The State of Alaska is actively recruiting for the Spring Trooper academy, and as of last week has six new recruits who have competed all testing, and 18 who have completed all testing and passed the polygraph testing. Those 18 still need to pass the psychological and medical exams.
For the “B cycle” for the Spring academy, which included the $20,000 hiring bonus offer, the Alaska Department of Public Safety now has 28 recruits who have qualified for testing in January, with over 50 that are still working through the background investigation process and if passed will be invited to test in January.
“Our recruitment team is confident that we will have at least 30 Alaska State Trooper recruits in the Spring academy in February, the most significant number of trooper recruits entering the academy in many years,” a source in the department said today.
The department’s recruitment team is also recruiting for the Fall 2022 academy. The $20,000 hiring bonus that the governor authorized in August 2021 is drawing in more potential applicants.
The recruitment team has especially focused on areas of the Northwest where anti-police attitudes have driven away officers. The team had a two-day recruitment event in Seattle-Tacoma in early November, and the governor sent a letter to potential applicants to let them know that he supports law enforcement professionals. Some from Seattle and Portland are now taking a look north, as those states are mandating vaccines. The Washington State Patrol lost 127 professionals due to the Gov. Inslee’s vaccine mandate.
“Our recruiters are constantly asked by potential lateral recruits about the attitude towards law enforcement in Alaska, and they are able to report that our governor, many legislators and other state leaders, and the public in general, proudly support law enforcement in the state,” the DPS source told Must Read Alaska.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has been working to rebuild the public safety workforce, which has seen many retirements in the past few years. There were about 60 unfilled positions for Troopers around the state earlier this year, but in November, 25 men and women graduated from academy in Sitka.
The State’s Labor Relations Section’s website only goes back to the mid-2000s with archived labor agreements. Few, if any, of those exist as bound and printed copies.
Since the beginning of bargaining, agreements had been laboriously hand-typed, rigorously edited, and once approved by both parties, signed and sent to Central Duplication for off-set printing and binding. Most were published as 4-by-5-inch booklets that would fit in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. The wear marks in that pocket were as much a mark of status and social position for a union hand, particularly stewards, as was the Skoal ring on a construction worker’s pocket. It didn’t quite say as much as the “Little Red Book” in the back pocket of a Sixties radical’s jeans, but it said a lot.
One of the last contracts printed and distributed in that form was the 1984 – 1986 agreements between the State and the Alaska Public Employees Association, which represented both the 8,000-odd members of the General Government Unit and the 1,300 or so members of the Supervisory Unit of State employees.
Beginning in early 1987, copies were becoming hard to find because so many had been entered into evidence in arbitrations, labor board hearings, and court cases in the aftermath of the mid-Eighties oil price crash and the Legislature’s refusal to fund the negotiated 3.6 percent increase for Fiscal Year 1986. There ensued a decade-long war between the State and its unions and by the end of that decade nothing much remained of the old ways.
In retrospect, the 3.6 percent that the Sheffield Administration offered the unions was not particularly out of line, though it was more than the CPI had increased since the last negotiated increase. Through most of the 1970s, Alaska experienced double digit inflation. Generally, Alaska dealt with the inflation by causing more inflation and increasing wages to try to keep up with the inflation. State employees got some of those inflationary increases but not all employees and not all of the cost-of-living increases. They did get all sorts of perks and operational benefits.
One perk that stuck in the Legislature’s craw was giving employees their birthday as a paid day off. The Legislature’s power to reject a contract was not yet well understood, and still isn’t, but they did understand how to pass an amendment to the Public Employment Relations Act and they defined monetary terms of an agreement subject to Legislative approval to include any provision that changed an employee’s productive work hours; that was just the prelude.
Oil prices verged on the mid-$30s in the early to mid-1980s. In today’s dollars that is close to $100/bbl. oil. Alaska’s dreams of domed capital cities and Soviet-scale hydroelectric projects crashed with the price of oil resting at near $10/bbl. by 1985 or so. The Legislature reacted by refusing to fund the wage increase and we spent a decade with unions suing, grieving, complaining, and singing songs and carrying signs in the street.
The one thing they never did was strike, and we never laid off any significant number of them. The Cowper and then Hickel Administrations both resolved that we would not give them any general increases but would not seek concessions to the point of provoking a strike, though we were tempted at times. Basically, we had enough foreclosed houses and repossessed cars in Alaska and the State didn’t want to create more. Most State employees are on a step pay system that gives them a 3 percent or so increase every year for their first five years.
