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Speaker Edgmon’s war on William Weatherby

Suzanne Downing
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25

DISTRICT 37’s TOP DEMOCRAT GETTING TOO MUCH HELP FROM HIS AIDE?

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other,” said the character Slim, in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

Some in the Alaska Democratic Party are scared of House District 37 candidate William Weatherby (Dillingham, King Salmon, Naknek, the Aleutians, King Cove), and they joined a Facebook page last month to trash Weatherby’s reputation.

It got ugly. There were threats of physical violence against Weatherby, and he was called vile names. Must Read Alaska has a half dozen screenshots to back up this claim.

It looked like a vendetta account, but since Weatherby had filed a letter of intent to run against Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Democrat from Dillingham, he is somewhat of a political target. “No to William Weatherby District 37” had distinct political overtones, especially when leading Democrats from all over the state suddenly joined the group in January.

The posts contained immature, terroristic threats like this one made in a private message to Weatherby:

The originator of the page appeared to be a “John Riddle,” a fake identity. Riddle posted provocative comments about Weatherby, and made accusations that were not just childish, but false, like this:
The fake John Riddle account was reported to Facebook, which dutifully deleted it, but the “No to William Weatherby District 37” page remained and was replete with comments about Weatherby, who had run against Edgmon in 2016 and is a Libertarian-leaning type of Republican with letter of intent to run against Bryce Edgmon in 2018.
Weatherby, who is active on social media, noticed the group needed a new “Administrator” after Riddle was blocked by Facebook, so he stepped into the fray to protect his reputation. He took over the page, infuriating the founder of the group. Weatherby has let the group stand, but he’s now policing the comments, and he’s changed other aspects of the page, including the banner.
William Weatherby

ENTER BRYCE EDGMON SENIOR STAFF

Meanwhile, in early January Rep. Bryce Edgmon’s top legislative aide, Amory Lelake, had been behind the scenes adding dozens names to what could only be described as a hate or terroristic group at that point.


Amory Lelake / Mark Begich / Social Media

While once very few people knew about the group, suddenly dozens of members of “No to William Weatherby District 37” were in, and they were some of the most powerful people in Alaska: Elected legislators in the Democrat-controlled House Majority, for whom Lelake is the top staffer on the staffer food chain, union officials, and media members.

Few of the members of the group were even from the Bristol Bay district — it was all being stoked from Juneau, late in the night on Jan. 4. It was a one-woman social media jihad on a man who had decided to run for office against the woman’s boss.

Lelake added the names of Reps. Ivy Spohnholz, Adam Wool, Harriet Drummond, Les Gara, Matt Claman, and Vince Beltrami, to name a few. She added other Democrat-friendlies, too, including several legislative staffers, her mother, as well as Alaska Dispatch News political reporter Nat Herz.

Must Read Alaska took some screen shots of all the work that Lelake had done to build up the social media war on Weatherby.

A sampling of her handiwork is shown here, with names readers will recognize:

Presumably they gave all their permission to join a Facebook tribe whose sole purpose seemed to be politically driven by Democrat legislators, staffers, and Alaska’s top union officials.

Is this the Alaska Democrat Party’s war on the working class?

Have any of the members of the group ever met the handyman and school bus driver named William Weatherby?

Asking for a friend.

If you don’t like this bill, you must be for child abuse

Suzanne Downing
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4
If you don’t like this bill, you must be for child abuse

ADVERSE COMMITTEE EXPERIENCE OF THE WEEK

House Concurrent Resolution 2 was being heard in House State Affairs Committee on Feb. 7. It’s a resolution that says the governor should do more to stop horrible things from happening to children. Who doesn’t agree with that?

Rep. Geran Tarr presented her bill to the committee, saying that adverse childhood experiences (ACES) are a health crisis involving abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. She spoke to the high cost of these experiences — obesity, higher drug abuse, higher Medicaid costs, higher suicide.

Rep. Geran Tarr, file photo

Tarr also talked touchingly about her own adverse childhood and the trauma experienced by her brother, who eventually committed suicide. It’s what motivates her to protect children.

It all seemed to be going well, and resolutions like this are rather routine. After all, no one can force the governor to stop everyone from beating and raping children. There is no fiscal note and no deliverables required.

HAPPY FAMILIES ARE ALL ALIKE

But then Rep. DeLena Johnson asked a reasonable question. She wondered aloud how far government should go to ensure a happy childhood.

That’s a question that reveals philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats: Everyone wants children to have happy childhoods, but who defines what a good home is, and what the role of government is in such happiness.

Johnson was simply asking Rep. Tarr if she had any discomfort about the State becoming an Orwellian Big Brother inside families, or engaging in social engineering by deciding what constitutes a good childhood.

