By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

CONGRESSWOMAN Madeleine Z. Bordallo recently met with federal officials to discuss the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Commission.
Bordallo met with retired Navy Admiral James D. Watkins and Leon E. Panetta, the co-chairs of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative.
Bordallo chairs the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans of the House Committee on Natural Resources, which has jurisdiction over many of the issues addressed by the recommendations of both commissions.
“The co-chairs and I agreed on the need to implement the recommendations of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative and I learned a great deal from them on the state of our oceans and the vital importance of the oceans to our nation’s economy and our environmental health,” Bordallo said in a statement.
The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative is a collaborative effort between the two commissions to advance their recommendations and to ultimately secure action on and adoption of them by Congress.
These recommendations call for the adoption of an integrated ocean and coastal governance approach in the United States that spans the breadth and depth of numerous areas of public policy at the federal, state, territorial, and local levels of government.
“These issues will have priority in the work of our subcommittee in the 110th Congress and we hope to make progress in advancing the key priorities that the Joint Initiative has identified,” Bordallo said.
Watkins, who is a former Chief of Naval Operations and a former Secretary of Energy, chaired the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, which submitted its final report to President George W. Bush and to Congress in 2004.
Panetta, from Monterey, California, served in Congress for 16 years and rose to become chairman of the House Budget Committee. President Bill Clinton appointed him to be director of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House when he took office in 1993.
He later served as chief of staff to President Clinton from 1994 to 1997, and was also a member of the Iraq Study Group. Panetta chaired the 18-member Pew Oceans Commission on which former Guam Senator Carlotta Leon Guerrero served. The Pew Oceans Commission released its final report in 2003.