Shaheen, Crapo, Risch Send Bipartisan Letter Urging Coast Guard to Allow States to Collect Fees When Vessels are Registered to Help Fund Boating and Water Safety Efforts

In part, the Senators wrote: "We write to seek your help with a recent Coast Guard statutory reinterpretation that will cause states difficulty in funding and managing boating safety and related programs and increase costs for recreational boaters. As you may know, the agency decided to reverse its previous interpretation of 46 U.S.C. 12307 that had allowed states to bundle payment for the issuance of the Certificate of Number (CON) for recreational vessels with related state boating fees for search and rescue, aquatic invasive species (AIS) and other boating safety programs. Despite the fact that the prior statutory interpretation was the status quo for over 50 years, the Coast Guard informed a number of states, including ours, that this prior practice violated federal law and needed to end if states did not want to risk losing their share of the Recreational Boating Safety grant program."

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.