In those days the average seniority for the General Government Unit was barely five years, so most got some wage adjustment every year even if they didn’t get general increases. That was enough to keep them sullen but not mutinous, and those became our watchwords; keep them sullen but not mutinous.
If I had to choose the capstone of my career it would be the fact that the State General Fund Operating Budget was essentially flat during my tenure from 1987 to 2006. It ticked up a bit with oil prices during the Gulf War and with the cash infusion of the Exxon Valdez cleanup.
We succumbed to the pressure of Tony Knowles and Sarah Palin’s promises leading up to the 2006 election, but through four governors, one of whom really didn’t want to do it, we held the line on the operating budget for over a decade. I’ll pat my and my co-workers’ backs for doing that, but I’ll temper that with an admission: We never had to deal with inflation. Republican presidents and a Republican Congress during most of the Clinton Administration kept a rein on inflation.
We’re going somewhere nobody has been before. I sorta’ knew some of the people who dealt with the spiraling inflation of the 1970s. I don’t think any of them are still in Alaska; if they are, they aren’t active, and I know quite a few of them are no longer among us. Thirty years later I was trying to bargain stuff out of the agreements that they gave away to try to keep peace, but they were doing an all new thing and nobody knew how.
The people who represented the State during the oil crash years and its aftermath went on to represent the State as the directors of labor relations and of personnel, two as human resources managers for the Court System, one as head of labor relations and later president of the University, one as a high level manager at the City and Borough of Juneau, one as a high level manager in Nevada, and one as the head of labor relations for Chugach Electric.
As far as I know only two or three of us are still in Alaska. I don’t know about the other two, but I’m not looking for a State job, especially in these times.
It’s a gubernatorial election year coming up. The government is on the auction block. I always figured that if I had the supervisors and the labor, trades, and crafts guys under contract, I could keep the State running no matter who else wanted to strike or sing songs and carry signs. The General Government Agreement expires June 30, 2022, and all 8,000 and change of them are available to be whipped up to a screaming fury to elect Bill Walker or Les Gara governor so he can give them money and set them free.
George Soros and all sorts of Communist front groups will make sure they have the money to play. I played this game with them during Hickel’s era; there was nothing we could give them that would make them accept an agreement. We came to taunt them with offers forcing them to explain to their single-mommy members why she couldn’t have a raise because it was more important to them to play politics. We put some fancy money on the table because we knew they wouldn’t take it, and we wanted to rub their noses in it. They wanted to wait for their “made-man,” Tony Knowles. It didn’t work out very well for them.
There is no peaceful way that the Dunleavy Administration can get an agreement with them. The only way to get an agreement with them, and more importantly to remove them as a significant factor in the gubernatorial election, is to pose an existential threat to them. The State’s initial proposal should not have a union security clause at all; union and agency shops have been illegal in the public sector since the Janus decision in 2018. It is between the union and the employee whether the employee would like to be a member; it is none of the employer’s business.
The Dunleavy Administration has done about everything possible wrong in implementing, or failing to implement Janus, but if he’d like to get re-elected, he might try to get it right.
Additionally, under Janus, as well as under some state constitutional arguments, the dues check-off provisions of the Public Employment Relations Act, are unconstitutional as well. In my experience, if you have a union by the dues sack, their heart and mind follows.
There’s their “paint by numbers” instructions, but I’m prepared to be disappointed in them.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
Mayor Dave Bronson on Friday filed a lawsuit against the Anchorage Assembly, asking for a court judgment about an Anchorage Municipal Code that prohibits the mayor from firing someone on his staff — the chief equity officer.
Mayor Bronson did fire Clifford Armstrong. Armstrong was hired by former unelected acting mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson, after the adding of the position of chief equity officer was approved by the Assembly on the request of former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz in the summer of 2020. The code says the Assembly must agree with the decision to fire the person who holds this position, and the Assembly majority does not agree with Armstrong’s dismissal.
Bronson’s team maintains the municipal code is invalid and not binding and that its passage was a breach of the principles of separation of powers, which is a fundamental doctrine of the Alaska Constitution nd the Anchorage Municipal Charter. Bronson says the Mayor’s Office has authority over people in the Executive Branch, while the Assembly says it has carved out this position to be different from others.
