The Homer City Council will tonight consider Resolution 17-09, but not the original draft of 17-09.
Tonight, rather than take on President Donald Trump directly, the council will vote on a sanitized version, one that is more careful in its wording but may not satisfy its critics.
The council is split on the resolution offered by three of its members — David Lewis, Catriona Reynolds and Donna Aderhold.
But the loud left-wing of Homer is gearing up for a fight at City Hall to call on all the citizens of Homer to “stand against intolerance and resist expressions of hate toward any members of the community.”
The meeting begins at 6 pm and the matter is 16th on the agenda. It’s likely that Mayor Brian Zak will limit public comment to three minutes.
The original resolution began by rebuking President Donald Trump and his entire cabinet for high crimes and misdemeanors of political incorrectness.
The new resolution is about 50 lines shorter, but critics say that the original version tells the full story as to what is behind Resolution 17-09: Creating a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants, putting “resistance” language into a city resolution intended as thinly veiled common cause with the “Indivisible” movement of Democrats nationally who oppose Donald Trump.
The original resolution caused a furor in Homer and garnered nationwide attention when it was released on Must Read Alaska last week. Locals are predicting it will be a long meeting and Homer conservatives say the resolution may have done more to split the community than to bring it together.
Community members of Sand Point, Alaska, confronted a man at the airport in 2013 and sent him back to Anchorage. They suspected him of being a drug dealer. (Carmen Dushkin photo from Facebook.)
In 2013, Sand Point residents became increasingly alarmed when a suspected drug dealer kept showing up in town. Whenever the angular stranger disembarked from a plane, young people started getting high on drugs.
In a small town in the Aleutian Islands, locals take note of such things. They observe small changes in the weather. And they know when kids are getting high.
Sand Point took charge, and a group of burly locals went to the airport, confronted the man as he entered the terminal and sent him back to Anchorage.
It could have gone very wrong. Mobs showing up at airports to block an arriving passenger is problematic in a republic that prides itself the rule of law.
But on the frontier, there is no law enforcement. The local decision, imperfect as it is, may be the only way to ensure safety.
Village of Allakaket. (US Fish and Wildlife photo)
Last week, the village of Allakaket took charge of its community when suspected meth dealers started showing up: They sent four people packing to Fairbanks.
No, there was not an arrest warrant, nor file of evidence. But the village council convened, discussed the problem, shared stories, heard from others, wept a bit, and finally took action.
PJ Simon, chief of the federally recognized Allakaket tribe, held the emergency meeting at the tribal office. About 25 people were reported to have attended — nearly one quarter of the village that lies on the south bank of the Koyukuk River, 190 miles northwest of Fairbanks.
Allakaket, largely Athabaskan, is still a dry village — it doesn’t allow alcohol in. People live by hunting and fishing, and collecting various checks from the government, their Native corporations, and the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend. There’s not much of a cash economy. In the last census, there were but 41 households in the village, and most of the inhabitants are related.
Chief Simon said he believed the newcomers had arrived in advance of Alaska Native Village Corporation shareholder dividends being distributed. The calendar of check distributions is something that wiley drug dealers take note of in Alaska. Last year, the K’oyitl’ots’ina Ltd. dividends were distributed in March.
In a place like Allakaket, four armed drug dealers stick out, but banishing them is also traumatic, due to the close familial relationships. In this case, two of the banished were residents of Allakaket, while two were not. One of the banished was given a lifetime banishment sentence.
The trend of dumping undesirables is a form of frontier justice that is an old-school Alaska way of cleaning up a community.
Villages like Allakaket are not practical locations for Alaska State Troopers. There is little housing, and outsiders are generally not welcomed. Even teachers posted in villages never stay long; some don’t even make it through a school year.
Although the village had a public safety officer in 2014, it’s without one now. Absent an officer, the solution appears to be the village tribal council.
Derek Adams set a fire that resulted in the deaths of three people in Nunam Iqua. (Bethel District Attorney photo)
MEANWHILE, IN NUNAM IQUA
Last year, 22-year-old Derek Adams was banished from his Yup-ik village of Nunam Iqua, after he had set a fire at a home a few years earlier. It resulted in the deaths of three people, including a child. In addition to banishment, he was sentenced to time served and put on parole.
Adams was also banned from Alakanuk and Emmonak before being arrested in Bethel for carrying large amounts of cash and what appeared to be heroin. He later tested positive for THC (marijuana) and opiates and was booked in September. A reopened hearing on his latest drug case is set for March 8 in Bethel.