It was the same thing pondered by author Leo Tolstoy, who wrote in Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Who is the arbiter of when a family is just too dysfunctional? It’s the question of the ages for policy makers.

Tarr had a response:

“No, I don’t think that it is social engineering. I don’t think that people or that children should have to be beaten. Or sexually abused. I just disagree. I think children are innocent. They have no ability or choice in the situations that they are brought into and I think it’s a responsibility. For me its a moral issue more than anything else, a responsibility to care for all children until such time as that it’s not necessary.”

She concluded her response. Chairman Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins wanted to move along to the “net neutrality” bill. He wasn’t liking where this was going. Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux covered her face with her hands. Even Rep. Adam Wool looked surprised.

But Rep. Johnson was not done. She put her hand up.

“I would rather not get into it,” said Kreiss-Tomkins, weakly.

Over his objections, Johnson blurted out for the record that in spite of what Tarr had just insinuated, Rep. Johnson was not in favor of beating children or abusing them.

“I want to fly the flag that we’re not for abusing children,” Johnson said. “And that if we don’t have the resolution, that we are? I felt like that was what was just being said. And I want to make sure that it was clearly stated that it was not my intent.”

Johnson had made the classic rookie mistake of falling down the rabbit hole with Geran Tarr. Rep. Ivy Spohnholz had made a similar mistake last year regarding the “Wear Blue for Child Abuse Awareness Month” email she had sent to legislators, and she got an earful from Tarr about it. You just don’t go there with her; it’s her signature topic and Spohnholz could just go get her own signature topic.

And that’s Must Read Alaska’s random committee hearing of the week.

 

50 shades of death in an Anchorage homeless camp

Suzanne Downing
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0

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

Fifty Shades of Grey, the 2011 sensational novel, titillated millions of readers and prompted some to experiment with sadomasochistic eroticism. For those who practice it regularly, it’s known as the BDSM (bondage domination sadomasochism) lifestyle.

Since it’s Valentine’s Day week, the 50 Shades industry is not going to let the opportunity pass by without milking it for some revenue.

Novelist E. L. James found success with her first novel, and she turned it into a trilogy, with Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed. Anastasia Steele is the female protagonist and business magnate, Christian Grey, is the male who introduces her to erotic dominance and torture.

The 50 Shades enterprise has since hit the big screen as hard or soft porn, depending on your tastes. For some, it’s a Valentine’s Day date night “must see.”

Author James could not have envisioned the BDSM she glamorizes leading to allegations and the resignation of an Alaska legislator.

Nor might she imagine that choking sex play would result in deaths on a high school prom night in Texas, or in a homeless camp in Alaska’s biggest city. The risqué world she writes about is at once salacious, sanitized, and successful.

IF SHE DIES

Artist’s rendering of Jeffrey McCracken.

May 11, 2016 was a typical Anchorage morning, about 50 degrees with clouds burning off and the promise of warm weather to come.

Students were at their desks nearby and runners and bikers were on the trails of the city; meanwhile, down in Juneau, the Legislature was in session, having extended past 90 days.

The House Rules Committee was meeting at the Bill Ray Center. Taxes on oil explorers was the topic. Everything was normal.

But in a homeless camp near a Mountain View elementary school in Anchorage, Jeffrey McCracken, then 37, had been doing drugs and had strangled his lover, a mother of six, as an aspect of sexual gratification. He was now trying to figure out how to cover his tracks.

Later, his court-appointed attorney would attempt to explain it as BDSM sex that went awry. He said McCracken wasn’t thinking about killing the woman he was with; he was “just f**ing.”

Hers was a drug-fueled death, and perhaps she was too high to know the candle of her life was being extinguished. One of her last acts in her 48 years was to release her bladder while McCracken got off.

SEX IN THE ROUGH

McCracken and his victim had been using meth and having “rough sex.”

For 45 minutes, according to his story, he used one hand to squeeze her throat, and when that hand tired, he’d switch to his other hand. By the time he was done, she was bleeding from her ears and was unresponsive.

Well, that was his second story. His first one is that he woke up and went to a gas station and she was unresponsive when he returned, so he called 911.

But that account was never going to hold up. The forensics were against him, and four months later he changed his plea.

A grand jury indicted McCracken for manslaughter, although the prosecutor had also wanted second-degree murder — extreme indifference.

McCracken pleaded guilty in September before going to trial, and last week was sentenced to serve nine years, with three suspended. He is no longer homeless, and possibly no longer on drugs in his cell at Goose Creek Correctional Institution.

With time already served, he could be released on parole as soon as the summer of 2020.

KIDS, DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME, OR ANYWHERE

The week before McCracken squeezed the life out of his homeless tent-mate, a 20-year-old Texas man was sentenced to 25 years for choking to death his 17-year-old prom date in a Houston hotel room. The charge for her death was aggravated assault but the sentence much more severe than McCracken’s.

