Has a WDFW manager ever lied to me personally? Yes; and I will give you the supporting scenario.

During the introductions for what was the first public hearing of the WDFW's proposed Rockfish Recovery Plan he said that if there were any questions that could not be answered during that meeting he would research and provide a response. I specifically challenged their stated poundage of food consumed by seals in P.S. annually (5MM#) which, in significant part, led to an assessment in the plan that such impact on the food chain would have a Minimum risk to rockfish recovery. Using their own included information (# of seals, average poundage, and daily consumption requirements/#) my calculation was 27MM pounds consumed/year; a significant difference! After the meeting that individual took my name and email (writing them in his notebook) and promised to research and respond. I am still waiting......

And they continued to utilize that erroneous 5MM# figure in subsequent public hearings. After all the meetings were conducted their final plan did provide the correct poundage and increased the adverse impact to Moderate validating my calculations. So not only did he lie to me by not getting back to me as promised he continued to present what he knew to be significantly erroneous data to the public during the subsequent public meetings. That was simply dishonest.

Another example of distorting the facts occurred during the hearings on the new crab management plan. The Shellfish manager presented a graph showing the value of the recreational fishery over a period of years using the per trip value established by the Department's contracted study but did not adjust for CPI. But when it came to the graph showing the value of the non-tribal commercial fishery over the same years those earlier years were adjusted to the current year using CPI. This effectively resulted in presenting an erroneous comparison of values for those two fisheries. Despite having this pointed out to him on more than one occasion he continued to present it to include to the Commission and the Senate Rec and Natural Resources committee although at that Senate hearing then Director Anderson acknowledged the disparate data. Guess it was okay to mislead the Commission but not the Senate??

So, again, yes to both questions - and those are not the only occurrences.