Assembly Seat 6, now occupied by Kameron Perez-Verdia for West Anchorage, has another candidate running — former Rep. Liz Vazquez.
A fundraiser-meet-and-greet is calendared for Wednesday, Dec. 22 from 6-8 pm at Round table Pizza, 800 E Dimond Blvd #208, Anchorage, AK 99515. The restaurant is in the Dimond Center.
Hosts include Larry Baker, Liz and Hugh Ashlock, Brian Hove, Frank and Jeanie McQueary, Mike Robbins, Steve and Olga Zelener, Steve Strait, Joan Priestley, M.D., Bern Davis, Matthew Fagnani, Stan and Candice English, Chris and Bud Duke, Loren Leman, and Win and Audrey Faulkner.
The Anchorage Assembly on Tuesday will take public testimony and will vote on a rewrite of Title 28 of Municipal code, putting severe restrictions on election observers for the all-mail-in ballot counting process.
The Assembly’s radical left majority describes the changes as “housekeeping.”
Working in consort with Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones, the nine leftist members of the Assembly plan to significantly reduce the number of observers who can be in position to watch ballots being counted at the Municipality’s Election Center at 619 East Ship Creek Ave. They also have other requirements, such as not allowing election workers to answer the questions of observers, but to require all questions to be funneled through the Municipal Clerk.
Clerk Jones objected to several election observers from the Dave Bronson for Mayor campaign and got into disputes with several of them during the April election and May runoff election. Their presence visibly rattled her and she was recorded scolding and talking down to the Bronson observers on several occasions. Jones and her operation has never had such scrutiny as they had during the April-May election.
At the same time, Assemblyman Chris Constant was recorded delivering a lavish bouquet of flowers to Jones during the counting process. Constant was a top lieutenant of Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar campaign for mayor and, as a member of the Assembly, is one of Jones’ bosses. The Muni Clerk reports to the Assembly.
The new rules Jones has written will allow her to remove any observer by simply rewriting the election observer handbook on the spot. Observers will also be required to be signed up over three weeks in advance, which is a barrier to candidates who do not have support of unions. Unions are able to deploy people to campaign activities, while candidates without unions must rely on volunteers.
In addition, observers will be required to undergo training from Jones’ staff and will not be able to record what they are seeing using their phones or cameras.
Brice Wilbanks, who was the campaign manager of the Bronson campaign, called these the “Brice amendments,” because most of them appear a result of volunteer vigilance on behalf of the Bronson campaign. Another testifier during Dec. 14’s public hearing described the amendments to Title 28 as obvious “retaliation” against the Bronson campaign.
Others noted that the city is getting ready to have body cameras on police officers, and that the cameras installed in the counting rooms are at such a distance that it’s not easy to see what is going on in the Election Center.
The proposed restricting of observers comes at a time when many in America have doubts about the results of election results in the 2020 General Election.
“Many Republicans appear to have bought into Trump’s lies about nonexistent widespread fraud in an election he lost,” reported NPR in a November news story. “Seventy-two percent of whites with degrees said they had trust in elections, while less than half of non-college-educated whites said they did.” The NPR poll found that only 33 percent of Republicans trust that the 2024 elections will be fair.
The Assembly meets at 5 pm on the ground floor of the Loussac Library, 3600 Denali Street. Information about the meeting, including how to watch it live on YouTube, can be found at this link.
Public testimony will continue tonight on the revised rules. Supporting documents provided by the Assembly:
School Board President Margo Bellamy told a community council group that the board will probably settle on a new superintendent by April.
Bellamy told the South Addition Community Council that Leadership Anchorage is in charge of the search and interviews for those those apply to replace Superintendent Deena Bishop, who announced she is retiring at the end of June.
That means George Martinez, program contact for Leadership Anchorage, is in charge of the initial screening of superintendent candidates. The final decision rests with the elected board itself.
