Saturday, July 19, 2025
Home Blog Page 1432

Metlakatla votes to change time zones

1

FOR NOW, IT’S IN A TIME WARP

Metlakatla quietly went on Alaska Standard Time last month.

Until January 20 at 2 am, it was the one place in Southeast Alaska that remained on Pacific standard time, out of sync with the rest of the State, which has clocks that fluctuate between winter time — Alaska Standard Time, and summer time — Alaska Daylight Time

Late last year, the Metlakatla Indian Community of 1,460 people voted to align with the rest of the state, starting in November, 2019.

Then, the community sprang forward another decision — to move up the date when the clocks would change to Jan. 20, 2019. That means it is on Daylight Savings Time more than a month before the rest of the state.

When the rest of Southeast Alaska shifts its clocks forward by one hour to enter Daylight Savings Time on March 10, Metlakatla will already be there, and its residents won’t endure the sleepyheaded mornings that others suffer through when they change their clocks each spring. The next time it will change clocks is on Nov. 3, when most of the nation, including Alaska, sets clocks back an hour.

The state is wide enough to encompass four times zones, and actually had four until 1983, when they were merged into one main time zone, and one fragment time zone for the far Aleutian Islands, which are in the same time zone as Hawaii. Back then, the Annette Island Native community decided to to remain on its own time, and shared Pacific Time Zone with much of the West until last month. As land in trust with the U.S. government, it was entitled to do so.

As the years marched on, the management of a village-centric time zone has become more problematic. Ketchikan, where Metlakatlans travel regularly, is just 20 miles away and maintains the same time as the majority of inhabited Alaska.

Metlakatla boat harbor.

HISTORY OF BOLD SETTLEMENT

Metlakatla is a Tsimshian settlement that arrived from British Columbia in the late 19th century with a missionary who had gotten into a doctrinal dispute with British Columbia church authorities and led his flock north to resettle. The United States government gave the Tsimshian colonists title to Annette Island, and eventually made it into a reservation.

In the 1970s, the reservation members opted out of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which was to extinguish reservations in Alaska. Metlakatla, with 132,000 acres of land and sea, has been considered a fortress of tribal sovereignty where most of its inhabitants achieve their status as tribe members through their families.

Eastman pulls surprise, but Knopp votes against Talerico — again

(1-minute read) DEJA VU: KENAI REPUBLICAN SAYS NO TO REPUBLICAN SPEAKER

Rep. David Eastman, a District 11 Republican, surprised House colleagues today by forcing a vote on the House floor for speaker. He nominated Rep. Dave Talerico of District 6, forcing members to get on the record again.

The vote was an even split, with Reps. Gary Knopp of Kenai, Gabrielle LeDoux of Anchorage, and Louise Stutes of Kodiak voting with the Democrats to make the 20-20 split. Daniel Ortiz of Ketchikan is a reliable Democrat vote as well and has been part of the Democrat-led caucus since he was elected as a nonpartisan.

Knopp said he couldn’t support Talerico because Knopp had been planning to present an organizational plan to Republicans today, a plan that fell through earlier when he said his colleagues said they were not ready to hear it. Must Read Alaska spoke to colleagues who said that Knopp misunderstood.

This is the second time Knopp has voted against Talerico as Speaker. On Jan. 22, he also voted against him.

Reps. Sharon Jackson, Tammy Wilson, and Steve Thompson spoke in favor of Talerico as  Speaker and said the vote should take place because the people’s business needs to be attended to.

Rep. Geran Tarr, like Knopp, objected to Talerico as speaker, saying that backroom dealings were underway and that Eastman’s motion was a stunt that destroyed the “good faith” negotiations that were ongoing and the trust that the Democrats were building with Republicans.

[Read: Republicans, Democrats work on 50-50 power split]

[Read: Jan. 22 – Knopp votes with Democrats against Talerico for speaker]

Although Democrat Chris Tuck nominated Democrat Bryce Edgmon as speaker, he quickly rose to decline his nomination “at this time” and Democrats made no further nominations, but also were unwilling to vote in favor of the one nominee on the floor.

The House is adjourned until Wednesday.

