2:30 PM, AUG. 9, 2016 – Six years hence, and Alaskans still think of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens as the beloved family member who will come home soon, smile on his face and some pithy observation, perhaps about the Internet.
Things are just not the same without him.
It was right about now, on Aug. 9, 2010, when the small floatplane plane carrying Senator Stevens and eight others crashed about 10 miles northwest of Aleknagik, and it was a moment when Alaskans felt their history had changed forever.
The weather was bad, and the mountainous area was generally flown under visual flight rules, with no radar support for flights that low. No one knows why the plane crashed — perhaps the pilot had a heart attack or stroke. “Temporary unresponsiveness” of the 62-year-old pilot was how the National Transportation Safety Board described it the following year. Five of the nine onboard died in that crash, including pilot Theron Smith, who had suffered a small stroke four years prior.
Stevens served as U.S. Senator for Alaska from December 24, 1968, until January 3, 2009. He was a lion for Alaska, having played a major role in the creation of Statehood, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Few remember his strong support of women’s sports and the work he did as a sponsor of Title 9, as well as the establishment of the U.S. Olympic Committee. He sponsored Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
After being targeted by a US Justice Department witch hunt in 2008, he narrowly lost his re-election to Mark Begich. The Natives of Alaska abandoned him at the ballot box, which ended up being one of the biggest hurts of all, as friends would later tell it. Nearly all rural precincts voted for Begich over Stevens that year. But before sentencing the entire case was thrown out because of gross prosecutorial misconduct.
For his family, today is not just another day. Although Stevens served more time in the U.S. Senate than any Republican in history, he was father, husband and friend.
Ted Stevens speaks a group at the Petroleum Club in Anchorage on April 24, 2009 at a fundraiser for Dan Sullivan for Mayor. Steve Strait photo
‘A LION WHO RETREATED BEFORE NOTHING’
This blog’s writer had been a speechwriter for Gov. Sean Parnell for merely a few weeks before the fatal crash.
I remember the growing tension in the air on the 17th floor of he Atwood Building as the governor was awaiting official word on what was already feared.
The working over of his formal remarks was painful and I did not feel up to the task. No one ever is ready for such an enormous and tragic event.
Governor Parnell looked at what I had written and, with uncharacteristic impatience, said: “No, it has to be bigger. He was a lion for Alaska.”
The final version included that phrase, which is as true today as when Governor Parnell spoke it spontaneously and with reverence: “Senator Ted Stevens fought hard for our future in Alaska. He was larger than life. Ted was a lion who retreated before nothing. He was a devoted husband… a loving father. His impact on Alaska will live on in future generations.”
The memorial service for Ted Stevens in Girdwood, on Aug. 29, 2010. Steve Strait photo
The Chicago Tribune shoots women athletes in the foot: While announcing Alaskan Corey Cogdell-Unrein’s win of a bronze medal, there was simply not enough room in the headline for “second bronze” or “trap shooter,” what with having to mention her husband and the NFL Bears.
The newspaper blunders on: “This is Cogdell-Unrein’s third Olympic games, but Unrein, a defensive end in his second season with the Bears, was unable to get away from training camp to join her in Rio and see her in the Olympics for the first time.”
By the time you had your first cup of coffee today, the Alaska Marine Highway System unloaded a massive life-sized humpback whale sculpture. It’s Juneau’s bronze metal artwork.
After years of contention and fund-raising, the six-ton whale headed through the rain for the Douglas Bridge this morning, where the sculpture will be erected and properly feted. It’s taken 10 years, and the dedication is another year away, but what’s another year in the history of Juneau public art?
We found a KTOO video of the whale en route to downtown Juneau this morning (congrats to the digital video guy for his early-Monday efforts). Here’s a screenshot:
MEANWHILE, IN ANCHORAGE, A LONELY PARK
Every time we do a site visit to Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’ new parking-garage-park atop the 5th Avenue Mall parking structure, we see the same thing: Not much … Nothing to see here, folks … Move along.