While Nunam Iqua’s elders are likely feeling that they made the right decision, the Adams case is an example of how banishment from one village can result in banishment becoming a chain reaction, where communities pre-emptively prevent someone from entering a place where justice systems are not up to the task of dealing with them. The other villages that banished Adams didn’t want to be a dumping ground for Nunam Iqua’s bad boy.
FRONTIER JUSTICE
Banishment is a loose method of frontier justice outside of the law, generally a result of either no law enforcement presence or dissatisfaction with local lawmen.
In the wild West, frontier justice meant tar-and-feathering, gun duels, lynching, and putting people on a train out of town with the warning, “Don’t ever let us catch you in these parts again.” There wasn’t a lot of due process involved. Everything was left up to the judgment of the mob.
Today’s frontier justice in village Alaska is simple, non-violent, but has never faced a true court challenge: They put you on a plane and send you and your problems to the nearest city that has law enforcement. With villages too tiny to police, this appears to be the only way for locals to nip the drug epidemic in the bud.
In 2003, an Anchorage Superior Court judge upheld the right of the village of Perryville to eject a resident who had a history of alcohol-fueled violence. But that’s as far as the challenge went.
It’s not best-practice justice, but it’s the only solution that locals have the ability to enforce in places where there are no police, no courts, no bail bondsmen, and no jails.
Someday, the practice of banishment will run up against a legal challenge that might come from someone who convinces the American Civil Liberties Union to take his or her case.
But until then, banishment is a curious Alaska anachronism, a little bit wild West, and a little bit Native justice. The state’s legal system looks the other way and hopes for the best.
What do we want: Planned Parenthood supporters, and one lucky baby, protest at Alaska’s Capitol on Feb. 24, 2017.
Sen. Dan Sullivan had to know it was coming this week. But he probably didn’t know how underwhelming the turnout was when Planned Parenthood targeted him in Anchorage while he was meeting with the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce.
Anchorage protest was noisy but small this week when Sen. Dan Sullivan spoke to Chamber of Commerce members.
The protest group gathered at the door of the Petroleum Club to make him walk through their noisy gauntlet, but he simply walked in the entrance on the other side of the building. Evidently none of the protest organizers had ever been to the Petroleum Club of Anchorage.
Madeleine Grant, who identified herself as a doctor with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, told the Alaska Dispatch News she was protesting because “she had seen the catastrophic damage that can occur when people are uninsured during her previous positions at community health centers.”
Using her official position to make a political statement may be a violation of the venerable Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political action during work hours. Using their official status to engage in political activity is strictly prohibited by law.
On Friday, Sullivan was at the Alaska’s Capitol in Juneau to deliver his update on all-things-DC, and a group showed up with bullhorns, a baby and a few pre-printed signs supporting public funding of abortions and Planned Parenthood.
They were led by a professional-sounding chanter, “What does democracy look like?” “This is what democracy looks like,” they shouted.
The sun shone brightly on the new snow and the air was warm as protesters honked a horn repeatedly, demanding more from Sullivan for Medicaid, Obamacare, and Planned Parenthood.
There were a dozen of them, which by Alaska Capitol standards is barely enough to get media to say “meh.” One of the stations livestreamed the protest, just in case, but it did not make for particularly good television. In the end, the lack of attendance was the newsworthy item.
Earlier in the week, Sen. Lisa Murkowski had voiced her support for Planned Parenthood funding. She has been a consistent supporter of the organization, to the consternation of the more conservative Republicans in the state.
But when KTUU reporter Austin Baird asked Sen. Sullivan whether he, too, supported funding the abortion provider, he said he would rather see the funds distributed among the more than 150 health clinics statewide that provide general care for people, not for the four Planned Parenthood clinics that primarily serve urban people.
Outside the media availability, the Planned Parenthood protesters chanted on as their numbers began to dwindle: “We want a town hall,” and “Shame on you!”
When asked by a reporter why he didn’t hold a town hall as the protesters were demanding, Sullivan said — and we’re paraphrasing — he meets with people regularly, but he’s not interested in getting in the middle of a shoutfest.
Planned Parenthood is an openly partisan organization that pays people to go door-to-door every election, and use various methods to only support Democrat Party candidates. It’s protest organizers are also paid, and those paid organizers are funded, in one way or another, by taxpayer dollars.
Planned Parenthood received $553.7 million in funding in 2015 from the government, which is about 40 percent of its annual budget.