Martinez is one of the plaintiffs filing a lawsuit against the new political redistricting maps. He has run for mayor of Anchorage as late as 2021, and was prominent in the Occupy Wall Street movement and as a community organizer, rapper, and former candidate for U.S. Congress in New York. He moved to Anchorage in 2007 and worked as an assistant to Mayor Ethan Berkowitz for several years. He is the vice president of Communications and Community Engagement at Alaska Humanities Forum, where he leads the Leadership Anchorage initiative.
Bellamy described the process for hiring a new superintendent:
“We do anticipate to have the process completed by early March. We don’t really know when we will have a new person because once we get through, you know, the board has to make a final decision, and then we’ve got to do the negotiations for the contract but it will really be more like early April before we have a superintendent. It is ambitious but we believe we can make that happen. and we also believe we can give the community as much input as it wants to have in the process. We have Leadership Anchorage is doing the canvassing and the interviewing, and the data collection externally, and then we have a third-party search firm that will be helping us with the internal component of the search process,” she told the community council.
It is unclear who besides Martinez in Leadership Anchorage is going to be part of the interviewing, canvassing, and data collection portion of the superintendent search. The current class of Leadership Anchorage is comprised of:
April Eide Aurora Agee Brennon Land Camilla Hussein-Scott Carmen Wenger Nyabony Gat Fadwa Edais Heather Barbour Jasmine Carter Joni Earp Spiess Kaila Pfister Kevin McGee Kima Hamilton Kyle Stevens Loreen Anderson Megan Malcolm Molly Cornish Nyabony Gat Traci Bunkers Weston Eiler
At the Anchorage School Board meeting on Monday, a revised school board policy is set to be voted on that may continue to blunt the ability of any board member to criticize the actions of the board.
The rule, BB 9010, states that before a vote, a board member may present whatever evidence they may feel important to the matter at hand. But not after a vote.
“The School Board shall fully consider the implications and relevancy of all information so presented. All opinions, reactions and positions shall be openly discussed, so that each member may understand all aspects of the issue before the School board makes its decision. Any School Board member who may wish to criticize or oppose any specific School Board action should do so during the School Board meeting,” the rule explains.
Once a decision has been made, the school board members are not allowed to “misrepresent” that decision to the public.
“When School Board members express their opinions outside of the School Board meeting, it is their responsibility to respect the democratic nature of School Board decision-making and always identify personal viewpoints as such,” the rule reads.
“Public statements in the name of the School Board shall be issued by the School Board president or, if appropriate, by the Superintendent or designee at the direction of the School Board president,” it says.
The proposed rule is better than what now exists, which says board members must “abide” by whatever decision the board votes on. The word “abide” is hard to define and is a certain abridgment of a board member’s First Amendment rights, although the new description of “misrepresent” also may be constitutionally weak, if a board president rules with a heavy hand.
Dave Donley, the conservative member of the school board, has been trying to improve this section of the board’s governing rules, because he disagrees with so much of what the board passes.
A second rule change will allow the Anchorage School District superintendent to act as an ex officio member of the board, with the ability to “make incidental motions and speak to matters under consideration during Board deliberations.” The rule change would not allow the superintendent to vote, however.
The Anchorage School Board meets Monday in executive session at 4 pm, and in regular open session at 6 pm. The issue of the superintendent of schools removing the mask mandate when children return to campus in January may come up as a last-minute item at the regular meeting.
The board has received over 50 email public comments, with many of them asking the board to overrule the superintendent in her decision to make masks optional across the district.
Sample of the public comments received include these chosen at random:
“My issue with the removal of the mandatory masking policy in our schools is the process by which it occurred. The super-authority granted to the superintendent to make these sorts of changes without school board input was created so that in the case of an emergency immediate action could be taken. No such emergency existed on Thursday, December 16. Covid-19 circumstances did not suddenly require unilateral action from the superintendent; Dr. Bishop should have briefed the school board of her proposed change, sought feedback, and allowed discussion.
I hope that whoever replaces our current superintendent is more respectful of the board, and that she or he will not abuse the power of the office to achieve an agenda that may or may not be in the best interest of our students. – Andrew Gray
My children do not need masks. They have more complications with wearing them such as bloody noses and asthma. They also have already had Covid and have immunity. It is a parents job to deem what is medically necessary for their children not the school board.