The parking garage’s top level cost taxpayers $11 million to build, back when the garage was constructed, but it’s now it is off-limit to cars as has become the home of the wind and an occasional lonely seagull. The idea was to have a playful downtown park that would be used by all the hipsters the mayor was hoping to attract, since the Towne Square Park has been taken over by the homeless. Whatever becomes of the rooftop park, it appears to need that certain something. The photo is meme-worthy.
Mayor Berkowitz’ jailyard-theme park on top of the 5th Ave. Mall Parking Garage. All it lacks is razor wire.
BUSINESS REPORT CARD
The envelope, please. It’s no surprise that conservatives do better when it comes to protecting business owners, entrepreneurs, and job creators. Here’s the list.
Anchorage Democrat Geran Tarr, in an expansive and unguarded interview with reporter Steve Quinn, opened up about her doubts about the direction of the AK-LNG project being managed by Alaska Gov. Bill Walker and his Alaska Gasline Development Agency.
Rep. Geran Tarr
The interview appears in the current issue of Petroleum News, which is behind a subscriber paywall but will be in print on Monday morning.
Tarr, who is in her fourth year on the House Resources Committee, not only questions the background of the AGDC President Keith Meyer, who has run risky-but-failed projects in the past, she points out the instability of the governor’s oil and gas team, with new players in charge every few months.
At every quarter update to the Legislature, a different person has been reporting to the House and Senate Finance Committees.
Tarr said that at the outset of the Bill Walker Administration, she thought it was more normal because it was a new governor in office, but “we haven’t got to a point of stability. We’ve had some pretty major departures from people I’ve had a lot of confidence in like Marty Rutherford and Mark Myers.” Myers was commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources, and Marty was his deputy commissioner, who became acting commissioner before leaving at the end of June.
“It’s surprising that folks would come on in the beginning of the administration and leave just a little over a year after taking the job,” she told Petroleum News. “Generally a person who takes such a high level position is making more of a commitment than that. That’s been difficult. As you lose that institutional knowledge, the next person doesn’t know what happened before.”
Tarr voted to create AK-LNG and has been very involved and outspoken about the process. “She’s done her homework and invested a lot of time in understanding the project,” said one of her legislative colleagues.
She has been a reliable left-leaning Democrat, promoting more taxes on the oil industry and criticizing Republicans routinely for their policies and politics. But she recently wrote an op-ed in which she pushed back on Gov. Walker for threatening her if she did not go along with his fiscal plan. “I must push back when the Governor says that this is about my election. Again, it’s a matter of fairness and equality, I have shared that with Governor Walker,” she wrote.
Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN, is now the head of a mental health advocacy group in Juneau. YouTube Screen Shot.
DISGRACED ACORN CHIEF IS ORGANIZING IN JUNEAU
A notorious national organization’s founder is now leading a local mental health advocacy group in Alaska’s capital.
Wade Rathke was the founder of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
ACORN sucked down millions of dollars of taxpayer money and was on tape committing voter registration improprieties. The scandal-laden organization was investigated by the FBI for a “coordinated national scam” of voter registration fraud.
“ACORN is not an organization that should be subsidized by taxpayers’ hard-earned money,” Speaker John Boehner wrote in 2008. “ACORN, which for years has been closely connected with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, appears to have played a key role in the irresponsible schemes that led to the recent financial meltdown that has already cost Americans trillions of dollars in the form of government bailouts and lost retirement savings. Congress has not yet held investigatory hearings to examine the details of ACORN’s involvement in these schemes. Until credible oversight hearings are conducted and completed in a manner that clears ACORN of wrongdoing, the organization should not receive taxpayer money.”
It gets worse. In 2008, The New York Times reported that Rathke’s brother had embezzled $948,607 from the group and its affiliated charitable organizations. An employee of ACORN’s accounting firm told Rathke that an investigation had led to discovery of the embezzlement.
“Clearly, this was an uncomfortable, conflicting and humiliating situation as far as my family and I were concerned,” Wade told the New York Times, “and so the real decisions on how to handle it had to be made by others.”