“Despite repeated attempts to resolve this matter without the need for litigation, recently Assembly Member actions show that judicial intervention is the only option. Like other executive mayoral appointees, the Chief Equity Officer can be dismissed at will for any reason or no reason at all. Attempts by the Assembly to insulate previous administration’s mayoral executive appointees with ‘for cause’ limitations and durational term limits clearly violate the Charter and Constitutional separation of powers doctrine. This Assembly has exceeded their authority, and are attempting to take power from the Executive Branch and control personnel matters, which are clearly an administrative function. I will not cede the authority of the executive branch to the legislative branch; the Assembly does not control both branches of government,” Bronson said.
The lawsuit was not unexpected. Armstrong stopped showing up for work shortly after Bronson became mayor. The chief equity officer position is one of the many new expenditures of the Anchorage Assembly that has put the city on the downgrade list from bond-rating agencies. Hired out of Tacoma, Washington, Armstrong made more than $115,000 a year and was supposed to develop and implement a Critical Race Theory policy to redistribute power in the city workforce to those seen as not seen as holding enough power in municipal jobs. His job deliverables were somewhat undefined and subjective, but he reported directly to the mayor, who was given no authority to replace him by the leftist Assembly.
Bronson replaced Armstrong with Uluao “Junior” Aurnavae in October. The Assembly does not recognize the Samoan-American as the legitimate chief equity officer and Assemblyman Chris Constant said on the record that his hiring was intended by Bronson to sow discord among racial groups in Anchorage.
Shortly after being fired, Armstrong published a cartoon of himself being fired by the Ku Klux Klan. Armstrong has since sued the Municipality for what he says is an illegal termination of his employment.
The Assembly liberal majority is on Armstrong’s side: “We do not recognize Mr. Armstrong’ s dismissal as complete nor valid and are advised by Assembly Counsel that it is not legally complete,” wrote Assembly Chair Suzanne LaFrance and Vice Chair Chris Constant in October.
Don Young has run for Congress 25 times, and lost once, in 1972, to incumbent Nick Begich, who was killed in a plane crash three weeks before the election. He beat Emil Notti in 1973, and then, successively, State Senators Willie Hensley, Eben Hopson and Pat Rodey. After defeating Pat Parnell and Dave Carlson, he faced Begich’s widow, Peggy, in 1984 and 1986. Then he crushed Peter Gruenstein in 1988, but had a serious challenge from Valdez Mayor John Devens in 1990 and 1992, winning with less than a majority the second time.
Young then breezed through reelection until 2008, when he faced Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell (son of 1980 opponent Pat Parnell) in the Republican primary, and won by only 304 votes. In the general election he defeated Ethan Berkowitz 50-45. He hasn’t been seriously challenged since.
Now he’s in Donald Trump’s crosshairs, and of all the targets of the former President he seems the least concerned. His sin is bucking Trump and voting for the infrastructure bill, giving President Biden a much needed win. But if given the opportunity, Young will always vote for any bill that brings federal money to Alaska. He’s the king of pork, and the proud sponsor of the infamous “bridge to nowhere”, which was so outrageous it helped bring an end to congressional earmarks. He’s never paid a political price for bringing the bacon home to Alaska, and he never will.
Working as a team with former Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Congressional delegation routinely brought home a billion dollars a year in federal largess, providing both needed projects and economic stimulus. As Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Stevens had a reliable partner in the House in Don Young, crediting him with never failing to secure House passage of projects that came over from the Senate.
Don is now 88, and unable to get around as he once did. Some speculate that he isn’t serious about running for his 25th term, and may pull out of the race at some point.
But now that he’s the target of Donald Trump’s ire, that is far less likely. Don relishes a good fight, and bowing out under pressure from the Trump brigade would be an ignominious end to a brilliant political career. I suspect the attacks from Trump will only energize him, and make him more determined than ever to go out a winner.
He sure didn’t seem concerned at the infrastructure signing ceremony outside the White House, joking around with President Biden, and complaining to him that his speech was too long, and Don was getting cold. Is Don Young afraid of Donald Trump? I don’t think so.
In fact, 2022 may spell the effective end of Trump’s influence in the Republican Party. He is so humiliated by his loss to Biden that he won’t let go of his claim that the election was stolen, even though no court in the land has given him any reason to think this can be proven. Every day of Biden’s miserable, disastrous Presidency is a rebuke to Trump, personally. He’s responsible for this. He lost to this guy?