Medicaid is one of those funding streams that Republicans in Congress could affect through appropriation. Medicaid represents 75% of the government support that Planned Parenthood gets for 650 clinics around the nation, four of them in urban centers in Alaska. The money helps the group test for sexually transmitted diseases and provide some reproductive health services, such as birth control. The money also enables the organization to use its other funds to provide abortions.
With a Republican majority in the House, Senate and White House, Planned Parenthood is mobilizing its grassroots base across the country, banking on the post-election discontent among Democrats to propel its message. Suddenly, Planned Parenthood protests are everywhere. Pink pussy hats are the new black.
‘PANNED’ PARENTHOOD?
But is fatigue setting in? A tiny protest at Alaska’s Capitol on a bluebird day, when organizers were hoping to see supporters out in force, must have been a disappointment. By 12:30 pm, when most state workers in the downtown core were available to picket with the small band of shouters, the support was embarrassingly small. This was in spite of the efforts of paid organizers, the formidable political machinery of Planned Parenthood, and a setting amidst the most liberal city in Alaska.
All over but the shouting:Protesters at the Capitol today looked a bit tired.
Rep. Geran Tarr opens a hearing on her bill, HB 111, which would raise taxes on oil.
FIREWORKS AS GERAN TARR SCOLDS WITNESS
An Alaska’s State House Resources Committee co-chair, already on the record against oil development, interrupted the testimony of Alaska’s spokesperson for the oil and gas industry during a Wednesday night hearing.
Rep. Geran Tarr cut off Kara Moriarty abruptly and then gave her a public scolding.
Moriarty, the CEO of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, was the first person to testify during the hearing that started at 6:30 pm, and the rebuke from Tarr came within the first few minutes.
Tarr, D-Anchorage, lectured Moriarty about what would and would not be allowed in her testimony: “Ms. Moriarty, we are not going to make statements like that in this committee,” Tarr warned. “So you’re not going to impugn the motives of that individual. If you want to respond to anything that was said, that’s fine. But we’re not going to do that.”
GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT
What drew Tarr’s ire is that Moriarty had firmly challenged old data presented by an invited speaker brought in by Tarr and co-chair Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, to shore up their argument for higher taxes.
The expert had provided bad information to the committee two days earlier, and Moriarty was calling him out on it.
Moriarty, between that Monday hearing and her opportunity to testify on Wednesday, had discovered that his company not only had access to new data, but the new information had already been provided to the State Competitiveness Review Board. He had denied the information was available.
Rich Ruggiero, Castle Gap Energy Partners
Rich Ruggiero of Castle Gap Energy Partners had simply chosen not to use the new data, but relied on an old slide from 2011, when oil was over $90 a barrel and tax policies were quite different across the globe.
And when asked on Monday by committee member Rep. Dave Talerico, R-Healy, for updated information, Ruggiero shrugged off the question by saying it would be pretty hard to get. That was not true.
Ruggiero, who helped the Palin administration craft the disastrous but now-defunct ACES tax plan, was paid $35,000 by House Democrats to give testimony favorable to raising oil taxes. He testified that Alaska raising its oil taxes often is not unusual, because it’s done all over the world all the time.
He also told the committee that they should expect to hear pushback from industry trade organizations like the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, which he said would bring out the same old “detracting themes” that industry brings up all over the world — how stability, competition and jobs will be negatively impacted if Alaska enacts higher taxes on industry.
Kara Moriarty, Alaska Oil and Gas Association
When Moriarty had her turn to speak on Wednesday, she came roaring out of the gate, blasting the old data and Ruggiero’s implication that the oil industry would try to mislead the committee.
“Your consultant on Monday mentioned that Alaska is not the only government changing taxes. And he used the six-year-old slide to demonstrate that point. He was very direct and told you that industry, including the trade association — in fact, he called out AOGA directly — would deploy ‘detracting themes’ such as stability, competition, and jobs, as reasons why you should not increase government take,” Moriarty said.
“I just want to put it on the record that I personally take great exception to his choice of words, and frankly I find them insulting,” Moriarty said.
“He was insinuating that industry is not credible and that these themes should not be believed. The reason the industry does talk about stability, competition, and jobs across the globe is that they are real factors,” Moriarty continued.
Moriarty explained she had easily found Ruggiero’s company updates through 2016. She found them on the State’s own website. She continued: By using old data, it appeared that Ruggiero was either ill-prepared or was trying to push an agenda.
That’s when Tarr snapped at Moriarty, and then abruptly cut off committee member Chris Birch, R-Anchorage: “You will not interrupt the chair!”