ACORN decided to cover it up, and not inform staff, law enforcement or even members of the board.
Wade Rathke told the Times that “the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a ‘weapon’ into the hands of enemies of ACORN, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to ACORN’s often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.”
He was forced to resign from ACORN but still has leadership ties to the ACORN International network. In a message to his supporters, he noted that ACORN International launched a group in South Korea and in Prague. The Prague group was called the “ACORN Comrades Club.”
Rathke now runs the newly formed Juneau Mental Health Consumer Action Network, or MCAN. What can possibly go wrong?
MOVING ON
Bruce Tangeman, former deputy Revenue commissioner under the Sean Parnell Administration, is gone from his job as CFO at the Alaska Gasline Development Agency.
He exited suddenly last week as the Walker Administration continues to conform the gasline agency to his purpose. The gasline agency is supposed to be independent of the Governor’s Office, but as reported here earlier this year, the two have become indistinguishable.
Also hitting the door is external affairs director Miles Baker, who is taking a month off to travel and unwind before pounding the pavement for work.
Others leaving their positions include Deputy Legislative Director is Lacy Wilcox.
Nathan Butzlaff is leaving the DC Office of the Governor, heading to the Midwest.
MOVING UP
Sarah Palin has found a buyer for her Arizona house, according to the Washington Post. That means Alaskans are likely to see more of her, unless she secures a spot in the Trump Administration. Just sayin’.
Craig Fleener is now top lobbyist for the State of Alaska, and is house hunting in Washington, D.C. He will be known as the governor’s director of state and federal relations, and is possibly the highest paid employee of the state. Facing a real learning curve in DC without Nathan Butzlaff to help him, Fleener will also remain the Arctic advisor to the governor.
Gov. Bill Walker says state government is cut to the bone.
REDUCTIONS HAVE LARGELY BEEN THROUGH ATTRITION
BY WIN GRUENING
The Walker Administration and a supportive legislative minority have struggled mightily to persuade Alaskans the budget really has been “cut to the bone” and it’s time to restructure the Permanent Fund and implement taxes to balance the budget.
As part of their campaign to convince Alaskans the budget has been substantially reduced, Pat Pitney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, is making presentations around the state. At a recent Commonwealth North meeting in Anchorage, she explained state employee numbers have dropped by 1,700 – from 26,500 two years ago to 24,800 today.
These reductions have happened mostly through attrition as only 70 employees actually received pink slips. It should be noted this includes the University of Alaska, Legislature, and Court System and other entities outside the purview of the executive branch.
Meanwhile, over 3,000 Alaskan oil sector workers will have lost their jobs by the end of 2016 with more to come next year. Alaska now has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 6.7 percent.
Claims by administration officials notwithstanding, the public has been confused by conflicting information regarding what and how much has been cut. Accounting gymnastics allow money to be moved around, appearing to reduce the operating budget only to have the expense appear somewhere else. Comparisons with expenditures in the past may not tell the whole story.
Even though most Alaskans realize Permanent Fund restructuring and increased taxes are inevitable, many remain skeptical that sufficient steps have been taken to reduce government and are reluctant to pay new taxes and sacrifice part of their Permanent Fund dividend to subsidize government largesse. That’s why many legislators returned to their districts without considering new tax measures, knowing they would face many voters this fall who feel this way.
FIT, FAT OR FIDDLING
How “fat” is measured is largely in the eye of the beholder. The number of reduced state employees may or may not have included Craig Richards, who was Gov. Bill Walker’s Attorney General until he abruptly resigned last month. He was replaced shortly thereafter but re-hired on a contract and is no longer counted as a state employee.
Richards’ contract calls for payments of up to $25,000/month — over twice what he made as Attorney General. (His contract is limited initially to $50,000 but can be amended at the discretion of the State). One might ask how many other positions have been replaced under some contractual arrangement and whether this distorts the actual number of reductions cited by the Administration.
Assuming the number of reduced employees is correct, one wonders why total employee compensation hasn’t decreased accordingly. The biggest reason, of course, is attributable to state salaries and benefits that are primarily determined by union contracts.
