PROVIDENCE — The state’s coastal regulating agency is already starting the new year on the wrong foot.
The Coastal Resources Management Council quietly announced last month that longtime council member and Little Compton resident Donald Gomez was resigning. Gomez, who prior to his professional retirement worked as an electric engineer for the Navy in Newport, had been serving in some capacity on CRMC’s executive panel since 2007.
“For me it’s a bad day if I don’t learn something,” Gomez said at CRMC’s Dec. 10 meeting. “I learned a lot in my 17 years here.”
“Don has been a great Council member and friend, and we thank him for his many years of service to the CRMC and State of Rhode Island,” CRMC board chair Raymond Coia said in a statement. “Don always brought analytical thinking and pragmatism to our proceedings. We wish him the best in his retirement from the Council and know we’ll most likely see him in the audience in the future.”
A spokesperson for CRMC didn’t specify an effective date for his resignation.
Gomez’s resignation represents problems for the coastal agency. Unlike other state departments, where final decision-making power rests with an appointed executive director, CRMC instead has an all-volunteer, politically appointed 10-member executive council filling the same function, voting on permits and overseeing agency staff. CRMC’s executive director, Jeff Willis, and other agency staff report to the council — chosen by the governor and approved by the Senate — whose members aren’t required to have expertise in coastal issues. It makes Rhode Island something of an outlier; California is the only other state that runs its coastal management program with a politically appointed council.