Moriarty didn’t back down; she was responding to the charts provided by Ruggiero, which were obviously inaccurate.
TERM OF THE DAY: ‘DETRACTING THEMES’
Curiously, during Ruggiero’s Monday testimony, he had also assigned motives to the oil industry, with his prediction of “detracting themes” the committee should expect. But his impugning of the motives of the oil and gas association was allowed and then actually defended by the committee co-chairs. When Moriarty made the very accurate and important observation that Ruggiero’s slides were either intentionally or unintentionally erroneous, Tarr leaped to his defense by inventing a new standard for testimony on the spur of the moment. That new standard seems to be that testifiers are welcome to impugn the credibility of industry, but industry is not allowed to defend itself.
The co-chairs also showed favoritism to another testifier who was clearly in their corner on raising oil taxes. Earlier this session, the co-chairs allowed oil industry foe Robin Brena, a political ally of Gov. Bill Walker, a full two hours to testify about the need for sharply higher oil taxes, during which time he showed over 50 slides and several times impugned the motives of Alaska’s oil producers.
Tarr and Josephson, both considered stridently anti-resource development, were recorded at a December 13 meeting of the Alaska Center (for the Environment), where Josephson told the members present, “Use my office and Rep. Tarr’s office as a virtual satellite office.” The Alaska Center for the Environment’s mission statement includes its political agenda: “We engage, empower and elect Alaskans to stand up for our clean air and water, healthy communities, and a strong democracy.” The group spends significant funds to elect anti-development Democrats.
As hearings continue, Tarr is making it clear the House Resources Committee is the Alaska Center’s satellite operation, and that the oil industry now must answer to her and can keep their “detractor themes” to themselves.
The Rotterdam approaches a set of locks in the Panama Canal in early February.
THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL
By WIN GRUENING
In my last column, while sailing nearly 5,000 miles between San Diego and Ft. Lauderdale, I discussed the history of the construction of the 48-mile long Panama Canal. Along with 1,300 cruise ship passengers, I then spent a full day transiting the Canal on our voyage from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. Only then, can you truly appreciate the vast engineering feat accomplished there.
Following the failed French effort to build a canal, Americans, championed by President Teddy Roosevelt, successfully conquered deadly diseases, rebuilt Panama’s infrastructure and simplified the canal design using a series of locks that raised and lowered ships 88 feet between sea level and a man-made lake.
The engineering challenges were enormous.
The most daunting task facing engineers was how to carve the canal through a nine mile stretch known as the Culebra Cut — the highest point on the route where the Continental Divide bisected Panama — an elevation 333 feet above sea level.
Win Gruening
To create enough space for two ships to pass each other safely required a channel 300 feet wide. With the base of the canal no more than 40 feet above sea level, excavation in the Culebra Cut would need to reach almost 300 feet. Initial calculations estimated 54 million cubic yards of earth would need to be removed but after several revisions, the total reached 100 million cubic yards.
New equipment was needed to handle the volume of excavated material. Giant Bucyrus steam-shovels were put in place to load rail flat cars which were rebuilt to allow a special “unloader” plow to clear a 20-car train of the excavated soil in 10 minutes. Another American innovation — a giant dirt-spreader — was devised to spread and level the unloaded material. A special crane was invented to lift whole sections of track and move them 9 feet to allow trains to continually move excavated material to new locations.
Much of the excavated material was used to build the giant Gatun Dam — the largest earthen dam in the world — eventually creating the 164-square-mile Gatun Lake — the largest man-made lake in the world (at the time).
Then there were the concrete locks themselves. Each of the 12 locks were 1,000 feet long — with three pairs of locks (six total) required on each side of the canal to handle traffic side by side in both directions at the same time. The science of concrete was relatively new and, as a building material, had never been used in the quantity or scale required for this project.
The locks’ gates, varying in height from 47 to 82 feet, were 7 feet thick but their lower half was hollow and watertight making them buoyant. This allowed each of the two 64-foot wide double doors comprising a gate to be opened easily with just a 40 hp electric motor powered by hydropower from the dam.
No pumps were needed to operate the locks. Water from Gatun Lake was (and still is) fed by gravity into each lock as needed to lift vessels on one side of the canal and drained into the ocean to gently lower them on the other side.
Although a wider and longer set of locks was recently added for larger ships, it’s a tribute to the ingenuity of those original engineers that the same equipment and structures still function flawlessly today — over 100 years after the canal was completed in 1914.
IT TAKES SPIRIT AND IMAGINATION TO BUILD SOMETHING
Even more amazing, after 10 years of construction, the American effort was completed ahead of time and under budget.