A month before the 2016 election he was revealed as a sexist pig by the Access Hollywood tape, and he was written off. But then eleven days before the election James Comey of the FBI reopened the probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails. As he subsequently admitted, this decision was influenced by Comey’s confidence in Trump’s defeat. Even though the probe was concluded before the election, the damage had been done. Trump the Improbable was elected President.
Trump beat, by a whisker, one of the most disliked and mistrusted presidential nominees in history (Clinton). Then in 2020 he lost to a man who clearly had no business running for president, as his brief tenure in the White House has amply demonstrated.
Donald Trump is a lousy politician. He’s one of the most divisive men in American political history, roundly despised by half the country. He’s unelectable, and only manages to stay in the spotlight by encouraging speculation that he’ll run again.
You think Don Young is worried about Donald Trump? With ranked choice voting, he’s in a stronger position than ever. In addition to his longstanding ties with, and service to, the Alaska Native community, he’s always been a reliable vote for organized labor. Against a Republican backed by Trump, he’ll prevail in a runoff with virtually the entire Democrat vote.
So get ready for two more years of one of the last true characters in American politics — the Indestructible Don Young of Alaska. When he finally does exit the stage, we’ll all miss him.
Former Alaska state legislator Fritz Pettyjohn once briefly thought about running against Don Young himself. Very briefly.
Three Anchorage residents filed a lawsuit on Friday challenging the new political district known as Senate Seat L, as drawn by the Alaska Redistricting Board. Their lawsuit objects to having part of East Anchorage lumped in with part of Eagle River, which the plaintiffs call “arbitrary and egregiously irrational senate districts … despite the starkly different and even contradictory legislative needs of those communities. Critically, the pairings inexplicably ignored the demographic, economic and geographic characteristics of these communities and the lack of meaningful contiguity…”
Eagle River is largely white, they say, while East Anchorage is very racially diverse.
Friday was the deadline for lawsuits challenging the new district boundaries to be filed.
The plaintiffs are all part of the new Senate Seat L: Felisa Wilson is a Democrat party activist who lives at an address on JBER. George Martinez is registered nonpartisan who has run for mayor of Anchorage in the past and is described in media as a “prominent Occupy Wall Street activist” from New York. Yarrow Silvers is a nonpartisan voter who is cofounder of a political action group called Anchorage Action, which is a counter to the Save Anchorage grassroots group. The three say that the new map gives Eagle River disproportionate power and lessens the political clout of East Anchorage, when it comes to representation in the Senate.
Another lawsuit was filed by the City of Skagway, which disputes the boundary that puts it in with the north Juneau House district. Skagway maintains that the final version of the map, Version 4, was never made available for public review or comment, in violation of the Open Meetings Act, prior to the last meeting fore presentation of draft plans to the redistricting board.
The plaintiffs in this lawsuit say that Skagway prefers to be aligned with downtown Juneau and Douglas, not the Mendenhall Valley and north, which is physically closer to Skagway. The lawsuit says Skagway wants the map the way it was during the court-approved 2013 redistricting plan.
The City of Valdez filed a lawsuit because its House district was moved in order to align with the Mat-Su, while it says it is economically more aligned with the Richardson Highway pipeline corridor.
Earlier, a lawsuit was filed by the Mat-Su Borough, which said the new map diminished and diluted its growing population. On Friday, a group of Native Corporations joined the suit on the side of the Redistricting Board, saying the map, as now drawn, better keeps Native shareholders in the same district.
The Alaska Redistricting Board has scheduled a meeting on Wednesday, when it will have an executive session to review the lawsuits with the board’s attorney.
Alaska legislators on Friday wrote to Craig Richards, chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Alaska Permanent Fund, expressing their “grave concern over the sudden and inexplicable termination of Angela Rodell as Executive Director of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC).” Rodell was fired on Thursday.
“In her six-year tenure as Executive Director, the Permanent Fund grew a record-setting $30 billion in value. Ms. Rodell’s track record is nothing short of exemplary, she has always been a steadfast professional, and did everything within her power to shield the Fund from outside political interference,” the two politicians wrote, inserting their own political preferences into the personnel decision by the board to remove Rodell, which was an overwhelming decision by the board in a 5-1 vote.
