Government double payments are unfortunately too common these days. The NOAA specialist was hired and paid for with tax money. The monitoring at sea duty should be paid for with the tax money. Billing the operator is just double taxation. The Fire Departments in CA do the same thing as they are paid with tax money until they come out to your house for fire suppression. Then they charge the business/homeowner for their time. A home owner can easily be charged $10,000 for their services after paying taxes for this service for years. This is how the Firefighters make way over $100,000/year and have a nice pension.