You are not to deem what is medically necessary for people’s children, only parents have the right for that. My kids have had Covid and have immunity. Masks are causing more harm to my children such as giving them constant bloody noses, headaches and asthma. I will pull them from school to place in private school as will many other parents and the ASD will lose even more funding. – Katherine Lucier
From direct observation of young children in my position leading nature hikes, the children are not bothered by wearing face masks. Many seem to prefer keeping them on even walking outside. Please keep in mind that many children are not vaccinated, and even if they are, they can carry the virus. Our incredible hard working school staff and teachers do not deserve to have the well being of themselves and their families compromised. Covid rates may be temporarily dipping, but the confusion of switching policies and the ongoing mutations of the virus make the action of unmasking in schools dangerous at best. With respect for the Superintendent, please consider overriding her dictate. – Sue May
It makes no sense to stop mandatory masking in schools for the spring semester- our health system is still trying to recover and masks have been shown to allow the spread of COVID19. Omicron is sweeping the nation, and with much higher infection rates we could see a significant uptick in cases. Lifting this policy now, only to reinstate it after we’re in a new world of hurt is very shortsided and not evidence based. Our schools have thousands of students and hundreds of teachers, the effect on the wider community is massive. Please continue to require masking in our schools. – Laura Herman
With rates of COVID doubling weekly in the Lower 48, schools closing, states enacting mask mandates and multiple hospitals reaching max capacity, now is NOT the time to end the mask mandate in our schools. Anchorage hospitals went on crisis care mode already – and that was before omicron.
Our three kids think it is SO much better than returning to online schooling. Students and staff are used to it now.
Please reverse Bishop’s poorly timed decision and keep masking in our schools, for all our sakes. – Kristiann Maclean
I am writing as a concerned Anchorage parent of two elementary school students in ASD and a community member. I was distressed to read the December 15 communication about the Superintendent’s desired transition to “parent-informed masking.” We should leave the public health decisions to public health professionals. For the younger students in our district, vaccination rates are very low (14%); masks are a proven way to minimize virus spread. Without masks, spread will be a problem and we will be back to closing classrooms and schools which is very disruptive to learning and family work schedules.
Students are already used to mandatory masking. I volunteer in my daughter’s kindergarten classroom and have been impressed with the normalcy of masking even among our youngest students. Making a rule that is not for everyone will be confusing for young children, and will put our vulnerable children and households at risk. Our kids have an immunosuppressed father and it feels much more stressful and risky to send them into school without masks.
The timing of this possible shift is also very distressing. Many families travel for holidays – bringing everyone back together again without masking is not appropriate or safe. The omicron variant is causing countries, universities, schools to fully close down. Removing our mask mandate at this time is very shortsighted and will have deadly impacts on our community. It is so distressing to so many of us in our community that these basic decisions about public health have become so politicized and so much misinformation is being spread. The guidance from health professionals is clear. Masks are an effective and easy tool to help control the spread of this deadly virus. Please protect our children, and our vulnerable family members, and all of us by keeping this mask mandate for our schools until such time as our rates and transmission is *low* (<5 / 100,000).
Thank you very much for your service and leadership. – Courtney Carothers, Parent of two elementary-aged students in ASD
As an ASD teacher assistant substitute working with an unvaccinated population in a pre-K classroom, I will no longer feel safe even though I am vaccinated. Pre-K students are very good at wearing masks, but don’t understand social distance. All these students will be more at risk if they contract covid. Also, as an effective assistant, I need to be close to them. Helping them open objects during lunch, getting outdoor gear on and off, working in small learning groups…we are always in close proximity. Mask wearing makes me feeler safer. With no mask mandate, I will have to step back from subbing. – Nancy Dunleavy
I am a mother with 4 children, 3 of which are enrolled in ASD. My older two have enjoyed a return to normal school year in middle and high school. We kept them home all of last year. My 3rd grader has recently been fully vaccinated and will return to school in January after having been home all first semester. My youngest child is not eligible for a vaccination and as a family we make great efforts and sacrifices to protect her from the virus.