It took spirit, imagination and determination to build the Panama Canal 100 years ago. And those very same traits built the Alaska Highway and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Can you imagine our state without either of those major projects? Would anyone suggest now they should not have been built?
Yet, here in Juneau, it’s taken ten years just to complete the permits and studies needed for a road the same length as the Panama Canal — a project that would also greatly benefit our state.
Gov. Bill Walker declined to move forward with the Juneau Access project even though, like the Panama Canal, it would lower transportation costs, increase employment, spur development, increase commerce, and make travel less expensive and more convenient.
In his day, Teddy Roosevelt could have settled for the perfectly serviceable — though longer and more costly — sea route between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Instead, he convinced the country there was a better way.
The Lynn Canal Highway can and should be built. Alaska’s workforce wants to build it. It makes sound economic sense.
What Alaska needs now are leaders willing to finish this project and reignite our traditional Alaskan can-do spirit that built our country and our state.
Win Gruening was born and raised in Juneau and retired as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in 2012. He is active in civic affairs at the local, state, and national level.
Juneau downtown businesses have started installing barricades to prevent homeless encampments in their entryways.
Juneau is home to about 32,000 people, 238 of whom are homeless, according to a recent “point in time” survey.
With the homeless population being less than one percent of Juneau’s whole, this generous community has 45 agencies devoted to providing them some type of service.
As the years roll by, the population of homeless people fluctuates, but never has it been so aggressive in the capital city, locals say. Juneauites have taken a soft-hearted, live-and-let-live stance, which unintentionally created a homeless and criminal magnet out of the small downtown district, where the Glory Hole homeless shelter serves meals and offers showers, a few beds and welcomes the homeless with a warm place to hang out during the day.
A homeless encampment in a downtown business tht had been broken into recently.
As the Glory Hole grew its services, downtown deteriorated with drug addicts and chronic inebriates camping in the doorways of businesses.
Anecdotes from business owners describe the homeless population as a changed one. “There are criminals that have infiltrated the homeless community,” one businessman described. “They can get their free meals, a shower, everything from the Glory Hole. And they’re breaking into places, shaking people down for money, especially unaccompanied women.”
The philosophy of the Glory Hole manager, Mariya Lovishchuk, has been that she wants the homeless to be visible. She doesn’t want them to be hidden away and forgotten.
She’s gotten her way. Women who go downtown are now arming themselves. Business owners are installing fencing in their entries, giving the downtown area the look of a business district under siege.
People who venture into the heart of the downtown district report having their cars accosted by aggressive panhandlers, or stepping in human excrement on the way to their offices.
Mayor Koelsch and the Juneau Assembly took an important step toward addressing the private property problem last week by passing Ordinance 2016–44, which bans unauthorized camping on private property in a defined downtown zone. It was put forward at the urging of downtown business owners.
Speaking in support of the ordinance, Eric Forst, who manages the Red Dog Saloon, said that Juneau is seeing a “a younger, meaner, more aggressive element that does not want to be helped — and that’s what this is targeted at.” He points out that “this is a small group — not all of the homeless — but there is a segment that is new, and it’s mean.”
Forst said that the new ordinance is simply an amendment to an existing ordinance that clearly defines the downtown zone.
KOELSCH RAN ON SAFETY
Juneau businesses are barricading their entryways against people who set up camps at night in them.
Mayor Ken Koelsch came into office one year ago with a strong public safety focus, and a commitment to downtown business owners. He’s not happy with the dangerously deteriorating conditions in the merchant area of downtown. He worries about how tourism could suffer if Juneau doesn’t clean up its ways.
Initially, he faced big challenges. In spite of a strong voter mandate — nearly 60 percent of the vote — Koelsch faced an Assembly that had its own liberal spin on issues, and a city bureaucracy that leans decidedly left on most issues, including the homeless problem.
But the Assembly is slightly more moderate than it was at this time last year. So Mayor Koelsch seized the opportunity to champion the new ordinance.
After hours of tearful testimony, it passed 5-4 with support from Koelsch, Jerry Nankervis, Debbie White, Mary Becker and Beth Weldon. Opposed were Norton Gregory, Jesse Kiehl, Loren Jones, and Maria Gladziszewski.
“This isn’t about the people who sleep on the sidewalk. This isn’t about people in Marine Park. This is about people who have invested in our downtown community, who employ our neighbors,” said Assembly member White.
The ordinance is about being able to keep trespassers off of private property.
