Rogue agency

Outraged, Ciulla challenged the penalty. He turned to Gloucester lawyer Ann-Margaret Ferrante, who is now a state representative and whose grandfather, father, and uncle were fishermen. Together, they decided to take on the agency known as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In need of political backup, they went to US Representative John Tierney, whose district covers Gloucester. Eventually, their grass-roots effort drew in the mayors of Gloucester and New Bedford, the Bay State congressional delegation, and a bipartisan string of lawmakers from Maine to the Carolinas.

This year, federal officials finally acknowledged their own regulators had gone rogue. They were guilty of overzealous, abusive, and targeted enforcement, a series of independent investigations revealed. Regulators were levying crippling fines for invented or inflated offenses, as they relentlessly bullied an entire industry. They were using the fishermen’s money to finance a fleet of cars, a luxury boat, and assorted foreign junkets.

In the aftermath of the findings, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke issued an apology, and some fishermen, including Ciulla, got money back. But the apology and reparations are not enough for Ciulla, who believes the government is just trying to move past embarrassing headlines. “What they’re trying to do is hide injustices and not let other injustices come to light,’’ he said.

The head of NOAA was pushed aside, but the underlying bureaucracy is essentially unchanged, added Ferrante. “Ten years ago, they told us they were accountable to no one. Corruption was brought to light and nothing changed,’’ she said.

Or, as Senator Scott Brown put it succinctly at a recent Faneuil Hall hearing: “What does it take to get fired at NOAA?’’