The death had taken place two years earlier, when the two teens were overnighting at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, where the prom had taken place.

Eddie Herrera’s mom had booked the room in advance and provided the drugs and booze. A cool mom, she wanted Eddie and his date, Jackie Gomez, to have a good time.

Herrera said Gomez’ death was due to rough sex, and that she had asked for him to squeeze her neck.

After he woke up, he “discovered” her dead, called his mother, and the two waited for two hours before finally calling the police, the prosecutor said. The mother came over to the hotel room. She put Gomez’s corpse back into her sparkly prom dress.

And then mom and son tried to figure out a story that would make sense.

There was just too much explaining to do, what with the mom’s involvement in buying the whiskey and the 15 opioid pills. Later, during the interrogation phase, Herrera admitted he had choked her and that due to the drugs, he couldn’t get an erection.

“I put my hands on her neck and squeezed,” Eddie Herrera told investigators, but only after they showed him the autopsy results. Gomez had deep hemorrhaging on her throat. Pathologists found she had hydrocodone and alcohol in her system.

Herrera is now serving 20 years of hard time, with 18 years to go.

LAWMAKER GOT LUCKY

Social media has been unkind to Zach Fansler, shown on the right on Facebook.

The law on consensual bondage and rough sex is 50 shades of ambiguous. Some people, like the kid in Texas, will spend more of his life behind bars than he did as a free man. Others, like McCracken, could be counted in the 2020 census as living in some Anchorage halfway house and wearing an ankle monitor.

And still others are lucky the rough sex didn’t get out of hand. Take Zach Fansler, the representative for District 38. He’s now just fighting to keep his licensure as a lawyer after what happened in January.

Fansler, who today is serving his last day as a legislator, was accused by a Juneau woman of slapping her so hard that her eardrum burst.

It all went down at Fanser’s hotel room on Jan. 13, after a night of drinking at the Alaskan Bar in downtown Juneau in mid-January. Texts between the two of them afterward make it unclear as to whether the rough sex play was consensual. He asked her out to dinner. She said no, her face still hurt.

Fansler’s text to her later said,

“I will keep my distance and be respectful tonight and whenever. You’re right about my drinking and the kink. I’m embarrassed and ashamed of myself. Please please please let me know if there is anything I can do. I’m sorry.”

Whether Fansler can or will be actually be charged with battery or domestic violence is in question because of the text the woman sent back to him, saying it wasn’t the slapping was the problem:

“I want to make it clear that being slapped was not the problem. I like that. You were too drunk and you weren’t listening to me. That’s why it was upsetting.”

“I certainly at no point in that evening was asked for my consent or gave my consent,” she told Juneau Empire reporter James Brooks later.

Fansler, who first stood his ground to keep his seat that he had won from Democrat Bob Herron (with the indispensable help of Anchorage Democrats, Gov. Walker’s surrogate Robin Brena, and AFL-CIO boss Vince Beltrami) had to resign his office. He had lost all credibility, even amongst his Democrat peers who had lauded him last year as a fresh new face for the party.

Today, he’s still Rep. Fansler. His resignation takes effect on Monday, a month after the alleged incident took place in a worn-out hotel room in Juneau.

His is yet another cautionary tale of how things can go wrong, very wrong, while practicing “the lifestyle,” especially when combined with alcohol and drugs.

In his case, the broken eardrum of his partner might have been Fansler’s wake-up call.

Don Young added to the Dem’s target list for 2018

Suzanne Downing
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6
Don Young added to the Dem’s target list for 2018

DCCC SAYS IT HAS LARGEST BATTLEFIELD IN HISTORY

Alaska Congressman Don Young has been added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s target list for the 2018 election cycle.

That brings the group’s list to 101 targeted seats.

Young represents a red state that voted for President Donald Trump by a 15-point margin in 2016, but the state has lost thousands of resource jobs and more people are dependent on the government for work or a check of some sort. Some analysts are now rating the state purple — or a toss up.

Alaska is still rated as a “safe” state for Young’s re-election.

But the Democrats don’t seem to think it’s a safe seat, and they’ll be pouring money into defeating Young, who rose from being a school teacher in Fort Yukon to being the Dean of the House.
Young’s challenger is NEA-advocate Alyse Galvin, who was a Bernie Sanders Democrat who is running as an undeclared candidate, and Greg Jones, a far-left Bernie Sanders supporter and registered Democrat.
Neither of the challengers has the centrist appeal that would be needed to win the seat from Congressman Young, who on March 6 will have served as Alaska’s sole U.S. representative for 45 years.
It’s just as likely that the Democrats are looking ahead four years to the next election, or betting that the congressman keels over before November. Young will turn 85 in June.
Other representatives added to the DCCC list include Maryland’s Andy Harris, New Jersey’s Christopher Hunt, Ohio’s Steve Stivers, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, South Carolina’s Ralph Norman, Texas’ John Carter, and Wisconsin’s Sean Duffy.
Cook’s Political Report considers Alaska to be so safe for Republicans in the 2018 congressional race that it doesn’t even include the state on its map depicting Republican districts.

DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, however, described the national committee’s strategy as “likely the largest battlefield in history. Democrats are firmly on offense for a variety of reasons, including incredible candidate recruitment, record-breaking fundraising, a historically unpopular Republican agenda, and extensive district level polling showing Democrats already beating or in close competition with their opponents. We have a long way to go and won’t take anything for granted, but are on track to take back the House in November.”

Where in the world is Alice Rogoff? Court deposition nears

Suzanne Downing
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4

JUDGE’S ORDER ALLOWS ACCESS TO HER DIVORCE SETTLEMENT

The next formal deposition of former Alaska Dispatch News publisher Alice Rogoff is scheduled for Feb. 21 in Anchorage.

For Rogoff, these court dates come and go. She is often not available, so one wouldn’t wish to schedule one’s hair appointments around them.

Rogoff’s legal deadlines are routinely rescheduled to accommodate the jet-setter’s busy life, and her bankruptcy lawyers stay busy in Alaska’s court system, piling up the billable hours to keep her treasure whole and to delay proceedings.

Last month, Rogoff was lecturing in England on opportunities in the Arctic. She’s been spotted house hunting in greater Boston, where she is attaching herself to a Harvard Arctic initiative.

In late December, when the ink was barely dry on her divorce from billionaire David Rubenstein, she formed a new corporation in Delaware called Arctic Today, and is publishing online with that entity, which is a mirror image of company she created in 2016, ArcticNow. It even has the same staff as ArcticNow.

WAIT … WHAAAT?

In the tangle of her various Alaska Dispatch News eviction, Chapter 11 reorganization, and Chapter 7 liquidation, Rogoff tucked the modest web publishing entity www.arcticnow.com into her Rogoff portfolio and took it with her.

No one seem to care about the fate of ArcticNow at the time, as it didn’t seem to be worth the URL to which it was assigned. Dozens of journalists and as many printers and advertising staff at her dying newspaper were just hoping to hang a bit longer at an entity that had a chance of supporting them in the sunset years of the newspaper industry.

With ArcticNow in her back pocket, Rogoff let her multiple “Rogoff Entities” default on their debts. She had run through more than $34 million in three years.

Although she likely had funds (or through divorce from the billionaire would soon have the funds) to pay off the millions of dollars in Alaska Dispatch News bills, she had chose to renege. She now wanted to preserve cash for future operations and lifestyle.

Rogoff also decided last fall to become a creditor of her own bankrupt companies, saying they owe her $16.6 million, and that she was to be the first in line for payment.

However, she was an outlier creditor with a special interest. As other creditors tried to pierce the barrier between her personal finance and her company’s debts, she acted as a contrary creditor and fought that maneuver: She definitely didn’t want Alice Rogoff’s personal finances to be exposed in order to pay her, Alice Rogoff, the creditor, or anyone else.

BREAKDOWN OF THE SHELL COMPANIES

Rogoff Entities are shell limited liability corporations Rogoff set up in Alaska to move money around.

In one corporation, she deposited funds she received apparently from a pre-divorce marital agreement she had with her now-ex-husband Rubenstein.

[The word “apparently” must be used because her personal finances have been kept off-limits during bankruptcy proceedings, something creditors are trying to change, and her ex-husband is trying to preserve.]

That marital agreement remains a secret, as are the terms of her Dec. 8, 2017 divorce and the cash-out with Rubenstein.

From that company, AK Publishing, she paid the bills — payroll, paper, ink, etc. — of the Alaska Dispatch News, which was also run as its own limited liability corporation.

At times, she ran things from AK Publishing, signing contracts and running up bills, and at other times bills were paid by the ADN.

AK Publishing was owned by yet another company she had set up in 2009, “The Moon and the Stars LLC.”

Alaska Dispatch News was owned by AK Publishing LLC.

Confused? Join the club, many were. Money went every which way for the three years she ran the newspaper.

Rogoff also paid personal bills with corporation money in such a way that things became intermingled, and now disputes have arisen about how to keep her private matters private when they are clearly listed among business matters that creditors are entitled to see.

The newspaper was soon racing through what was said to to be over $500,000 a month, and Rogoff didn’t have the funds to move her press operations out of the building she had sold to GCI in accordance with the sale agreement.

A year ago in February, her newspaper simply stopped paying the rent and utilities to GCI. She stopped returning the landlord’s phone calls. She stopped paying contractors and wouldn’t take their calls.