The decision to make masks optional at this point does not make any sense whatsoever. Masks have been successful at keeping infections at bay in our schools. New variants are continuing to bludgeon our country and no one really knows what things will look like in two weeks, in a month, in two months. Why this decision was made this preemptively seems careless and ill advised.
Saying parents can make decisions on mask wearing for their child(ren) is ridiculous. Mask wearing is most effective if everyone wears a mask- and you all full well know this. Children will feel singled out and different if they are asked to mask and their own teachers or administrators aren’t even masking up, let alone their peers.
The community is tired of covid, yes. If numbers rise and more of our community falls ill and needs medical care then this will fall to the already overtaxed medical community to deal with. The school district should NOT contribute to this hardship in any way. Please make masking required of all staff, teachers and students in all ASD buildings. Thank you for your time, – Jolene Becke
I am writing in to vote for mask choice. This has gone on long enough. I am a kindergarten TA and see first hand how this is harming our children. I have three teenagers in the school district, and see the effects on those students as well. Vaccines are available for everyone who is in the system. Move on, please. – Monica Tovsen
Thanks to the school board and superintendent for calmly and intelligently working hard keeping our students safe during this pandemic.
Please keep doing the smart and safe thing by continuing the indoor mask policy that has been working so well. The vast majority our kids, including my own third grade son, think of indoor masking as an acceptable and reasonable way to protect themselves and others.
Please don’t take away that protection now as we enter the next phase of this pandemic with new and unknown threats related to the omicron variant.
Thank you again for all you do. The science-driven decisions you have made on behalf of our students and community have made this school year safer and more stable for all of Anchorage.
Keep up the good work by continuing to follow the science and public health recommendations. – Jimael Johnson Mother of current ASD student
School board members: Thank you for your time and for hearing my concerns. I strongly disagree with the operational guideline from Dr. Deena Bishop that would make masks optional in ASD schoolsbeginning January 3, 2022. Why? Who benefits from this? Whose needs are being met here? Does this decision prioritize the best outcomes for all children and our community?
Health experts report a likely approaching wave of cases due to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Furthermore, many families will be returning from travel after the holidays and/or will have been engaging with families and friends locally. I’ve heard that cases did not rise after Thanksgiving break, and this was cited as a reason to make masks optional. But masks were STILL REQUIRED in ASD buildings after Thanksgiving which may be one reason cases didn’t rise. Also, that break is shorter. Using that data for the Winter Break situation is flawed.
I am a parent of two children in ASD schools – a kindergartener and a second grader, the latter has asthma. Our family has been very COVID-cautious, because of my son’s asthma and because we have an infant at home. This decision for mask-optional gives us two terrible options: go to school where some people will be unmasked (even though my kids will mask, it isn’t very effective if others are not) or stay at home and transition to ASD virtual. My kids stayed virtual all last year (to protect our newborn) and were so happy to go back to school. I will have to make a decision to prioritize either my children’s physical health or their mental health. Why must we choose?
This timing is terrible. The proximity to Winter Break is poor, as I mentioned earlier. If we must change policy, why not give it two weeks to allow any travel cases to be identified, and then implement mask optional right after Martin Luther King, Junior day? Wouldn’t that be wise?
Also, for any family who wishes to vaccinate their 5-11-year-olds against COVID but have not yet done so for any reason, two weeks notice is not enough time for them to receive a full cycle of the vaccine and build adequate immunity. Why the rush? Why so little notice? Why such terrible timing, when we should be taking a break instead of scrambling to decide what to do for next semester?
Recently, I was speaking to an elder in a predominately Inupiat village in Northwest Alaska. (I am not using his name as he did not give express permission.) His village has been extremely careful and has had very few cases and none serious. When I remarked on this, he explained how the most important priority for them was to protect and care for the elders and the children. They’ve been so careful that even vaccinated people will often quarantine after travel, at an inconvenience to themselves.