The naked politics is evident in the letter, because if the two had a valid concern, they would have handled it through back channels. Instead, they widely disseminated their letter to the media as a political weapon.
“We strongly believe that the public and legislature deserve an explanation for the action the board took yesterday,” wrote House Rules Chair Bryce Edgmon and Senate Rules Chair Gary Stevens.
In addition, Senate Finance Chair Bert Stedman weighed in. As quoted by the Anchorage Daily News, he said the circumstances around Rodell’s firing are suspicious. Possible gubernatorial candidate Sen. Natasha von Imhof also indicated she may hold hearings in her Legislative Budget and Audit Committee; Von Imhof is a close personal friend of Rodell’s and is a known adversary to the governor on matters of budget and Permanent Fund dividends.
Thus, a kangaroo court scenario may be ready to play out in the Legislature, just as Gov. Mike Dunleavy prepares to unveil his 2023 budgets, which he must provide to the Legislature by Dec. 15.
In that budget, many expect the governor to once again propose the 50-50 dividend formula, which is his compromise position to get Alaskans more of what they are entitled to by law from the Permanent Fund, and to settle the dividend formula law once and for all.
His effort is likely to try to restore the dividend as something that has a relationship to the fund itself. During the last legislative disbursement of the Permanent Fund dividend, not a single penny of Alaskans’ dividend actually came from the Permanent Fund. Instead, the Legislature used all of the fund disbursement to fund government, and then made an appropriation to pay dividends out of the Statutory Budget Reserve and the General Fund.
Even former Gov. Bill Walker, who is now returning to the scene as a retread candidate for governor, took the stage on Twitter to say he was concerned about Rodell’s sudden exit.
“Alaskans rightfully have questions about her abrupt dismissal. I hope for some clarity on that question in the coming days and will look for answers on what comes next for the Fund,” Walker said on his campaign Twitter feed.
The irony of Walker second-guessing the decision is that Board Chair Richards was once Walker’s attorney general, and in fact, Walker appointed Richards to the board of the Permanent Fund. Now, with Richards having moved into the position of Board Chair, Walker is questioning the decision-making capacity of his former law partner and attorney general, as well as the judgment of the four other board members who voted to remove Rodell. Only Bill Moran voted to retain Rodell after her performance review was completed this week.
Walker owns the dubious distinction of being the father of the demise of the Permanent Fund, as he is the governor who vetoed Alaskans’ lawful and statutorily set dividend in 2016, and set in place the calculation of the dividend as a purely political calculation, rather than formula-driven decision that had worked well for decades.
Politicians complaining about politics is nothing new. Candidates like Edgmon, Stevens, Stedman, Von Imhof, and Walker asking for details of a confidential personnel decision that they know cannot be publicly discussed is political theater and a calculated distraction from the governor’s budget rollout on Wednesday.
The Anchorage Assembly, on a vote of 9-2 Friday afternoon, chose to override Mayor Dave Bronson’s budget vetoes, and instead pushed the city’s budget by nearly $2 million, all the way to the tax cap.
The Anchorage Assembly tax-and-spend majority authorized revenue amounts that are not certifiable to fund sources and exceed projections, according to the Municipal Finance Department, which informed the appropriating body of the fiscal hazard.
“I fundamentally disagree with this decision,” said Mayor Bronson. “Spending in the Municipality ballooned 20% from 2016 to 2021, while our population declined by nearly 15,000 residents. We must reign in spending and put taxpayers first. I will continue fighting to make government more efficient, responsible, and accountable to the people of Anchorage. We simply cannot spend more than we have.”
The Assembly majority has not come to grips that they are spending more than is likely to come in though taxes and fees in the coming year, and that homeowners are already strained by the increases in property taxes.
The Assembly majority, during the special meeting, strenuously objected to the Finance Department’s assertion that the funding sources were not certifiable.
Among the more important obligations of a modern municipal government are providing for public infrastructure and promoting economic growth and development. Elected leaders often struggle to balance these two responsibilities so that each fairly serves their constituents and contributes to the overall health of the community.
When these responsibilities are out of balance, the community suffers.
Seemingly comfortable with an endless appetite for all sorts of public/non-profit projects, Juneau’s Assembly appears to have given little thought to supporting the citizens and private sector that will ultimately pay for their largesse.