By August, 2017, three years after she bought the Anchorage Daily News and renamed it Alaska Dispatch News, GCI filed papers to evict her newspaper from its East Anchorage location.

That event left her little choice but to file bankruptcy: ADN needed protection from its creditors.

Last August, at her request, the Binkley Company rode in on a white horse and saved the newspaper, one day before it was unable to make payroll to its carriers. Without newspaper delivery labor, she would have had to stop the presses. The Binkley family made the payments, and more payments after that, and the crisis was averted with the cash infusions that kept coming.

In a few fast-paced legal weeks, the paper was transferred to the Binkley family’s ownership, costing them an initial $1 million that was needed to keep the ADN alive, and more in the weeks thereafter.

But the matter of the overdue rent and utility bills was still Rogoff’s problem, as she had made a personal guarantee.

Last week, a judge in Anchorage approved the settlement between Rogoff and GCI for $1.5 million that Rogoff will pay GCI to remove the press. The settlement does not include rent and utilities that she still owes.

TRANSFER FRAUD?

One of the companies that got stiffed was Arctic Partners, the entity that owns the old warehouse on Arctic Blvd, where Rogoff decided to move her entire newspaper operations. It sits empty along the railroad tracks.

She signed a 10-year lease, began extensive improvements totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then stopped paying the contractors and stopped paying the $40,000-plus a month in rent to Arctic Partners.

While the deposition scheduled for Feb. 21 would allow Arctic Partners to question her personally and require her to speak directly to her personal finances, her divorce settlement, and whether she even had the money to give Arctic Partners the personal guarantee she made, there is a looming problem: Transfer fraud.

Plaintiffs will be interested to know how she moved personal and business money around in the months leading up to bankruptcy. Transfer fraud occurs when someone or some entity that is clearly heading to insolvency moves money to protect it from creditors.

Rogoff’s attorneys objected to the questioning and moved to make off-limits her personal assets, her divorce settlement, and her marital settlement.  However, the judge has ruled against Rogoff’s attorney and will allow these topics to be probed.

In other words, the judge has given Arctic Partners permission to rip the seal off her divorce settlement and all her other personal financial matters. This is hugely significant.

‘PAY US FOR WHAT WE DO’

In January of 2017, Rogoff wrote to readers of the ADN that changes were ahead for the newspaper, including the need for paid online subscriptions and the elimination of the Saturday print edition. But not to worry, the newspaper would be alive and well for “generations to come,” she wrote.

Fast forward to January of 2018, Rogoff is writing a similarly cadenced letter to visitors of her newly relaunched ArcticToday, describing her ambitions for the Arctic media empire she has launched and declaring she wishes to be paid for her work:

Dear Reader,

We are pleased to bring you this new, expanded platform for our Arctic coverage. You’ve known us as Arctic Now, a circumpolar news partnership.

Now we’re adding more news, opinions, and features from around the circumpolar region — and we’re renaming ourselves “ArcticToday.”

We want these changes to signal our renewed commitment to bringing this region to light for you.

“ArcticToday” is a name we find better-suited to explaining our mission. Yes, we are a news organization. And yes, we aim to share vital and stimulating news of the region, for the region and as a region. Yet as many of you know, we are also hoping to connect readers — those scattered all around the world — who are attuned enough to the consequences of climate change to understand that the Arctic is of vital importance to them and to our changing planet.

From China to Singapore, observers in countries far from the Arctic understand that a new shipping route across the North Pole will soon completely upend the world’s maritime commercial patterns. Others understand that a key to future food security in a changing world will be sources of protein from the Arctic Ocean.

And of course, today’s Arctic residents know their coastlines are becoming geo-politically significant, as Arctic defense interests sharpen their focus on the region, while also working to avoid conflict in the far North. Then there is what is termed the “economic Arctic” — a rapidly growing cluster of commodity and renewable energy assets that the world to the south finds increasingly attractive. And yet accessing those natural resources in the Arctic — particularly fossil fuels or mining sites — is ever more controversial. And many social challenges — including ensuring the sovereignty of the region’s indigenous peoples — must be addressed as the Arctic’s economies develop. Combined with the need for massive infrastructure building north of the Arctic Circle, all these topics will be followed with interest by the world’s most forward-thinking leaders.

We are delighted to know that you share our deep interest and affection for our Earth’s High North, a place of intrigue and interest for centuries that all of us are together experiencing through the new lens of rapid — and alarming — climate change.

But just as importantly, as Arctic residents, we know — and want to share with the rest of our world to the south — that there are also opportunities from this rapid change. While the perils of rapid sea ice melt and warming are obvious, the upside of this evolution is more subtle. And exciting to contemplate.

In short, we aim to cover it all, and more — with travel features, lifestyle content, and all the texture of a northern life that is foreign to most of the world to the south.