Listen to your elders. Put the needs of children first, not political pressures or perceived inconvenience. Do the right thing. Alter this policy to give more time for cases to appear after break and for more children to get vaccinated, or better yet, keep the current mandate in place for third quarter and re-visit for fourth.
With gratitude and faith in your good sense and care for others, – The Rev. Lisa Smith Fiegel (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) Denali Montessori mom and PTSA board member
Please support Superintendent Bishop in allowing parent-informed masking when we return to school in January.
Transmission numbers in Anchorage are trending down and the Municipality of Anchorage’s (MOA) emergency order has been lifted. COVID-19 testing now shows a downward trend and cases in schools have remained low as well.
The COVID-19 vaccine has been readily available to all school-aged children for several months now, and the booster is available for those 16 and older.
Summer school was a success when masking was not required, and I know it will be a success for the rest of the school year.
Thank you for doing what is best for our children by allowing masking to be a choice! – Rachelle Pessetto
The Superintendent’s decision to make masks optional after winter break appears to be short sighted. European nations and US states on the east coast are seeing rapid growth in covid cases due to Omicron. We know that hospitalizations and deaths lag behind infections. Anchorage and Alaska just recently had record cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from the Delta variant. We finally are trending downward in numbers largely due to increase in community mask use and an influx of over 400 health professionals to deliver care at our hospitals. I don’t understand how Dr. Bishop feels we are suddenly in the clear on this pandemic and can ditch masks in schools. Information available does not support it. We should continue to be proactive to keep our kids in school, not reactive and more disruptive to their learning environment. My kids don’t mind the masks, they want to be in school. We have heard of the difficulties finding enough bus drivers and substitute teachers. I have to wonder how ASD plans to keep in person class going when teachers and staff are unable to attend in person due to covid infections and there’s no backup personnel. I hope the school board will push back on this short sighted plan for optional masking. We can see the next wave coming if we just look past our feet. Thank you! – Alecia Rathlin
The school board meets at the Anchorage School District Education Center, 5530 E Northern Lights Blvd Anchorage, and it has allowed for limited seating due to its rule relating to Covid mitigation. The meeting can be watched, with great limitations, at the board’s YouTube channel, ASD-TV at https://www.youtube.com/user/AnchorageSD
In 1969, when Alaskans realized how much oil was in Prudhoe Bay, people quickly understood the implications. A formerly cash starved state was going to get rich. The questions were how quickly, how rich, and what should be done with all that money?
When Alaska Natives demanded a settlement of their land claims, it was apparent this issue needed to be resolved before any pipeline could be built. The landmark legislation that resulted, the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act of 1971, cleared the way.
Then the oil crisis of 1973 made the enormous cost of a pipeline economically feasible. Construction began in 1974, and by the summer of 1977 the oil began to flow. By 1978 1.2 million barrels a day were arriving in Valdez, gradually reaching a peak in 1988 of 2 million barrels a day. The State of Alaska was poor no more.
The still unanswered question was: What to do with all the money? As a result, the most important election in Alaska’s history was the 1978 Republican gubernatorial primary. Whoever won would become governor, with the power to control the expenditure of the windfall.
The candidates were incumbent Gov. Jay Hammond, the man most responsible for creation of the Alaska Permanent Fund; former Gov. and Secretary of the Interior Wally Hickel; and conservative stalwart Tom Fink, Speaker of the House.
Neither Hickel or Fink had much use for the Permanent Fund. They both believed that Permanent Fund money should be spent on major infrastructure improvements, like the Rampart Dam. So this election determined the fate of the Fund. It would either thrive, under Hammond, or be discarded in favor of huge mega-projects. Bridges across the Turnagain Arm and the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet were seriously considered. Moving the state capital from Juneau to Wasilla was financially feasible. Money was no object.
