, unexpected resource situation where a biologically
allowable resource harvest would be precluded by delayed regulatory action and
such delay would be significantly burdensome to the petitioners because the
resource would be unavailable in the future. Petitions dealing with subsistence
hunting or subsistence fishing will be evaluated under these criteria:
(1) the petition must address a fish or game
population that has not previously been considered by the board for
identification as a population customarily and traditionally used for
subsistence under AS 16.05.258; or
(2)
the circumstances of the petition otherwise must require
expedited consideration by the board, such as where the proposal is the result
of a court decision or is the subject of federal administrative action that
might impact state same management authority.
Notes
Authority:AS 16.05.251
AS 16.05.255
AS 16.05.258
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