October 11, 2003
Saturday - 2:20 pm

Based on recommendations by the Department of Law and Division of Elections, Lieutenant Governor Loren Leman has certified the initiative petition entitled:

"An Act providing for taxation of certain commercial ship vessels, pertaining to certain vessel activities and related to ship vessel operations taking place in the marine waters of the State of Alaska."

The initiative petition is sponsored by Joseph Geldhof, Gershon Cohen and Norman Sarabia. If adopted the initiative would impose a "per person per voyage" tax on cruise ships to pay for vessel services and would also tax cruise ship gambling in State waters. Cruise ships would be required to gather and report certain information about wastewater discharges and permits. The initiative would authorize citizen suits to enforce these discharge statutes and permits and requires commercial passenger vessels to carry a State-employed marine engineer to monitor operations while in State waters. Cruise ship vessels would also disclose on-ship promotions of shore-side businesses.

The Division of Elections has verified that the application has a sufficient number of sponsors to qualify for circulation of a petition. The Department of Law has concluded that the initiative application complies with AS 15.45.030 and AS 15.45.040. Therefore, Leman certified the initiative application as being in the proper form under AS 15.45.010 through AS 15.45.070, and Article XI of the Alaska Constitution.

Source of News Release:

Office of Lt. Governor
Web Site

 

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