Hickel was one of the richest men in the state, while Hammond and Fink had modest means, and relied on small-dollar donations. All the business interests in the state, along with organized labor, were behind Hickel, but they were unable to overwhelm Hammond with money. In 1978 Alaska had a very strict campaign finance laws, and Hickel’s wealthy supporters were of limited use to him. This proved critical, since Hammond only beat him by 98 votes.
That law was later ruled unconstitutional, and recent Supreme Court decisions have made effective campaign finance laws unobtainable. Big money from outside, dark money, from people like George Soros, will be pouring into next year’s Alaska Senate election. Dark money groups get a bigger bang for their buck in small states like Alaska. Here, a few million dollars can make a difference. In large states, they have to spend a lot more to have an effect. And the votes of senators from Alaska count just much as the ones from California.
Alaska voters have repeatedly voted for campaign finance reform, most recently in 2020, for Prop. 2. We’d vote for it again, if we could, but court decisions like Thompson v. Hebdon prevent any such reform from taking place. Congress will never clean up this mess. It’s dysfunctional, mired in extreme partisanship, and thoroughly corrupted by big money donors.
One group of American patriots, Wolf-PAC, is trying to do something about this corruption, and the Alaska Legislature in 2022 will have the opportunity to participate in the solution they propose. It can pass a resolution calling for an Amendment Convention limited solely to the subject of campaign finance for the purpose of proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution.
Under the terms of Article V of the Constitution, if 34 state legislatures pass such resolutions, Congress is required to call the convention for this limited purpose. When it meets, Republican and Democrat delegates will work to forge a compromise solution acceptable to both parties. A partisan proposal would be pointless, since it could never be ratified by the required 38 states.
Campaign finance reform can work, as shown by its effect in Alaska in 1978. We wouldn’t have a Permanent Fund without it. The United States Congress is dysfunctional, paralyzed by the money of special interests. The Alaska legislature can be part of the solution.
In 1983, as a freshman State Senator, Fritz Pettyjohn voted for an Article V resolution calling for a fiscal reform Amendment Convention.
Representing Pebble mine for three years, I spent far too much time dealing with speculation by opponents with no basis in fact.
I have no facts, no smoking gun. But something happened.
After nearly two years, and after the publication of the draft environmental impact statement and only months before the final environmental impact statement, the Army Corps of Engineers and its cooperating agencies determined that the alternative preferred by the developer was not the Least Environmentally Damaging Practical Alternative.
The developer’s preferred plan was to take the concentrate by road to the North Ferry Terminal, load it on an ice-breaking ferry, across the lake to be re-loaded on trucks to the port. It was a unique approach that avoided by a factor of nearly half of the road crossings, bridges, and culverts of a land route.
The Corps decided that the Northern route was the preferred route. This is after nearly two years after having the developer’s preference.
The adjustments were significant, not the least of which was the known-to-everyone difficulty in securing rights of passage in the northern route.
There were a couple of related events that may have had an influence on this late switch.
Only a few weeks later, Environmental Protection Agency had coming due a “request for elevation.”
This seldom-used request amounted to a judgment that “this project is too difficult to handle at the regional level” so we request it is elevated to the federal level.
EPA chose not to send the request. Instead, they published a letter explaining why they chose not to. That letter amounts to a “bromance” letter with EPA, showering praise on the Corp of Engineers and the way the discussions were being handled.
Almost from that day, relationships with the Corps of Engineers cooled noticeably, nowhere near unprofessional, but a bit more curt and distant.
Something had happened.
The difficult adjustment was carried out with the project and the final EIS reflected the handling of those adjustments.
Any project would have been thrilled to receive the final EIS that the Pebble project received. Yet, the standard requirement for a mitigation plan was presented with especially harsh rhetoric.
Mitigation plans are always required as part of the process, and always come at the end of the process to account for adjustments in the plan needed to comply with various regulatory interpretations.
The response from our U.S. senators took no note of the excellent report, involving eight federal agencies and three state agencies, which reported that the mine was environmentally sound (with substantial call outs of innovation). Instead, their take was essentially. “This plan cannot be permitted until the developer presents a mitigation plan.”