Breaking: Bernhardt the new Interior Secretary, replacing Zinke

1

President Donald Trump announced he will appoint Interim Secretary David Bernhardt to be the permanent Interior secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, he will replace Ryan Zinke, who left service last month after being hounded out by opposition groups who created scandals around him.

Trump announced his decision on Twitter today.

[Read: Zinke to leave by end of year.]

He is an attorney who has been a partner at a Colorado law firm, and began working for the Department of Interior in 2001, serving as the department’s solicitor from 2006 to 2009. He was Deputy Secretary for DOI, when nominated by President Trump in 2017, and sworn into office that August. He’s been in acting Secretary since Jan. 2.

Bernhardt grew up in Rifle, Colo. He became involved in politics at age 16, when he went before the Rifle City Council to request the it not levy taxes on arcade games at the teen center he was starting.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Northern Colorado and his law degree from George Washington University Law School.

“David Bernhardt is an excellent choice to be our next Secretary of the Interior,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said in a press release. “He is a strong advocate for the goal of energy dominance, and will help facilitate Alaska’s role in that goal. During his years of private practice and leadership positions at the Interior Department during both the Trump and Bush Administrations, he has gained a deep understanding of Alaska’s unique land issues – including ANILCA. He has also shown a commitment to the Interior Department’s trust responsibility to Alaska Natives. I believe that Mr. Bernhardt will be a great Secretary of the Interior for my state, and for our country.”

Republicans, Democrats could split House control 50-50

(3-minute read) EMERGING PLAN WOULD MEAN CO-SPEAKERS, CO-CHAIRS

It’s been three weeks since the Legislature gaveled in, but still there’s no leadership established in the House.

Now, it appears that a small group of appointed legislators have over the past week crafted a 50-50 power-sharing plan between Democrats and Republicans. Today could be the day.

It’s a plan the Democrats may like very much, since they only have 17 elected members (including Daniel Ortiz of Ketchikan, who identifies as a nonpartisan), and the Republicans have 23.

That split exists in Alaska’s House because three Republicans — Louise Stutes, Gabrielle LeDoux, and Gary Knopp — won’t caucus with their fellow Republicans.

The fragile Republican majority fell apart in December, when Knopp decided to walk out on Republicans. He wants a 50-50 power-sharing split.

Knopp of Kenai has been working for weeks to get Democrat Bryce Edgmon back as Speaker.

Now, Knopp appears to be shifting again as he walks back and forth between ends of the hallways, serving as the power broker. Dave Talerico is once again emerging as a possible co-speaker, if he accepts the role.

A group of eight legislators will today present the 50-50 power-sharing agreement to their respective sides for a vote.

Four of the eight are rookies, never having served in the Legislature before.

The group is composed of Reps. Lance Pruitt, George Rauscher, Josh Revak, and Bart LeBon on the Republican side, and Jonathan Kreiss Tompkins, Daniel Ortiz, Andi Story, and Grier Hopkins for the Democrats.

They’re calling it the Montana Plan, based on what the Big Sky State and others have done at times, when they had a 50-50 split.

What is being talked about would involve co-Speakers, co-chairs for committees, and 50-50 splits on committee memberships, which give Democrats an advantage they were not able to achieve at the ballot box last fall.

The group has even talked about how there may need to be decisions made by a coin toss.

It’s a plan that will likely disenfranchise the more conservative members of the House, which represent the growing Mat-Su Valley, in favor of the Democrat strongholds of Anchorage and Juneau.

The group hopes to have its model firmed up before Gov. Michael Dunleavy releases his budget amendments on Feb. 13.

For Knopp, that appears to be a priority. His overarching goals are to block Gov. Michael Dunleavy’s legislation and to shut out the Mat-Su Valley delegates. He has already said on the record he is afraid of some of Dunleavy’s platform, and he refuses to join a Republican caucus that includes Valley member David Eastman.

What is George Rauscher, a conservative legislator in his second term, who hails from the state’s most conservative district, doing in that group? He’s an unlikely fit.