You’ll be noticing something else about us: We’re going to try hard to persuade you to become a paying subscriber.

As with so many news sites, the only way we can continue as a business is to ask you, the reader, to pay us for what we do. [Sentences have been underlined by Must Read Alaska].

We share with you a commitment to understanding the Arctic, so as we expand what we produce, we aim for you to see its value.

Please take me up on this request: Let us know how you find our coverage. Tell us what more or different you’d like from us. As a new and growing organization, we want to be responsive to your needs and perceptions. Our entire team is looking forward to hearing from you about our coverage.

You can find a variety of ways to reach us at our contact page, or you can simply email [email protected]. If you have a story or opinion you’d like to share with our readers, please send it to [email protected]. You’ll hear back from someone on our team promptly.

We look forward to learning more about all of this along with you.

Please do stay in touch.

Alice Rogoff, Publisher

ARCTICNOW BECOMES ARCTICTODAY, IN DELAWARE

ArcticNow was largely a content curation site that Rogoff launched in November of 2016, two months before she stopped paying rent for the Alaska Dispatch News.

ArcticNow plucked top stories from publications around the north where Rogoff had relationships with other publishers.

The Alaska Dispatch News was one of those “partner” organizations last year. In fact, it was the lead partner.

This year, her ArcticToday partner list does not include the ADN, but Rogoff has contributions from Reuters, and she appears to have at least two people on payroll. Her company is a Delaware corporation.

People form corporations in Delaware because of the state’s business-friendly laws. A company does not need to be in Delaware to be a Delaware corporation. Delaware doesn’t charge state corporate income tax for companies that are formed in Delaware but do not conduct business there.

Delaware also has a special court for businesses that keep litigation moving, rather than being bogged down behind the many non-business cases also competing for court time. This means legal disputes can be resolved more quickly, although that might not be Rogoff’s prime motivator.

With no advertisers yet, an editor in New York, and a hungry freelance writer or two, Rogoff is also pitching a $99 subscription/membership to readers of her relaunched news site, as recently as today on Facebook:

MONETIZING IS THE NEW BLACK

The platform that ArcticToday is built on is designed for sponsored content, for web sites that charge people money to have their stories featured, and that charge readers to read them.

It might be a combination that works for Rogoff, who at 66 has only a few reinvention plays left. This one is repurposing her reputation not just as the Alaska expert, but as a circumpolar thought leader with a communications platform designed to reach millions across the northern globe.

But will the ArcticToday publisher show up at the deposition on Feb. 21, when Arctic Partners will be allowed by the judge to probe her personal accounts and money transfers leading up to her defunct companies’ bankruptcies?

It’s not something that ArcticToday will be reporting on any time soon.

In the meantime, any prospective ArcticToday creditors may wish to take note.

[Another take on this unfolding story is found at CraigMedred.news.]

Kowalke is governor’s pick for Senate Seat E

Suzanne Downing
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11
Kowalke is governor’s pick for Senate Seat E

‘OUTRAGEOUS,’ SAYS GOP CHAIRMAN

Randall Kowalke, who won his assembly seat in the Mat-Su with the help of 73 percent of Talkeetna voters, is Gov. Bill Walker’s choice for Senate Seat E, the seat that represents some of the most conservative communities in the state.

District E stretches from Wasilla to Glennallen, Delta Junction, Tok, and Valdez and even Whittier — and liberal stronghold Talkeetna, where they elect cats as their mayor.

District E has been unrepresented since mid-January, when Mike Dunleavy left the Senate to focus on his run for governor.

Walker chose not to draw from the list of three names forwarded by Republicans in the district, but instead found a kindred spirit in Kowalke, who has been a supporter of Walker’s.

Kowalke is a retired businessman who worked in wood products, oil and telecommunications and who serves on the Mat-Su Borough Assembly, a seat he won by 33 votes in 2015 against his political adversary, Doyle Holmes.

Kowalke was the first to file for Dunleavy’s seat, doing so on Dec. 31, 2017 after Dunleavy rejoined the race for governor. The Kowalke pick could allow a coup to take place in the Senate, and could put Democrats in charge with the help of a couple of willing Republicans. Several Democrats have alluded that this is part of their plan to “flip the Senate.”

Carol Carman, who is the Republican chair for House District 9, expressed her disappointment, as she and other party officers spent over 500 hours vetting 11 applicants, Kowalke among them. He did not make the final but was near the bottom of the list.

Kowalke, who is a registered Republican, was a Walker supporter in 2014, and is an ally of Borough Mayor Vern Halter, who ran with the express support of Democrats and unions. He is also close with Wasilla Mayor Bert Cottle, an unaffiliated voter who co-hosted a fundraiser for Walker this past fall.

