§4012 Assessments

Summary

Councils must charge and collect fees called assessments to pay for their work. The council’s approved charter says whether fees are charged to people in the receiving sector, the importing sector, or both. Fees are a percentage of the value of the fish or fish products. For most buyers in the receiving sector the fee is a percent of the fish value when they buy from harvesters. For owners of fish-processing vessels the fee must be at least what it would have been if someone else had bought the fish. Importer fees use the value under U.S. customs rules when goods enter or leave a warehouse for use. People who were not allowed to vote in the council’s organizing referendum because they failed certain rules may not be charged unless they meet those rules later. Anyone can give money or goods to the council. All money must go into a council bank account named in its charter. People in the covered sectors must give the Secretary the information needed to run and enforce these rules. That information is kept confidential except for court or administrative uses, for anonymous statistics, or when the Secretary publishes the name of someone who broke assessment or quality rules. Anyone who must keep information secret but knowingly reveals it can be fined up to $1,000, jailed for up to one year, and removed from office.