WAKEFIELD, R.I. — It’s not often one of the state’s environmental agencies gets a report card from the federal government.

This year the Coastal Resources Management Council has been undergoing a routine checkup from the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. When Rhode Island created the CRMC, the state joined the National Coastal Zone Management Program, which allows states along each coast and in the Great Lakes region to take charge managing and developing their shoreline areas.

As part of the program, states are required to be evaluated by NOAA every five to 10 years to ensure the state has remained consistent and compliant with the rules governing the program.

How CRMC has performed since its last evaluation in 2020 depends on whom you ask.

“I would say that it’s been middle of the road,” said Michael Woods, chair of the New England chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. “There were bright spots in CRMC’s performance, and then there are some structural things that we are very concerned about.”

CRMC has done especially well with two programs, in Woods’ estimation. He pointed to what the agency has accomplished with regard to public shoreline access. Since the last NOAA evaluation, the agency has designated nine additional rights of way, with five in Portsmouth and four more combined in North Kingstown and Providence. The agency has also stepped up with signage and informational sessions regarding the public’s right to the shore under the state law that went into effect last year. That law, which took effect in June 2023, clarifies the public’s right to laterally access the shore up to 10 feet landward of the visible high tide line — the line that is recognized by seaweed, shells, or other debris left by the tide.

Woods also pointed to CRMC’s role in funding habitat restoration. The agency awards money from the Coastal and Estuary Habitat Restoration Program and Trust Fund to municipalities, nonprofits, and other organizations with an aim at protecting marine and aquatic life. Projects in recent years have restored or repaired damage to South County marshes, from the Narrow River all the way down to the various salt ponds that line the shorelines of coastal communities.

Topher Hamblett, executive director of Save The Bay, a nonprofit that has long watchdogged CRMC, cited the agency’s promotion of coastal access as a strength, and noting the agency’s small staff.

“The staff has done phenomenal work, just keeping up with the workload that it has,” said Hamblett in an interview with ecoRI News.

Hamblett noted the staff excelled despite its tiny size and minuscule budget compared to other state agencies. On average, CRMC has a staff of just over 30 full-time positions, and a budget of around $5 million, half of which is derived from NOAA as part of the coastal zone management program.

That’s the good stuff; what’s the bad?

For Hamblett and many critics of the agency, CRMC’s woes spring from a sole source: its politically appointed, 10-member, decision-making council.

“The whole agency itself, in its basic duties, could be more efficient if the staff was just free to do its job and not have to go before a council and explain the rules, and deal with the politics of the council,” Hamblett said. “That’s a lot of wasted time and money, not just for the staff of the agency, but also for applicants who have to go through months and sometimes years of hearings for a simple application.”

Woods, himself a longtime critic and watchdog of CRMC’s executive panel, brought up the agency’s 2010 evaluation, when NOAA officials criticized the council’s poor record of achieving and maintaining quorum for both regular subcommittee meetings and full council meetings. It wasn’t marked on the agency’s last evaluation from NOAA, but Woods said since the pandemic, council activity has become, at times, sclerotic.

“In 2021 they had seven members, in 2022 and 2023 they had eight members, this year they only have seven members,” Woods said. “And over the last four years they’ve canceled or haven’t filed meeting minutes for about 20% of their meetings.”

More often than not, it’s the decisions the council makes, or deliberately chooses not to make, that has made the executive body a focus point of ire from its critics.

Woods and Hamblett both mentioned last month’s decision by the council’s planning and procedures subcommittee to allow the Quidnessett Country Club in North Kingstown to argue why CRMC’s own rules should be rewritten to legitimize a seawall it illegally erected in 2023.

CRMC issued the country club a violation last year, after a member of the public notified the agency about the seawall. Quidnessett Country Club ignored take-down orders from agency staff for months, and earlier this year petitioned the agency to change its own regulations to allow the seawall to remain. The club has long claimed the seawall was the only solution to protecting the country club’s golf course — privately used by its members, not the public — from worsening coastal erosion.

Meanwhile, the agency said it implemented many of the recommendations outlined by NOAA in the last evaluation. A spokesperson for the CRMC said the agency has taken greater steps toward succession planning, requiring outgoing staff to record information about their jobs in written documents and videos, as well as having retiring staff onboard new hires. The agency also provided greater job aids for its council members, in the form of tablets to access necessary information for decision-making, and overhauled its permit database to make it accessible over the internet. Making the permit database available online was the only action required by NOAA in the last evaluation.

NOAA asked the agency to continue working with ocean stakeholders, something that went awry last year when the Fisheries Advisory Board resigned en masse over the agency’s offshore wind approvals.

“We have a new plan forward and are in the process of reaching out to the industry to detail our plans,” said public information coordinator Laura Dwyer in a statement.

A public comment hearing on the CRMC evaluation has been scheduled for Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. at the Rhode Island Department of Administration, 2nd floor, Conference Room A, One Capitol Hill in Providence. NOAA is accepting written comments until Oct. 25. The final evaluation findings, including recommendations, are expected to be submitted in January.