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Ketchikan: Mental Health Trust to Log Deer Mountain Timber if Land Exchange Legislation Does Not Pass - The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority last week approved the sale of timber on two parcels near Ketchikan and Petersburg. According to the Mental Health Trust Authority, the sale will move forward if Congress does not pass legislation this session requiring the US Forest Service to exchange land with equal timber values for these and other Trust land.

Alaska Mental Health Trust Parcels for Exchange - Ketchikan Area
Map courtesy AMHT

The action of the trustees in Anchorage on August 24, 2016 follows 10 years of efforts to complete an administrative land exchange with the U.S. Forest Service. The conditional sale was approved because the potential loss of a viable timber industry in Southeast Alaska threatens to render these parcels valueless to the Trust if they are not marketed soon.

Facing a costly uphill battle on the land exchange and an imminent closure of the timber industry in Southeast Alaska, the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority board of trustees concurred with the advancement of two negotiated timber sales on Trust land near Ketchikan and Petersburg. The Trust Land Office will move forward with these sales after January 15, 2017, if legislation has not been passed by Congress at that point.

The two potential sites are part of a land exchange the Trust is currently pursuing through legislation, Senate bill 3006, also known as the Alaska Mental Health Trust Land Exchange Act of 2016. The board of trustees stated on the record that while they still support this legislation and are hopeful that Congress will pass the bill this fall, they must be prepared if the bill is unsuccessful.

Introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski in May 2016, S3006 directs the Department of Agriculture to move forward with a land exchange with the Trust. The land outlined in the exchange is detailed in an Agreement to Initiate signed by both the Trust Land Office and United States Forest Service on June 30, 2015, and is a result of a 10-year process that had significant stakeholder input. The exchange includes approximately 18,000 acres of Trust land near Wrangell, Ketchikan, Sitka, Petersburg, and Juneau for approximately 21,000 acres of Forest Service land on Prince of Wales Island and land near Shelter Cove.

“The board did not make this decision lightly. We understand the concerns of area communities, but our overriding responsibility is to Trust beneficiaries throughout the state. The Trust must use our land and resources to meet beneficiary needs. We cannot allow our land to lose value or sit idly while our only opportunity to gain value from our land is lost," said Russ Webb, chairman of the board

Webb said, "Our preference is to get S3006 passed to approve a land exchange that would accommodate the broader community and environmental interests we have learned about during our 10 years of developing a proposed exchange. But, if that isn't possible we have protect the value of assets to fulfill our duty to Trust beneficiaries for the long- term.”

Pinks are Alaska’s highest volume salmon fishery and hundreds of fishermen depend on the fish to boost their overall catches and paychecks. So far the statewide harvest has reached just 36 million humpies out of a preseason forecast of 90 million. That compares to a catch of 190 million pinks last summer.

“This is the worst salmon year in nearly 40 years, and that’s huge,” she said. “It doesn’t just affect the fishermen – it’s a trickle-down effect on the cannery workers, the processors, and nearly all businesses in the community. It’s a disaster, there’s no other way to describe it.”

Stutes, who chairs the House fisheries committee and is known as a straight talker, said she has gotten very positive response from the state Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development.

“They are on it and already moving forward,” Stutes said.

At the same time, she is working with the Division of Investments to allow a “blanket pardon” of state-funded fishermen’s loan payments for this year.

“This would not be a forgiveness, but would add this year’s payment onto the end of the loan period and forgive the loan payment just for this year,” she explained.

The disaster declaration and the loan suspensions “go hand in hand,” Stutes said, “but don’t depend on each other.”

While visiting constituents in Kodiak, Cordova and Yakutat, Representative Stutes said that “literally people are in fear about making mortgage payments and paying their bills. They can’t claim unemployment because they are still employed. There is just no work.”

By week’s end she was awaiting word from Lt. Governor Mallott, who is the Administration’s fishery “point person,” to take the ball and run with it.

But Stutes said the process has already begun and her job is to make sure it keeps moving.

“I’m a squeaky wheel and this is crucial to the resident workers and to people in so many communities. I’ll keep the pressure on so things will move quickly.”

It won’t be the first time a salmon disaster has been declared in Alaska. In 2012, a disaster was declared due to fishery failures on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers and in Cook Inlet due to low Chinook salmon returns for that season and in previous years. - More...
Monday PM - August 29, 2016

Alaska: Isotope tests ID salmon remains at Interior Alaska site By JEFF RICHARDSON - Ice age inhabitants of Interior Alaska relied more heavily on salmon and freshwater fish in their diets than previously thought, according to a newly published study.

A team of researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks made the discovery after taking samples from 17 prehistoric hearths along the Tanana River, then analyzed stable isotopes and lipid residues to identify fish remains at multiple locations. The results offer a more complex picture of Alaska’s ice age residents, who were previously thought to have a diet dominated by terrestrial mammals such as mammoths, bison and elk.

The project also found the earliest evidence of human use of anadromous salmon in the Americas, dating back at least 11,800 years.

The results of the study were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

DNA analysis of chum salmon bones from the same site on the Tanana River had previously confirmed that fish were part of the local indigenous diet as far back as 11,500 years ago. But fragile fish bones rarely survive for scientists to analyze, so the team used sophisticated geochemistry analyses to estimate the amount of salmon, freshwater and terrestrial resources ancient people ate. - More...
Monday PM - August 29, 2016

Columns - Commentary

MONEY MATTERS: EVALUATING AND SELECTING A FINANCIAL ADVISOR By MARY LYNNE DAHL, CFP® - I recently attended the wedding of a friend who asked a really good question, one that many other people are probably asking these days. We had been standing in a group at the reception, talking about retirement and money matters. During the conversation, two of those present mentioned that they were “financial advisors”. One was a stock broker at a big name firm in New York City. The other was a Certified Financial Planner ™ at an independent boutique firm in a small town. My friend listened to these advisors talk about money and investing and later took me aside and asked me to explain what it meant to say that one is a “financial advisor”. He mentioned that at age 42, he was interested in getting financial advice regarding his retirement plan at work but that he also had questions about refinancing his home, buying a vacation property and a business opportunity he was considering. He wanted to find someone to work with that he could trust to give him objective advice and he wanted to be able to invest his retirement plan money wisely.

I had been asked this question before, many times. By now, I have concluded that the public has not been educated enough about what it means to be a “financial advisor” and what credentials are required to call oneself a “financial advisor”. - More...
Monday PM - August 29, 2016

RON PAUL: The Right Lessons from Obamacare's Meltdown - The decision of several major insurance companies to cut their losses and withdraw from the Obamacare exchanges, combined with the failure of 70 percent of Obamacare's health insurance "co-ops, " will leave one in six Obamacare enrollees with only one health insurance option. If Obamacare continues on its current track, most of America may resemble Pinal County, Arizona, where no one can obtain private health insurance. Those lucky enough to obtain insurance will face ever-increasing premiums and a declining choice of providers.

Many Obamacare supporters claimed that the exchanges created a market for health insurance that would allow consumers to benefit from competition. But allowing consumers to pick from a variety of government-controlled health insurance plans is not a true market; instead it is what the great economist Ludwig von Mises called "playing market."

Unfortunately, if not surprisingly, too many are drawing the wrong lessons from Obamacare's difficulties. Instead of calling for a repeal of Obamacare and all other government interference in the health care market, many are calling for increased penalties on those who defy Obamacare's individual mandate in order to force them onto the exchanges. Others are renewing the push for a "public option," forcing private companies to compete with taxpayer-funded entities and easing the way for the adoption of a Canadian-style single payer system. - More...
Monday PM - August 29, 2016