But the left side of the Assembly did not let it pass without a fight and, of course, some choice theatrics. Liberal Assembly member Kiehl was in tears as he spoke against the ordinance: “Are people better off now in doorways? You bet they are because those abandoned mine buildings above Gastineau Avenue are scary places and there are no lights and [the police] doesn’t drive by and check.”
In other words, the problem is much more serious than Juneauites imagine. Even by Kiehl’s description, if you’re not within shouting distance of a police officer in Juneau, you’re not safe.
His castle: View from Assemblyman Jesse Kiehl’s house a few blocks from downtown, where he has a matching wrap-around chainlink fence to protect his private property. Photo from Kiehl’s social media page.
Kiehl, a legislative aide to Sen. Dennis Egan by day, minored in drama at Whitman College. His tearful testimony was a masterful performance.
But notably, he didn’t offer his own Harris Street home, with its sturdy chain link fence all around it, as a sanctuary for homeless people.
This is not over. The ACLU is threatening to sue the City and Borough of Juneau over the ordinance. It calls the no-trespassing ordinance an “anti-homelessness ordinance.”
“Homelessness is tragic, especially in Alaska,” said the ACLU’s Alaska Executive Director Joshua A. Decker in a statement. “But with over 200 homeless people in Juneau, Ordinance 2016–44 does nothing to fix the problem. Instead of trying to outlaw sleeping downtown when people have nowhere else to go, Juneau should refocus its efforts to ensure that everyone has a safe place to sleep at night.”
Decker may not be aware that Juneau is in the middle of the nation’s largest national forest, with 17 million acres of open land. And he seems willfully ignorant that this is a law that pertains to private property rights, not public space.
HOMELESS IN SEATTLE, PORTLAND, EUGENE…
Like Juneau, efforts to embrace the homeless have had similarly bad results in other cities across the Pacific Northwest.
Seattle faces a massive problem. In 2015 its mayor declared homelessness an emergency on the heels of a much-publicized 10-year-plan to end homelessness. The plan failed miserably; homelessness spiraled.
The current mayor, in his state-of-the-city address yesterday, asked for $55 million in new property taxes to address the homeless problem, as the city now has more homeless than any other city its size. Only New York City, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas have bigger homeless populations than the greater Seattle area.
Portland began a sanctuary policy for homeless people, a decision that led to people putting up tents and living anywhere they chose to on public property, in doorways, and on sidewalks. The filth, destruction of property, and human waste has accumulated from freeway interchanges to downtown doorways.
Six months into the experiment, Mayor Charlie Hales not only had to end it, he too had to declare an emergency.
Eugene, Oregon’s downtown is now in crisis mode. A planning consultant hired by the city says the homeless problem there is the worst she’s ever seen. It’s unsafe to be downtown at any time. She probably hasn’t been to Juneau yet.
Juneau’s downtown business community is growing weary of bearing the brunt of the homeless culture. Now, it also is also feeling heat from some Juneau anti-private-property critics, who have threatened to stop spending their money in downtown businesses in retaliation for what they feel is harsh treatment of a vulnerable population.
These businesses owners appreciate that Mayor Koelsch and his supporters on the Assembly have taken a very important step in defending the concept of private property, while also reintroducing a refreshing element of sanity into the discussion.
JUNEAU – The Alaska Senate today approved a resolution supporting U.S. Rep. Don Young’s effort to overturn an 11th-hour rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that took away fish and game management from the State of Alaska on 77 million acres of federal refuge lands.
The state resolution encourages Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan to work effectively together to pass House Joint Resolution 69 in the U.S. Senate, so it can go to the president’s desk for signature.
Sen. Cathy Giessel’s resolution passed easily by a vote of 15 to 4. Senators Tom Begich, Bill Wielechowski, Berta Gardner and Dennis Egan, all Democrats, voted against it, while Republican David Wilson of District D had left the floor before the vote.
Wielechowski spoke against the resolution, bringing up his objections to predator control, which was the reason the Fish and Wildlife Service gave for developing a closed-door regulation with the cooperation of the Humane Society.
Alaska’s senators have been under intense pressure from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and the Humane Society, both of which have made false claims that Alaska allows hunters to hunt grizzly bears from airplanes and kill wolf pups in their dens. Neither of these hunting practices are allowed in Alaska, but these “fake news” claims have received wide press coverage and have been promoted across social media.