It sounded to me like a “Don’t give up haters, we still have another chance” message.
Mitigation plans are a reasonable and appropriate way to deal with the certainty that some environmental damage will be done by any road or any development. Normally, the reasoning would direct, “you impacted this amount of wetlands; give us a plan you have for creating or restoring a small multiple of that.”
The mitigation plan that was required was very much a surprise. The Corp required a very high multiple of impacted wetlands: 10 times. That is way out of line with recent requirements. The Donlin mine had a multiple of about 2.
But that only makes it harder. It was the restrictions that came with it that makes one wonder.
Let me pause for a moment and further describe how mitigation is dealt with in the Lower 48. There, they have “mitigation banks,” which are essentially sites that have been polluted or otherwise compromised by historical developments. The developer can select the project or projects needed to meet the requirements of mitigation.
Some of these are quite demanding. For instance, in an old fuel storage area where leaking tanks have polluted the area, the developer may have to dig 40 or 50 feet into the ground and treat (sometimes burn) the dirt that can be cleaned, and dispose of the soil that cannot be treated. In the end, the ground is near its original state. They have whole companies whose job it is to respond to these requirements.
In Alaska there are few such polluted sites (although there are a few remaining from WWII fueling sites that are very polluted and very remote).
In any case, there was no option for mitigation banks at the Pebble site. There is no polluted ground there. There isn’t even a four-wheel track.
The requirement was that all mitigation would be done “in kind,” which means impact on wetlands needed to be returned 10 times in wetlands. That would have been doable by buying up land to be turned into a preserve. That in itself would be a bad precedent for Alaska, which has 85% of federal wildlife area already.
But there was more: All of the mitigation had to be done in the Koktuli river drainage. The only possible solution was the buying up of land in the Koktuli drainage and making it a preserve. That is essentially what Pebble proposed and was rebuffed.
It was clear to all that the mitigation was made impossible on purpose.
I don’t know what exactly; but something happened. We will probably never know what it was, but we know from the final environmental impact statement what it was not: It was not a threat to salmon, it was not a threat to rupture the tailings facility, it was not an earthquake risk, it was not toxic.
It was a good mine that could have provided jobs for a very long time, brought a higher standard of living to all around the lake, and brought dollars to the state treasury.
I don’t know what happened, but I know why. A majority of Alaskans were fooled. Once that happens, no one will wait for the science. Politicians will turn against the proposed project following the will of the people. One email from EPA had it right from the beginning: “It’s not about science, it’s politics.”
You were “Pebbled” Alaska. Don’t ever let them do that again.
The “Pebbled” series at Must Read Alaska is authored by Mark Hamilton. After 31 years of service to this nation, Hamilton retired as a Major General with the U. S. Army in July of 1998. He served for 12 years as President of University of Alaska, and is now President Emeritus.He worked for the Pebble Partnership for three years before retiring.
At the conservative AmericaFest mega-convention in Phoenix, Arizona, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said on Sunday she will not get vaccinated for Covid-19, and she encouraged people to “stiffen their spines” in resistance to vaccine mandates. Palin got the virus in April and recovered.
“It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot. I will not do it. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids, either,” she said.
Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk interviewed Palin, and asked her what she says to people who are getting fired because they are refusing the Covid vaccine.
“I think if enough of us, rise up and say, ‘No, enough is enough,’ there are more of us than there are of them,” Palin said, to thunderous applause. Palin said. “There is an empowerment in a group like this where we can kind of feed off each other and really be strong.”
Chugiak Eagle River Assemblywoman Jamie Allard and former LaMex Restaurant owner Trina Johnson are at the conference and said they are going to try to get Kirk to Alaska to talk to young people in the 49th state.
Eagle River Assemblywoman Jamie Allard, Erika Kirk, and Anchorage business owner Trina Johnson.
“They love her down here,” Allard said of Palin in Arizona. “She could not move through the civic center without a flock following her.”
Palin comments were echoed by many others at the convention, including Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson.