But will the Senate accept Kowalke? The Senate Republicans will decide, and they have gaveled out until Monday morning. But it is not likely they will concur with the pick. The governor probably has been told the nomination is dead on arrival.

Tuckerman Babcock, chairman of the Alaska Republican Party who facilitated the process of forwarding names to the governor, said the pick is unacceptable.

“It’s absolutely outrageous that the governor will go against the wishes of the district. The Senate should absolutely vote him down,” he said, as he drove from Anchorage to his home in Kenai today.

Reached in Wasilla, gubernatorial candidate Mike Dunleavy was also unimpressed with the pick for his former seat, because he felt it disrespects a well-organized vetting process by constituents.

“The critical question is this: Who owns the seat? The voters of District E or Gov. Walker? The governor has a chosen to substitute his own judgment for the views of local leaders,” Dunleavy said.

Walker should have asked District leaders to send him three more names before going off the list provided to him, Dunleavy added.

The district had sent him the names of Rep. George Rauscher, Todd Smoldon, and Tom Braund of the 11 who applied.

Senate President Pete Kelly signaled the response from Senate Republicans: “While we recognize a fine choice by the governor in Mr. Kowalke, we would prefer the governor work through the traditional process involving local participation from the districts. The Senate Republicans will meet next week to discuss the governor’s appointment.

KOWALKE, THE ASSEMBLYMAN BUILT BY TALKEETNA

In 2015, the Mat-Su Borough election came down to votes from Talkeetna, where the ballot counting machine had stopped working. The ballots were collected and placed in a sealed bag, and then counted by another machine, but during that process, an election clerk from Houston, Alaska was left alone with the ballots for 90 minutes.

Holmes said that since the election official and the clerk were each alone with the ballots for an extended period of time, tampering may have occurred. In liberal Talkeetna, 73 percent of the votes went to Kowalke, while only 27 percent went to Holmes. In the rest of the district, Holmes had held the lead. But his claim was denied and with 33 votes (less than 2 percent of the vote), Kowalke was sworn in. Liberal Talkeetna had pulled him over the line.  Now, in a twist of fate, he is poised to become senator for the entire district.

THE HIGHWAYS DISTRICT

Some call District E the Bible Belt of Alaska, while others describe it as the “Highways District” because it encompasses the Glenn, Richardson, and the Parks Highways.

But it’s also a place where Southcentral Alaska meets Southeast Alaska, as it reaches both Valdez and Whittier, and ferries are important, especially in Whittier, while ocean fishing is important in both communities.

Valdez, clearly Bill Walker country, has massive property tax revenues from oil export facilities there, and residents in Valdez have a different world view than many communities in Alaska, due to a constant flow of funds. And uber-liberal Talkeetna is also in the district, one of the biggest Bernie Sanders voting blocks in the state.

In essence, District E is a cultural melting pot of non-urban Alaska.

Math doesn’t add up in education funding bill

Suzanne Downing
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5
Math doesn’t add up in education funding bill

CREATIVE FINANCING OF EDUCATION OR KABUKI THEATER?

Homer Rep. Paul Seaton is pretty pleased about HB 287.

In record time, the chair of House Finance got his bill passed to separate education funding from the herd of other operating budget items and advance it out of the House early in the legislative session.

That way, teachers don’t have to worry about getting a temporary pink slip over the summer if a budget agreement is delayed, as it has since the Democrats took control of the House.

Teachers are voters. This is an election year. Such a bill would put their minds at ease.

The bill, as passed by the House, puts $1.32 billion into education, said Seaton, who is the bill’s author. It’s exactly the amount the governor asked for.

Except that it didn’t. An entire $1.2 billion isn’t in the bill that arrived in the Senate.

In a press release, here’s what the Democrat-controlled House wrote:

“HB 287 Eliminates Uncertainty for School Districts and Prevents Unnecessary Teacher Layoffs.”

It does no such thing, because it has no funds for teachers, only funds for miscellaneous education expenses.

“HB 287 appropriates $1.32 billion for K-12 public education, the same amount as proposed by Governor Walker, and includes $1.2 billion from the Constitutional Budget Reserve (CBR) and $67.8 million from the Statutory Budget Reserve (SBR). The decision to fund public education from the CBR preserves more money in the higher earning Permanent Fund Earning Reserves Account,” Seaton said.

In fact, Seaton’s bill had wished for $1.2 billion from the Constitutional Budget Reserve, which requires a three-quarters vote to access.

But the three-quarters vote failed in the House, so the bill went to the Senate without funding. That’s why the money isn’t in there, although the House Democratic Majority wordsmithing says it is.

The $67 million that is in the bill will pay for student transportation, miscellaneous things, and for special schools, such as Mount Edgcumbe High School in Sitka.

There is no regular funding for the base student allocation — the BSA — because Seaton either forgot or decided not to include a fall-back plan if the CBR vote failed.