Alaska is now experiencing, in the words of many, the worst fiscal crisis it has ever faced. Yet, many of the expense reductions undertaken by the private sector have been overlooked or minimized by the State. In addition to layoffs, it is commonplace in the private sector to freeze employee pay, eliminate overtime pay, forgo merit increases and bonuses, reduce or forgo contributions to health insurance plans, and temporarily furlough employees in order to reduce costs when faced with severe budget deficits.
So why is the State still signing off on union contracts containing salary and benefit provisions that offset savings from employee reductions and only worsen the deficit?
The State concluded negotiations this year with the Alaska State Employees Association (ASEA) that represents 8,125 employees – 51.3 percent of the total executive branch workforce with a yearly payroll of $466 million. It called for continued merit/step increases that automatically give raises to employees over the life of the contract. However, freezing merit/step increases in currently pending contracts then could potentially have saved $70 million in the executive branch alone.
Union negotiators also succeeded in getting the State to cover ASEA employee healthcare premiums at the same level as 2016. That exceedingly generous contribution will eventually top $17,000 per employee annually without requiring state employees to contribute anything.
Alaska remains one of a handful of states reimbursing 100 percent of premiums for employee health coverage while across the United States, municipal employees contribute an average of 20 percent of their health care costs.
Surely state employees are hard-working dedicated people but with a benefit package around 50 percent of base pay, it’s much richer than comparable private sector employees. Isn’t it time to consider some sharing of healthcare costs?
Employee salary and benefits containing these kind of “stealth” provisions, if modified, offer potential savings that must be considered in light of sacrifices being made by workers in the private sector.
Unfortunately, as long as examples like this are ignored, Gov. Walker will have a difficult time making the case the budget has been cut to the bone.
Win Gruening retired as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in 2012. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is active in community affairs as a 30-plus year member of Juneau Downtown Rotary Club and has been involved in various local and statewide organizations. This opinion first appeared in the Juneau Empire.
CRISIS OF CHARACTER: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate. By Gary Byrne.
Gary Byrne was the Secret Service agent who stood guard as the last defense before someone could get to the president.
He saw it all and heard it all, including the comings and goings of Monica Lewinsky, the expletive-laced haranguing by Hillary Clinton, her merciless berating of Vince Foster, her volcanic temper. He even was the first to see the black eye she gave Bill Clinton during one of their many violent arguments that involved a shattered vase.
Now Byrne is telling all that he knows, so that if America chooses Hillary as president, it’s doing so with eyes wide open.
Why tell now? “I want you to hear my story. It’s about the men and women risking their lives to protect this nation.
“And more importantly, it’s about how the Clintons must never again be allowed to put them—or you and your children—at risk,” he writes.
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services has, for the second year in a row, suspended inflation pay increases to Medicaid providers.
Payment rates remain frozen at the FY 2015 level.
Medicaid providers are feeling frozen out as they absorb what amounts to a 5 percent cut in pay across two years. Several small providers report that they haven’t been paid by the State for work performed over a year ago.
Medical inflation is substantially higher than inflation in other areas of the economy. The US health care inflation is 5.41 percent annually, higher in Alaska. For example, the national average for a doctor’s visit is $105.03, but it’s $169.40 in Anchorage and $173.50 in Fairbanks.
“This will hit hard on the most needy population,” said one State of Alaska health systems expert who asked to remain anonymous. “The care providers are dropping out in droves because some of them are getting 24 cents on the dollar for some of the services they provide.”
Last year, the total loss of funding for the Medicaid program was nearly $100 million. Last year’s freezing of inflation payments robbed providers of $8 million in uncompensated care costs; this year it may be higher.
“It’s the second big ‘I told you so moment’ on Medicaid expansion,” she said.