Rauscher was recruited as a substitute member when last weekend there were not enough Rs in Juneau to participate. Rauscher appears to be a “no” vote on this power-sharing plan, however. He said he’s keeping an eye on things but has been leery of the current direction.

Where’s your Super Bowl party? For Alaska Democrats, in the Speaker’s Office

3

GAME OF THRONES: KICKING BACK IN THE #OCCUPIED CAPITOL FOR THE BIG GAME

Alaskans, like many Americans, are taking the day off to watch the game between the Patriots and the Rams.

In Juneau, now enduring the 20th day of the House of Representatives shutdown, House Democrats are gathered in the Speaker’s Chambers and suites, which is still occupied by last year’s House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, since the votes are not there to come up with a replacement.

Voices can be heard outside the rooms from the halls of the second floor, with an estimated dozen legislators and aides gathered behind the closed doors to watch the game, possibly enjoy beverages and a buffet, and kick back on a Sunday after a long week of work.

Speaker Pro Tem Neal Foster, a Nome Democrat, doesn’t occupy that office, although he is gaveling the sessions in and out as required, while nothing gets done. There is no Speaker, no Rules chair, no Majority or Minority caucus, although rumors abound that there may be a 50-50 power split in the works for this coming week, with Republicans, who have 23 seats, giving over power to the Democrats, who have 17 (plus three Republicans who went with them).

Meanwhile, Edgmon is enjoying the view from his spacious C-suite, and it doesn’t look like he plans to give it up.

The Legislature is now one quarter of the way through its 90-day session.

Ptarmigan wins over Raven in MRAK poll

4

(3-minute read) MOST ALASKANS LIKE THEIR CURRENT STATE BIRD 

In an unscientific opinion poll run by Must Read Alaska on Facebook during a 7-day period ending Sunday, the willow ptarmigan has prevailed over the common raven.

Some 2,700 people took part in the poll, which asked whether the willow ptarmigan should remain the official Alaska state bird, as it has been since Statehood, or if the common raven should be crowned the ornithological symbol of Alaska.

Fairbanks Sen. Scott Kawasaki, in his first important bill filing, has requested the Legislature change out the State bird to raven.

72 percent of participants thought the ptarmigan, that camouflage artist of the tundra, should remain the state bird.

28 percent, however, were going with raven.

Ptarmigan started out strong in the poll and never lost much ground. At one point, it was ahead, 78-22 percent. The poll was widely shared by more than 100 Facebook accounts.

The bill that Kawasaki proposes simply changes the name of the state bird from ptarmigan to raven, and provides no explanation.

But isn’t it really about which bird has the better marketing department?

The ptarmigan isn’t featured in Alaska art as much as the raven is. There are no ptarmigan images on silver bracelets, while ravens are quite popular with paint artists and metalworkers. They are more interesting to photograph.

A more literary bird, the raven is filled with legend and poetic controversy. In Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “The Raven,” the bird symbolizes death. In Tlingit cosmology, it is at times the creator and at other times the trickster.

In Greek mythology, ravens are a symbol of bad luck, and were the gods’ messengers in the mortal world.

In the Islamic Koran’s version of the story of Cain and Abel, the raven taught Cain how to bury Abel, whom he had just murdered. Badass move.

The ptarmigan is considered a easy prey animal, while ravens have so much attitude that occasionally they will even gang up on bald eagles, the symbol of America.

The common raven has been the official bird of the Yukon Territory in Canada since 1986, and also the official bird of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

Craig Compeau, a Fairbanks business owner and backer of the legislation, tried to convince this author of the charm of the raven, with this original poem:

 

Behold the lowly Ptarmigan
A silly little bird

Considered by most of its peers
A brainless fuzzy nerd

It changes as the seasons go from brown to winter white
I think because its maker knew the bird could never fight
The raven on the other hand- is brilliant and tenacious
And it should be Alaska’s bird, if simply on that basis.
It has the keen ability to do math in its head
To make and use for tools what it needs to get ahead
It sits upon a roadkill moose, but can’t get to the feast.
So simulates a howling wolf- and draws the canine beast
It doesn’t take but minutes for the wolf to smell its prey
Then tears it up.. providing Mr Raven his buffet.
The Ptarmigan, conversely, has a shortage of gray matter
The massive grill on semi-trucks is where they often splatter
And if a hungry person had the urge to catch one whole
They likely could, on snowshoes, with my Chitina dip net pole.
So let’s give Mr. Raven the respect that he should get
And make him our new State bird, there is nothing left to vet
For those that want the Ptarmigan, (that fragile little group)
Must be content just knowing that it makes a decent soup.