The Assembly has blithely approved funding for extraneous projects costing millions of dollars in the last year. Some, such as $1.5 million for the Sealaska Heritage Foundation Art Campus project, are purportedly one-time expenditures. Others, like the million-dollar Vote-by-Mail initiative that provides no benefit, will continue to drag down the budget for years to come.
But those examples are dwarfed by two new projects, the re-imagined Centennial Hall/Juneau Arts & Cultural Center development and the proposed new City Hall. The CH/JACC venture (now dubbed Capital Civic Center) that was proposed as a way to save money has now morphed into a consolidated city-owned endeavor with a preliminary (and staggering) price tag of $77 million.
Together, the two projects could cost in excess of $100 million.
When first discussed several years ago, the estimated cost of a new city hall was pegged at almost $27 million. Who knows what it could cost today with current supply chain issues and rampant inflation?
Centennial Hall upgrades costing approximately $4.5 million were approved by voters in 2017 and those improvements (now underway) are not included in the estimates above. The JACC project was initially slated to cost $18 million – all privately funded by the arts community except for the city’s contribution of the land and a $1 million donation.
After years of sustained effort, JACC supporters have been unable to raise more than an additional $5 million toward their project. In 2019, they insisted the city provide an additional $7.5 million towards the estimated cost but the funding was decisively nixed by Juneau voters.
So given all that, how did Juneau city officials allow the already controversial JACC project to escalate into the risky mega-million behemoth being proposed today? And do projects of this size even make sense given Juneau’s economic and demographic trajectory?
Those are questions to be explored in future columns but, as a backdrop, I propose a wider discussion about how community elected officials and their staff have been empowered to develop a revenue and expenditure scheme that allows them to dole out significant amounts of money for favorite causes with little public oversight.
In normal years, the City and Borough of Juneau annual general governmental operating budget of approximately $100 million is offset more or less by a $50 million contribution from property taxes and an equal amount from sales taxes. Yet, Juneau management of the budget has resulted in outsized and unnecessary accumulations of reserves – sometimes approaching $40 million. This is far in excess of what is required to run the borough on a daily basis.
In effect, Juneau is “over-collecting” property taxes through higher millage rates, socking it away, and then parceling it out in million-dollar chunks for pet projects that may or may not be justified. So it’s no big deal when assemblymembers, as they just did last week, unanimously vote to spend $2 million for a design study for a $77 million Capital Civic Center before they have a clue how much taxpayers would be willing to spend.
Assembly members spin the Capital Civic Center as a “different” project because it has a new name and would be totally owned by the city. Therefore, they can ignore issues raised previously by citizens who objected to this level of profligate spending without the economic base to support it.
With CBJ population stagnant and economy under stress, city elected leaders might reassess their priorities. It’s time to consider lowering taxes, which helps promote more affordable housing, and support serious economic development initiatives that would reduce the cost of living by increasing our tax base. Wildly speculative expenditures on government-owned facilities do little to stabilize or grow Juneau’s economy.
More to come…
After retiring as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in Alaska, Win Gruening began writing op-eds for local and statewide media. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is involved in various local and statewide organizations and currently serves on the board of the Alaska Policy Forum.
There are some words that are hard to take back. During a Zoom teleconferenced call last month, Lynn Canal Conservation’s vice president uttered such words — on a hot microphone.
LCC’s Eric Holle said he’d “like to kill Liz Cornejo.” Cornejo was, until April, an employee of and consultant to the owner of a mining claim south of the Haines highway near the historic Porcupine placer gold camp.
The comment came during a panel discussion about heliskiing operations in the area, another hotly contested subject. According to the local newspaper, there was a momentary pause after the “kill” comment, some uncomfortable laughter, and someone said, “There’s the truth.”
Such is the state of public discourse in the 21st Century. Those who advocate for resource development and jobs do so at their own peril as those on the Left become more emboldened.
The publisher of the local newspaper in Haines brushed it off, and in an editorial he neither excused the Holle statement nor supported Holle’s critics, who called for him to resign from the Lyn Canal Conservation Council. He told the community to calm down and he accused Holle’s critics of being hyperbolic.
As for Cornejo, she hired an attorney who sent a stern letter to Holle, saying what he had said amounted to “hate speech.”
Holle has since apologized in response to a note he had received from Mayor Doug Olerud about the incident. He said he didn’t intend anyone to hear what he had said and had merely flubbed the “mute” button during the call. And he intends to issue an apology to Cornejo.