According to the department’s notification, the freeze in payments to Medicaid providers is a result of budget shortfalls:
“While the department hoped that this suspension would only be necessary for one fiscal year, significant fiscal challenges continue to exist. Accordingly, DHSS has determined that it must again implement cost containment measures under AS 47.07.036 and will need to suspend inflation adjustments for Medicaid rates in state fiscal year 2017. ”
Another way of looking at it is this: The automatic step pay increases for public employees, which costs the state $70 million a year, has eaten away at funds that could have been available for Medicaid providers, who are mainly in the private and nonprofit sector.
The department will need to issue emergency regulations to implement this suspension of payments.
ONE YEAR SINCE EXPANSION ANNOUNCED BY WALKER
Last July, Gov. Walker unilaterally expanded Medicaid in Alaska to include regular working age adults who earn up to 138 percent of the federally established poverty level.
By 2020, the State of Alaska will pay 10 percent of the exploding health care costs cost for the expansion population, which could be as much as 40,000 Medicaid recipients in Alaska.
But even in Year 1, with 19,000 new enrollees in Medicaid under the expansion, the governor had to come up with a huge patch for the health care boat over in the private health insurance pool, a disaster caused by Obamacare.
Gov. Walker introduced HB 374, which bailed out the state’s high-risk health insurance sector to the tune of $55 million. Without the patch, it was likely the entire Alaska health insurance market — down to one provider now — would sink.
The $55 million comes from taxes levied on most insurance policies in Alaska, including those that are not health care policies.
That bailout is seen as a harbinger of what to expect as the state picks up more of the costs of Medicaid.
Recent federal studies show the average cost of Medicaid expansion enrollees was 49% higher in fiscal year 2015 than Health and Human Services had projected.
REFORM COULD HELP
Senate Bill 74, sponsored by Sen. Pete Kelly of Fairbanks, could save the state $75 million a year. It was signed into law by Gov. Walker and includes:
more telemedicine
more primary care case management and health homes for people who have chronic health conditions and behavioral health needs
reforming the behavioral health system
enhancing a public/private partnership to reduce non-urgent use of emergency room services
setting up better protections to prevent opioid dependence
A report was issued for each state and it was taken at face value by the Alaska Dispatch News, without an iota of critical thinking applied by either the report or the reportage.
The Alaska report itself is a fluffy piece of propaganda favoring open immigration laws and regulations, which is why the benefits of immigration are glowingly detailed at length.
Yet the report carefully avoids reporting any of the costs of legal immigration, illegal immigration, and refugees. It is a dishonest “study,” and readers are being hoodwinked when the newspaper falls for it as gospel.
According to the report, immigrants in Alaska grew by more than 19 percent between the years of 2010-2014, while the immigrant population nationally grew by under 6 percent.
With immigration occurring in Alaska at more than three times the national rate, readers deserve a critical look at both sides of the social and economic equation.
The report claims: “In 2014, immigrant-led households in Alaska earned $1.8 billion dollars—or 8.2 percent of all income earned by Alaskans that year. With those earnings, the state’s foreign-born households were able to contribute more than one in every 13 dollars paid by Alaska residents in state and local tax revenues, payments that support important public services such as public schools and police.”
Some $60.7 million went to state and local taxes from immigrants, the report says. This is a remarkable assertion, since residents pay no state taxes and few local taxes. There’s no mention of whether immigrants pay property taxes, since there’s no mention of home ownership. And yet, the Dispatch passes this information along to the unsuspecting reader as solid data.
If the report is correct that immigrant-led households earned $1.8 billion, and paid $435 million in combined taxes, that is an extraordinary deal for immigrants, in the less than 25 percent tax range. Most tax-paying Americans (at least the 49 percent who pay federal taxes) give the government more than 33 percent in total taxes.
The report continues on to say immigrants are more likely to work than “native-born” Alaskans. The report fails to mention that this is not unusual at all, and has always been the case, since immigrants tend to be more able-bodied, and that very few disabled, aged, very sick, or mentally ill people are admitted to the country, and those same disabled, aged, very sick, or mentally ill populations also don’t have the stamina to survive the trip that most illegals must make. Those allowed legal entrance are somewhat screened for their abilities to work.