BUT STILL…

With all that mythology, cosmology, and poetry, Alaskans still stuck with the uncomplicated ptarmigan.

In the comments underneath the poll, many Alaskans agreed that the raven is a smart, cagey bird, and that the ptarmigan is none too swift in the IQ department. But most of the comments centered around the triviality of the entire Kawasaki bill, indicating that he has too much time on his hands.

Now, back to the game.

Swift child-predator busts show Troopers back governor’s ‘get tough on crime’ words

6

(3-minute read) CRIMINALS HAVE BEEN WARNED; NOW THEY’RE BEING ARRESTED

“If you are a criminal, this is going to be a very dangerous place for you, starting now. I strongly suggest you get out while you can. No more coddling, no more excuses.  Your days are over.”

When Gov. Michael Dunleavy said those words in his State of the State speech on Jan. 22, he wasn’t just channeling Clint Eastwood.

Ten days later, three men who sexually abused minors were taken into custody in Western Alaska after being arrested  in three different communities.

One arrest was the result of a months-long investigation, but the other two arrests happened relatively quickly after the men’s perversions against children were reported by rural residents — a shift to swifter justice, as promised Dunleavy.

On Thursday, Devin Darrough,  a 56-year-old Dillingham man, was indicted after an investigation into his sexual abuse of two children multiple times.

Troopers received a report of his abuse in July. Both of the children were under the age of 13. His arrest was for two counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree.

Darrough during that time period was the corrections sergeant at the Dillingham Contract Jail. He is now housed in that jail, with no bond. Dillingham Police assisted in the arrest.

On Friday, Timothy Fisher, a 47-year-old Kwethluk man, was arrested and taken into custody in the village of Napaskiak. Troopers transported him to the Yukon Kuskokwim Correctional Center.

Back on Dec. 13,  a concerned Kwethluk citizen reported to a village police officer that a young child was sexually abused by Fisher.

By Jan. 31, 2019, a grand jury indicted Fisher on charges of four counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree, one count of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree, one count of sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree, incest and indecent exposure.

The arrest came just six weeks after the initial report.

Troopers also arrested Jeffrey Phillip, 33, of Kwigillingok, after a jury in Bethel indicted him for sexual abuse of a minor since the child was 11 years old.

Phillip was a tribal police officer when the alleged abuses occurred, and he took secret nude photos of the victim and sent the victim photos of his own genitalia, according to the Trooper report. Phillip is held in the Yukon Kuskokwim Correctional Center in Bethel on four counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree, two counts of third degree sexual abuse of a minor, one count of incest, and one count of indecent exposure.

The initial report on Phillips’ crimes was made to state authorities on Dec. 27, 2018. The investigation and arrest took just one month.

Instead of allowing investigations to drag on, hoping to gather everything possible to prosecute, State Troopers are now getting the best information they can and getting the arrest made, and perpetrators off the streets.

The Department of Public Safety has also made numerous large and midsize drug busts for substances coming into small communities, according to a person close to the department.

“The word needs to get out. We’re taking action and arresting.”

During his remarks last month, Dunleavy told Alaskans, “But to the criminals, and to the rapists and molesters who see women and children as nothing more than opportunities, I say this to you: We will do everything in our power to stop you, apprehend you, and put you in prison for a very long time.”

This month, it appears the new sheriff is, indeed, in town. And in rural Alaska.

Former state lawyer gets away with a crime — again

5

By ART CHANCE
SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR

Erin Pohland was a State of Alaska assistant attorney general. Then, nine years ago, she started to get in trouble.

On Dec. 30, 2010, Pohland had one excellent adventure when she and a friend were caught shoplifting hoards of shoes, but essentially got away with it.