SMOKING GUN:
After the federal agency in August took over fish and game management on lands traditionally managed by Alaska, its director sent a congratulatory note of thanks to the chief executive officer of the Humane Society:
The Humane Society’s defacto federal rule-making that Wielechowski, Gardner, Begich, and Egan clearly support was done without consultation with the State of Alaska, Alaska Natives, the hunting community or other stakeholders. Yet, Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society was on the inside of the rule-making process.
LIMITS ON BUREAUCRATS
Alaska’s Senate Resolution 4 gives full-throated support to U.S. Rep. Young’s H.J.Res. 69, which seized authority from the State to manage fish and wildlife for both recreational and subsistence uses on 77-million acres of federal lands in Alaska. H.J.Res. 69 passed the U.S. House of Representatives on a nearly partisan vote, and is on its way to the Senate.
“We sent a clear message today to the unelected bureaucrats in Washington D.C. — Congress writes laws, not you,” said Sen. Giessel .
“One of the iron-clad promises at statehood was the promise by the federal government that the state will be the primary authority for managing its fish and wildlife,” said Sen. John Coghill, R-North Pole. “The federal government – in direct violation of the statehood act, the Alaska Constitution and relevant precedent – is directly undermining that authority via unilateral rule-making. No more.”
Sen. Giessel’s resolution asks U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski to make every possible effort to see that the resolution is also passed in the U.S. Senate.
“Unelected federal bureaucrats are not the ultimate power in Alaska, even if they’d like to be.” said Senate President Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks. “Congressman Young deserves our support in his fight to restore local management over fish and game.”
An Anchorage woman called for a cab in early December. The dispatcher said that one was enroute and it could be expected in 20 minutes.
But 50 minutes later, the cab hadn’t arrived. The woman called the company to confirm, and was informed their computers were down and they had no idea if the cab was on the way. Or not.
Because her jet would leave shortly, and she would need to be at the airport 40 minutes in advance to check luggage, the hapless traveler ended up doing the only thing she could do: She drove herself, parked at an off-airport lot, and resolved to pay $150 in parking — that was her transportation cost to and from the airport since of the length of her trip meant she’d be leaving her car for several days.
If the cab had arrived, she would have spent $40 roundtrip, plus tip. If Uber or Lyft had been allowed to operate, she may have spent less than $25, plus tip.
ENTER UBER
Stories like this abound in Alaska. Computers go down, dispatchers don’t have a backup, cabs are gross and dirty, riders get kicked to the curb (literally) when drivers find out they’re paying with a credit card, and women who are made uncomfortable by their drivers have no recourse, as drivers are independent operators and the cab companies have no way to rein in behavior.
SB 14 would change that by allowing ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft to operate in what is now a taxi-cartel state. Uber and Lyft, which are technology platforms rather than transportation companies, have mobile applications that have been downloaded by nearly 70,000 Alaskans who want to buy a ride, but can’t use the service because of the taxi cartel. This cartel is created by local governments that sell taxi permits for vast sums.
While much of what the Legislature does is partisan, Republicans and Democrats agree that ride-sharing services work fine in 47 other states, and they’ll work fine in Alaska if government gets out of the way and lets the free market work.
Sponsored by Sen. Mia Costello, SB 14 and its companion bill in the House, HB 132, sponsored by Rep. Adam Wool, D-Fairbanks, “Let’s Ride Alaska Act” has everything going for it as a bipartisan bill.
Jeremy Price, Alaska director for Americans for Prosperity, is among the many younger Alaskans who say ride-sharing opens up the free market, increases transportation options and can create economic growth and jobs for self-starters. During his recent “Pints and Policy” political briefings for Millennials, Price said the ride-sharing bill was a huge hit for his generation.
Competition is good, Price said, and besides, the cab cartel is a corrupt system that stifles innovation.
“Taxi permits in Anchorage have cost tens of thousands of dollars to acquire,” he told the Senate Committee on Labor and Commerce. “I personally have spent my career taking cabs and Uber rides in the DC area. They both have pros and cons. Here in Anchorage, Yellow and Checker have drivers who are independent contractors, not employees. Therefore, if you have a problem with a driver, complaining to Yellow and Checker doesn’t provide any relief or resolution. With Transportation Network Companies (TNC’s), passengers rate their drivers and drivers rate their passengers.”
The customer feedback loop with ride-sharing platforms is instantaneous and serves as a peer-to-peer monitor of the behavior of drivers and their passengers. People who get consistently low scores just don’t get to participate in the sharing economy.
Municipalities might not like SB 14 and HB 132, because it pulls regulation (read: cartel power) out of the local sphere of influence and up to the state level. That’s necessary, proponents say, to ensure that drivers of ride-sharing vehicles can drive from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, for instance from Wasilla to Eagle River, or from Homer to Kenai.