OTHER FACTS GO UNREPORTED
Illegal immigrants, in fact, are not properly separated out in the report, but a quick peek at data available from the Heritage Foundation shows that illegal immigrants use more in benefits than they contribute in taxes. This is not a criticism, but a statement of fact as presented by a credible research organization.
The Heritage Foundation study discovered that illegal residents contribute about $10,000 in total taxes (federal, state and local taxes) but use $24,000 in entitlements and social services. Thus, the average illegal immigrant costs $14,000 more than he or she contributes through taxes.
Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, says the cost per illegal immigrant is actually much higher than that.
His analysis shows that 62 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants were clients of at least one significant welfare program, according to a statement he made to Investors Business Daily.
“Bottom line, illegal immigrants have a 10th grade education on average,” he said. “In the modern American economy people with that level of education tend to make modest wages and as result pay relatively little in taxes, at the same time they tend to use a lot in public services, regardless of legal status. In the case of illegals, they often receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children. If you had to put it in a bumper sticker it would be: ‘there is a high cost to cheap labor.’ ”
Camarota published his own “native” vs. “immigrants” employment statistics last month. In his usage, “native” means “American born.” His study did not receive the kind of coverage that the propagandists received in the media, but is worth a look because it shows remarkable stability through time.
Immigrants may offer many benefits to our society and our state. There is no doubt they enrich our lives and our communities and help us understand the world.
But let’s see the facts, rather than a romanticized, scrubbed version of them packaged to push an agenda — at least if it’s front-page material offered up as news.
Areas in the Aleutian chain that are subject to the new rule preventing predator control by the State of Alaska. More than 77 million acres have been taken away from State predator management by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
STATE STAYS SILENT WHILE FEDS TAKE CONTROL
It’s our land, the feds say. And with the swoosh of a pen, another 77 million acres is now off limits to State of Alaska wildlife management practices.
The final ruling came yesterday from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The State remained silent as it yielded the sovereignty it was guaranteed at Statehood to federal control.
By taking management of fish and wildlife away from the State, the federal government broke another of its Statehood Act promises, and rural Alaskans lost even more access to subsistence.
The State of Alaska stood by and kicked at the dirt.
Fish and Wildlife’s action came on top of the 20 million acres already taken by the U.S. Park Service just a few months ago. In October, the Park Service overrode Alaska regulations pertaining to fish, wildlife and, specifically, to predator control. The Bureau of Land Management jumped in on the action and took yet another million acres in the Fortymile Area last month.
Nearly one hundred million acres gone from state management in six months.
The State of Alaska has fought this in the past because comprehensive management of fish and game is, quite clearly in law, a State right promised by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA).
But in 2016, the State seems to have lost its will to fight the federal government on just about anything. Under the Gov. Walker Administration, the federal bureaucracy has moved in, and State sovereignty has stepped back.
Strangely, the final rule by Fish and Wildlife Service applies only to Alaska refuge land, not to other states. While the congressional delegation had asked FWS for an exemption for Alaska, what the agency instead did was make an example out of the state. Similar rules in other states will likely follow.
The Walker Administration remained mute. Why not file an injunction? Attorney General Craig Richards, who stepped down in June, said that no one had been harmed by this rule, therefore no legal action could be taken. One would need another John Sturgeon to step forward and file a lawsuit, he implied.
Another John Sturgeon will be hard to find. Most people aren’t willing, nor do they have the resources, to fight the federal government all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Brown bear sow with cub in Kodiak. Photo, Lisa Hupp/USFWS
THIS PREDATOR, NOT THAT PREDATOR
Alaska has more than half of the wildlife refuges in the nation. When ANILCA was written, it was done so in such a way that refuges encompassed huge ecosystems. The priority, as intended by ANILCA, was to ensure that wildlife remained abundant and subsistence hunting could continue. And that management would be comprehensively run by the State of Alaska.
But under the new FWS rules, the interpretation is to prioritize preservation without human intervention. With no predator management, the equilibrium will now shift in favor of wolves, coyote, and bear. Their population will take priority over human subsistence. The State can no longer intervene to manipulate a population, such as thin a pack of coyotes so that more Dall sheep lamb will survive to reverse the currently declining sheep populations in large areas of Alaska, or thin a wolf pack to ensure more moose or caribou.