[Read: Shoplifting shoes leads to a pair of disbarments]

She next came to law enforcement’s notice when she became involved with a case of forged union interest cards being turned in to the Alaska Labor Relations Agency.

Pohland, you see, was the State attorney assigned to advise the State’s labor agency in dealing with what appeared to be a criminal act.

Along the way Pohland neglected to inform the State that the person thought to be the forger was actually Pohland’s close friend and landlord, from whom she rented a suite of rooms in the suspect’s home.

[Read: Conviction of former Assistant AG overturned]

A search of Pohland’s computer reveal that she had actively worked with the suspect in helping her to avoid charges and Pohland, in her role as the labor agency’s official counsel on the matter, misled the State as to the appropriate course of action.

She was dismissed from the State and charged criminally with official misconduct.

The trial court convicted her, she appealed to the State Court of Appeals, which found that the computer was not legally searched by the State Troopers, and any evidence obtained from the computer was suppressed. Charges were ultimately dismissed.

The State Department of Law asked for reconsideration. On Friday, the Court of Appeals ruled that it still agreed with its first decision.

[Read: The Appeals Court ruling after the rehearing of the case, which has the entire timeline.]

So, although guilty as sin, she’s free as a bird. With the conviction erased, she can go on to inflict her legal skills on someone else.

I’m not going to lament the fact that when a lefty commits a bad act any place where lefties are in charge, it’s not a bad act at all.

What is worthy of discussion is why this Pohland mess happened.

I’ve done dozens of investigations of State employee misconduct, some of them with criminal implications. It is a delicate business and in some ways more art than science. It is easy to taint a criminal investigation with actions taken while conducting an administrative investigation. But the people who do labor relations in the Department of Administration know how to do investigations properly, and in my memory the State has never had a criminal investigation of employee misconduct tainted by the conduct of its own investigators in administrative proceedings.

The policy guidance that I put out in 2003, which remains in effect today explicitly directs supervisors and managers to immediately involve labor relations if there is a possibility of the misconduct also being a criminal act.

Yet, neither the Department of Law nor the Alaska Labor Relations Agency have much experience with investigating and disciplining or dismissing their own employees. Since it was created in the early 1990s, there has been almost no staff turnover at the Labor Relations Agency, other than from retirement. I recall no disciplinary actions there, or if there were any, they were so minor that they didn’t come to the attention of the Department of Administration.

Most of the employees of the Department of Law are partially exempt and essentially are political appointees. Any sort of formal discipline is extremely rare; so rare I don’t recall any in my 20 years.

Assistant attorneys general do get in trouble from time to time, but they usually just quietly resign and live to fight another day.

Some get asked to resign when the administration changes, and most also quietly go and live to fight another day. Some don’t and the State has lost some wrongful discharge suits by assistant attorneys general who were dismissed at the change of administration.

There’s the rub in Alaska employment law; the Alaska Supreme Court has held that there is an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing in any employment contract, and it takes amazingly little to form a contract in the eyes of the courts. The reality is that no public employee and few private employees are really “at will” or “serve at the pleasure” employees because the courts have reserved to themselves the right to substitute their judgment for that of the employer in discipline and dismissal cases.

Then there are the State Troopers and the inadequate search warrant that let Ms. Pohland walk.

First, although the press reports and even the court decisions lay the inadequate warrant on the Troopers, it is extraordinarily unlikely that the Troopers prepared the warrant. At most they described the facts and circumstances to an assistant attorney general who prepared and presented the warrant to the court.

Pohland was simply bycatch in the search; the warrant was for her friend and landlord. I have to wonder why the Troopers and the Department of Law didn’t know that the suspect had a tenant and who that tenant was. It is pretty well established law that if you are going to search a dwelling you need to know if it is a multi-family dwelling and tailor the warrant to that fact. I don’t know that a Trooper should be expected to know that, though probably so, but an assistant attorney general certainly should.

Frankly, I never used the Troopers for white collar crime if there was local law enforcement. The Troopers are really good at some things, but white collar crime isn’t their thing. I really don’t know why the Troopers were brought into this matter since it happened in the Municipality of Anchorage, and Anchorage has pretty good white collar crime abilities. I don’t know if anybody will be interested enough in this debacle to do an after-action analysis, but if they do, why the Troopers were the criminal investigators inside city limits of Anchorage is a good place to start.

