Editorial: Ex-AG’s ‘probe’ of fishing fund hardly independent – Gloucester Daily Times
The Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund’s naming of former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to carry out an investigation into its own “governance, policies and operations” might seem like a good move 
— one that could clear up the clouds raised last winter by fishermen who voiced conflict-of-interest and concerns to Gloucester’s two state lawmakers.
Harshbarger, after all, has extensive experience both as attorney general and private attorney dealing with regulatory and fiscal issues involving nonprofit organizations. And that fits the fishing preservation fund, which largely serves as a commercial fishing permit bank handling the $12 million in mitigation money granted to fishermen as compensation for having a liquified natural gas terminal plunked down in the middle of some of the regional’s most lucrative fishings grounds five years ago.
But it doesn’t take much looking beneath the surface to find all sorts of red flags and questions marks regarding a purported “investigation” that is not at all as it seems.
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