Alaska game managers know that without predator control, the moose and caribou populations will actually decrease.
The new rules say that if a population wanes for whatever reason, including too many wolves or global warming for example, the federal government will end subsistence hunting.
WHY SO SILENT, GOVERNOR WALKER?
Gov. Bill Walker
Within the last six months, 100 million acres has been simply taken away from hunters by the three federal agencies: Park Service, BLM and FWS.
Alaskans expect their government to defend State’s rights. They expect a maverick like Gov. Walker to throw down the gauntlet and actually engage in civil disobedience himself to stand for State’s rights. Wally Hickel would have.
But the governor didn’t bother to beat his chest. He didn’t even shoot out a press release.
The reason Gov. Walker is silent is simple: He needs the cooperation of these very agencies to get federal permitting for the gasline he is attempting to build, which crosses vast areas of federal land. He cannot afford to irritate the Washington bureaucracy that will rule on his access.
And so, with the gasline as the No. 1 priority for Walker, Alaskan hunters and subsistence users are watching federal control encroach into the majority of our fish and game management areas, because our governor is too fearful to challenge Washington, and too obsessed with his one big plan for Alaska.
DELEGATION REACTS
Congressman Don Young issued a swift rebuke to the ruling yesterday:
“Make no mistake – the size, scope and impact of this rule is enormous. With over 76.8 million acres of wildlife refuges in Alaska – an area equaling the size of New Mexico – this unilateral power grab fundamentally alters Alaska’s authority to manage wildlife across all areas of our state.
“Not only does this rule undermine promises made in the Alaska Statehood Compact, it violates the law by ignoring provisions Senator Stevens and I secured within the Alaska National Interest Lands Claims Act (ANILCA) to protect Alaska’s sovereignty and management authority.
“This newest attempt to exert federal authority over Alaska has not gone unchallenged and I will continue to work every angle in Congress to strike this rule, and a similar proposal by the National Park Service, from the federal register. If this rule is allowed to stand, we could see an opening for future jurisdictional takings by the federal government – transforming a cooperative relationship between Alaska and the Fish and Wildlife Service to one of servitude.”
Senator Lisa Murkowski weighed in:
“The Fish and Wildlife Service has once again decided that it knows what is best for us, and is trampling Alaska’s long-standing right to manage wildlife in refuges,” Murkowski said. “What we know, from experience, is that this will not end well for anything but predator populations. I find it shocking that this administration’s policies are pointing to a future where we can fill our freezers with genetically engineered salmon, but not the moose and other game we have traditionally harvested in a sustainable manner from our refuges.”
“The FWS rule was accompanied by an unusual opinion piece written by Director Dan Ashe, which attempts to make a case for the new rule but does not contain a single statistic to demonstrate that state wildlife management practices are ineffective. The piece is titled ‘Keep Public Lands Public—And The Wildlife They Protect!’ – which is ironic, as the agency initially sought to extend the maximum length of temporary closures from 12 months to three years, and in its final rule extended the maximum length of emergency closures.”
Earlier this year, Sen. Dan Sullivan described the rule change this way, as he introduced an amendment to try to block the takeover:
“These proposed regulations, as currently written by the Fish and Wildlife Service, would fundamentally alter not only how we now manage wildlife refuges and the Fish and Wildlife habitats on them. [They] will also change the relationship between Fish and Wildlife and individual states from one of cooperation – which it should be – to subservience.”
The final rule will be available for public inspection today,August 4, and will publish in the federal register Friday, FWS will post the website links. Here the draft final rule, which goes into effect on Sept. 6.
The Walker Administration and a supportive legislative minority have struggled mightily to persuade Alaskans the budget really has been “cut to the bone” and it’s time to restructure the Permanent Fund and implement taxes to balance the budget.
Gary Byrne was the Secret Service agent who stood guard as the last defense before someone could get to the president.