The record is clear that it was a Labor Relations Agency staff member who first suspected the forgery union cards, and had some idea that Pohland’s advice on the matter was tainted by her exceedingly close association with the forger.

Why did the Labor Relations Agency not go to the Department of Labor or the Department of Administration’s human resources and labor relations people for advice on how to proceed? Just who was driving this train? My conclusion is that nobody was driving it, and that is why it ended up in the ditch.

I have to believe that the Alaska Labor Relations Agency was totally taken aback by the forgeries. Despite some of my conservative friends’ fears, public sector labor relations in Alaska is pretty lawful and orderly. Some of us who’ve been involved in it are pretty rough players, but that is like the old saw about gun control: An armed society is a polite society. If you both know the other guy can really hurt you, you mind your manners. There really hasn’t been any significant conflict or controversy involving the State in a decade and a half. It seems that everyone just stumbled into this.

Maybe it is a good thing that the new commissioner of Administration Kelly Tshibaka has a background with the federal government’s Inspectors General. Alaska desperately needs a functionary whose job is to make sure the State obeys the law and follows its own rules.

Right now, and since Statehood, it has been up to the personal integrity of individual State employees to make the State obey the law; that is a heavy burden.

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. 

Rock and roll review: The year in earthquakes

1

(3-minute read) 2018 WAS A RECORD YEAR FOR ALASKA 

The Alaska Earthquake Center says that there were 55,000 earthquakes in Alaska in 2018. The figure is not exact, of course. The center is still assembling the data.

The histogram chart above made by Lea Gardine of the Earthquake Center shows daily earthquake counts. The pie chart indicates how much energy the Nov. 30 quake released compared to the other 49,999, give or take a temblor.

It wasn’t just your imagination — 2018 really did set a record for Alaska earthquakes.

The previous high was set in 2017, but that record — 42,989 — was established due to the 157 new monitoring stations in place, collecting more data in remote parts of the state, especially in the north and west.  Before that, the record was set in 2014 with 40,686.

The expanded monitoring network increased the total in 2018 as well. But even taking the new monitors into account, it was a rock-and-roll year, and it included two large earthquakes: a 7.9 magnitude quake in the Gulf of Alaska off of Kodiak last Jan. 23, and a 7.0 quake in Southcentral on Nov. 30.

“This was an endurance test for our analysts, who manually check the waveforms for every earthquake and scan the data for earthquakes the automatic system missed. Their work is largely invisible to the public, but they deserve special recognition for what they accomplished this year,” the center wrote in its year-end summary, which is linked here.

The Top Ten Hits

In 2018, Alaska had the top 22 earthquakes in the nation. The top ones were:

  1. M7.9 Jan. 23 Offshore Kodiak
  2. M7.0 Nov. 30 Anchorage
  3. M6.6 Aug. 15 Tanaga Island
  4. M6.4 Aug. 12 southwest of Kaktovik
  5. M6.3 Aug. 22 Tanaga Island
  6. M6.1 Aug. 12 southwest Kaktovik
  7. M6.1 Dec. 30 Cold Bay
  8. M5.9 Aug. 25 Chagulak Island
  9. M5.8 July 18 southwest of Sand Point
  10. 4 tied at M5.7, including the largest aftershock from the Nov. 30 Anchorage quake

(Note that in some cases, the linked event pages have outdated magnitudes.)

UNUSUAL: 6.4 KAKTOVIK EARTHQUAKE

The center noted that the most unusual earthquake, from a seismological standpoint, was the Aug. 12 6.4 magnitude quake in the Sadlerochit Mountains, 52 miles southwest of Kaktovik and 25 miles south of the Beaufort Sea coast.

It was the largest ever recorded north of the Brooks Range. It also had an after shock of 6.0 on the same day, which was the second largest earthquake ever recorded in the region. Two big quakes on the same day in the same place is, indeed, unusual. They were both felt as far south as Fairbanks.