And it’s also essential to ensure that the every operation — taxi or ride-sharing — conforms to laws pertaining to independent contractors. Municipalities, for example, cannot exempt companies from worker’s compensation laws, but the state has that authority.
“The message we would like to send is that we need a transportation solution and we need the jobs,” said Sen. Costello. “We are in a recession. We should be doing all we can to create jobs and expand the economy — for stay at home parents who want to drive part-time, for military spouses, for other Alaskans who want to participate.”
SB 14 will be heard by Senate Finance next week and will be in the House Transportation Committee, too. More than 66,000 Alaskans who have downloaded the mobile app will be waiting to see if bipartisanship can work to the benefit of ordinary people with ordinary needs for reliable, affordable transportation.
Members of the Kenai Borough Assembly stand while a constituent of the Satanic Temple offers an invocation in August.
Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly has followed a long-standing tradition of hearing an invocation before each of its public meetings. The practice has been part of public proceedings since the borough was formed in 1964.
That invocation may now be a relic of a bygone era, now that Satan has gotten in the game. A public hearing on whether it should continue will be held next month.
The matter came to a head last summer, when the Assembly allowed an atheist and a Satanist to give invocations in July and August.
Those invocations caused a stir across the Kenai Peninsula as the public expressed shock at seeing its Assembly members standing with bowed heads while the power of Satan was being invoked. The Assembly members themselves didn’t much enjoy it, either. The spectacle made national news.
The borough code states that invocation givers are chosen on a first-come, first-served invocation. The atheist and the Satanist simply had gotten in line.
But with Satanists now in the mix with pastors, rabbis and imams, the assembly faced a choice — either eliminate the invocation or limit it to representatives from established religions that meet regularly in the borough.
They chose the latter option, and quickly drew a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union Alaska chapter.
Now, faced with a constitutional lawsuit, the assembly is considering an ordinance, introduced last week, that would ditch the moment of prayer. Introduced by Assembly member Willy Dunn, it’s the same ordinance that never made it to a vote when introduced twice in 2016.
ACLU DRIVING BOROUGH ACTION
In mid-December, the ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of two Kenai Borough residents, Lance Hunt and Iris Fontana, who challenged what they say is the Assembly’s unconstitutional restriction on who may offer invocations at public meetings.
Hunt is the atheist who gave the invocation at the July 26 meeting, and Fontana read an invocation from The Satanic Temple before the Aug. 9 meeting, concluding her reading with a “Hail, Satan.”
“I’ve lived on the Kenai since 1994,” said Hunt in a statement released by the ACLU. “I’m involved in my community and I try to make the Kenai a better place for my neighbors. My July invocation called on the members of the Borough Assembly to be good to everyone, to recognize our common humanity, and to have empathy for our neighbors. Just because I don’t belong to a religious association, I don’t understand why the Assembly felt the need to prevent me from offering a similar invocation in the future.”
Iris Fontana, from her social media.
Fontana identified herself as a psychology and anthropology major at Kenai Peninsula College. “In August, I tried to inspire the Assembly members to use our common, innate human gifts of logic and reason as they deliberate on what’s best for me and my neighbors; last month, they told me that I could not give another invocation.”
Eric Glatt, staff attorney at the ACLU of Alaska, said the Assembly violated the Constitution by limiting the invocation to groups that meet in the borough.
“Rather than picking invocation speakers in a fair and neutral manner, such as first-come, first-served, the Borough has decreed that some speakers are acceptable and others—like our clients Lance and Iris—are not. This violates the Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and not favoring one religious practice over another.”
A public hearing on the ordinance is scheduled for the Assembly’s March 21 meeting.
Those familiar with the composition of the Assembly say that the mood has shifted to eliminating the invocation altogether, rather than fight it out in court.
The Satanic Temple has a national initiative to ban public prayer and Christian symbols from official meetings and public property. It has forced the debate by staging similar Satanic invocations in places like Phoenix, Arizona and Pensacola, Florida.
The group is pushing to open Satanic clubs in public schools as a method of shutting down Christian clubs. In Arkansas, the group is working to install a statue of a demon named Baphomet on the Capitol grounds near an existing monument to the Ten Commandments. The same effort is being attempted in Oklahoma.
The stated mission statement of The Satanic Temple is to “facilitate and mobilize the communication of politically aware Satanists, secularists, and advocates for individual liberty.” The group also puts an emphasis on abortion rights.