“This bill is not going to accomplish what people think it does,” said Rep. Mike Chenault, on the House floor. “School bond debt reimbursement is not included in this bill. Neither are PRS and TRS payments that the state makes. That’s going to come along in the remaining bills and the operating budget. Until those are all set in stone, the school districts are not going to actually know how much money they’re going to get.”

Only three members of the House voted against HB 287: Budget hawks Reps. Cathy Tilton, David Eastman, Tammie Wilson.

 

HB 287 was co-sponsored by House Democrats and nominal Democrats Justin Parish, Jason Grenn, Harriet Drummond, Dan  Ortiz, Chris Tuck, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, Bryce Edgmon, Scott Kawasaki, Andy Josephson, Ivy Spohnholz, Les Gara, Neal Foster, David Guttenberg, Louise Stutes, Gabrielle LeDoux, Matt Claman, Sam Kito, Adam Wool, Geran Tarr, Zach Fansler, and John Lincoln, the freshman replacing Westlake.

Now it’s the Senate’s turn, and because it is an appropriations bill, senators could insert the entire operating budget into it and shoot it back to the House as a complete budget. The Senate could do a lot of things to the bill and send it back. But one thing it’s not likely to do is break into the quickly depleting CBR early, before it knows what the rest of the spending needs are.

The CBR balance is roughly $2.59 billion. The Walker Administration has been running deficits of about $2.5 billion a year that have brought the CBR down to its now fragile status.

“Providing for quality public education in Alaska is among our core constitutional responsibilities and warrants this innovative approach,” said Speaker Bryce Edgmon.

The approach was innovative: Pass an appropriations bill over to the Senate but leave out the funding.

 

‘Nothing to Say Mayor’ video is direct hit at Berkowitz

Suzanne Downing
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6

Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz is known for hanging out with his friends at the back of the room during Anchorage Assembly meetings. And rarely does he have much to say when asked for the Mayor’s Report.

But we had no idea how little he had to say until we saw this one-minute video, posted anonymously by someone who calls himself or herself “Reformed Snowflake.” The YouTube video was posted on Thursday and forwarded to Must Read Alaska.

In the video, week after week, Berkowitz is asked by then-Assembly Chair Dick Traini to give his report, and week after week, Berkowitz has nothing to report, even while crime grips the city, with record-breaking murders and car thefts that are some of the highest in the country.

In fact, by September of 2015, Anchorage was on track to set a new homicide record, even while homicides were falling around the country.

It set another new homicide record in 2016, and again in 2017, when homicides reached 35 — a 191 percent increase over the 12 homicides that occurred in 2014 under the previous mayor, Dan Sullivan.

In one meeting, Traini asks Mayor Berkowitz, “All these people, and nothing to say?” referring to the large crowd assembled for the meeting.

Berkowitz appears caught off guard and can only muster a weak, “I’ll defer to their wisdom” one-liner.

The election for Anchorage mayor and school board seats is mail-in only this year and starts in mid-March, when official ballots are sent to eligible voters through the mail. (They’ll be mailed from Washington state, so there’s no telling when they’ll arrive in Anchorage.)

 

Fewer Alaskans enrolled in Obamacare for 2018

Suzanne Downing
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0
Fewer Alaskans enrolled in Obamacare for 2018

Alaska saw a 4.35 percent drop in the number of residents signing up for private health insurance during the Obamacare open enrollment period that ended in December.

For comparison, in the open enrollment for coverage for 2017, some 19,145 Alaskans signed up for health insurance on the federally run marketplace, which has but one provider to choose from: Premera Blue Cross.

But this past fall, only 18,313 Alaskans signed up for the insurance coverage for the 2018 cycle, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. 

The drop in Alaska enrollment was not as great as in other states using the federally run market. Among the 34 using the federal exchange, the enrollee drop was 5.28 percent from the previous year.

The enrollment period during the fall of 2017 was only six weeks long, rather than the two months from the previous year, which may account for some of the drop. Another reason may be that President Donald Trump signed an order to roll back the requirement that Americans must have insurance coverage or pay a tax to the IRS.

But enrollment doesn’t mean that people have coverage. They have to pay their premiums to get that. Actual, or “effectuated enrollment” as it’s called, is substantially less.

2016 – 15,252 Alaskans who enrolled ended up paying their first month premium. By the end of the year, only 13,243 still were paying for coverage.

2017 – 14,954 Alaskans who enrolled ended up paying for coverage. The year-end figure is not yet available.

Alaska has the smallest number of enrollees in the Obamacare private health insurance program, also known as the Affordable Care Act. The typical cost for a 27-year-old buying the health insurance offered is more than $1,000 per month, but many receive tax credits that bring the cost down. The average tax credit in Alaska for the insurance is $965.53 per month.

 

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