“No one should be forced to get the vaccine against their will under any circumstances whatsoever,” said Kirk. “Period. End of story.”
Other conservative superstars on the agenda of the conservative gathering include Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Benny Johnson, Jesse Watters, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, Congresswoman Kat Cammack, Jack Posobiec, Candace Owens, Sen. Ted Cruz, Brandon Tatum, Kyle Rittenhouse, Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, Kayleigh McEnany, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and Dennis Prager of Prager U.
The agenda and more information about Turning Point USA at this link.
Performances by Dee Jay Silver and Lee Greenwood, Russell Dickerson, and Dustin Lynch are also on the agenda.
About 20,000 people are attending the conference, which is aimed at younger Americans. In addition to Palin, Allard, and Johnson, there were at least five other Alaskans at the event.
Turning Point USA is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote freedom. Its founder and president, Charlie Kirk, age 28, started the organization in 2012 to push back on the Marxist indoctrination on America’s college campuses.
It’s a Covid thing. Evidently Covid hit Chugach Electric hard, the utility said. Other utilities? Not so much.
Chugach Electric filed a rate decoupling request on Dec. 9, along with a request of 4.1% increase to energy and demand rates for the North and South District customers.
The decoupling request is intended to separate Chugach’s retail and wholesale customers.
Four days later, the Regulatory Commission of Alaska issued a Notice of Utility Tariff Filings for a rate increase, as requested by Chugach Electric. Comments from the public are due no later than Jan. 7.
The public comment period lands during the busy holiday season, when many may not be paying attention to public notices.
The RCA notice states the Covid-19 pandemic as the reason for this rate increase request. To date, Chugach is the only Railbelt electric utility asking for rate increases due to Covid-19.
Not discussed in the notice is the $1 billion purchase of Municipal Light & Power by Chugach Electric as an underlying issue in this rate request. There is also no mention in the notice of the ballot language that specifically promised Anchorage voters “No Increase in Base Rates” as a result of the sale.
Sixty-five percent of Anchorage voters approved the measure, called Proposition 10, in April of 2018. Former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz closed the sale in 2020, and the rate increase request comes just one year later.
In the terms of the sale in 2020, the Municipality was to set aside $36 million to protect customers in of ML&P from rate increases that would come due to the sale for the first three years.
The promise from former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz was that the combined utility would create a downward pressure on price increases, and that $15 million from the sale would be used to fund an addiction treatment facility, which was a promise Berkowitz made to Providence Alaska Medical Center leaders in exchange for their support. Providence is a major user of electricity in Anchorage.
On Aug. 24, 2020, Berkowitz was quoted by his public relations department saying, “This is a time to reflect on the journey we’ve been on and to express appreciation and gratitude to those who made it possible. I want to thank the ML&P employees who’ve gone above and beyond to provide service with competitive, safe and reliable energy. Thank you to the teams that worked incredibly hard for such a long period of time to sew up the details of this complex deal. I also want to thank the ratepayers and voters of Anchorage who had the vision and persistence to implement the kind of change that will benefit our community for generations. Finally, I want to thank our partners at Chugach for staying the course and for the stewardship that they will provide to a great utility and the customers it serves.”
“After more than two years of working on this important transaction, we are very pleased to see the end is in sight,” said Chugach CEO Lee Thibert said in the same press release. “At a time when many are facing financial challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, having one Anchorage electric utility will help bring lower long-term energy costs for our community. We appreciate the commitment and hard work of all the employees who have been working to bring these two utilities together, and we look forward to welcoming ML&P employees and customers into the Chugach family.”
Thibert has announced he will retire in April of 2022, after having spent over 30 years with the utility.
Chugach’s filing is part of a much broader series of issues as outlined in a July 1 Chugach filing, known as RCA Docket U-21-059.
Chugach is also requesting a waiver from the supporting information requirements for the rate changes and cost of service methods.
Comments onthis Chugach Electric rate increase request must be filed with the RCA no later than Jan. 7, 2022 and must reference TA392-121 and/or TA514-8.
