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Ketchikan: Public Invited to Join First Lady Donna Walker in Christening of the First Alaska Class Ferry - Vigor Alaska, the State of Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities and Alaska Marine Highway System is inviting the public to celebrate the christening and launching of the M/V Tazlina. The vessel is the first AMHS ferry to carry the 'Made In Alaska' logo.

The celebration of the Tazlina will be held Saturday, August 11, 2018 at Vigor’s Ketchikan shipyard. The ceremony will begin promptly at 1:30pm, with First Lady Donna Walker performing the christening. Dignitaries attending include Governor Bill Walker and Senator Lisa Murkowski. All Alaskans are invited to join in person.

“Christening the M/V Tazlina is an honor for me, and an exciting moment for Alaska. This vessel – and its sister ship – will improve access throughout Lynn Canal for the hundreds of thousands of Alaskans, tourists, and businesses who rely on the Alaska Marine Highway. By building the vessel in Alaska, we also helped launch a thriving maritime industry based on local opportunities and jobs,” said First Lady Donna Walker. - More...
Wednesday PM - August 08, 2018

Alaska: New healthcare law touches on medical cost transparency, childhood trauma, and family therapy By MARY KAUFFMAN - Governor Bill Walker signed Senate Bill 105 at the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce’s meeting at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage Monday afternoon. Supporters of the omnibus health bill gathered to watch its sponsors – including Rep. Ivy Spohnholz, Rep. Geran Tarr, and Sen. David Wilson – speak to the bill’s merits, and watch it become Alaska’s newest law. Three different pieces of legislation were combined before passage to create a bill offering a range of what many will welcome as good changes related to health care in Alaska. 

The bill improves medical transparency in Alaska. Sponsored by Representative Spohnholz, the medical cost measures in the bill require healthcare providers and facilities to help patients make more informed decisions about the costs behind their care. Instead of waiting to be surprised by a medical bill, SB 105 requires healthcare providers to publicly post the costs of their most common procedures, and install signs to let patients know they can ask for estimates in advance. The bill requires that providers supply good faith estimates of what patients can expect to pay – including a full explanation of the charges – within 10 days of being asked.  

“Healthcare costs are a critical issue in Alaska,” Governor Walker said Tuesday. “Trying to keep costs sustainable is an important issue for individuals and families, but also for businesses and our economy. Seeking care is often hard enough – our medicals bills shouldn’t hurt, too.” 

You can expect to see these cost lists no later than February 1st, 2019. 

The bill also included a measure on ACES (adverse childhood experience syndrome), sponsored by Representative Tarr. Trauma that children go through early in life – whether it’s abuse, toxic stress, neglect, or more – continues to affect them for the rest of their lives, rippling out into their families and communities. Her measure encourages policymakers to make decisions for Alaska in a trauma-informed way, and to consider the extra support that children, adults, and communities need as a consequence of ACES. 

This mandate for trauma-informed policy is being addressed by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS), which is incorporating the policy into their work supporting children and families. SB 105 also provides a new opportunity for DHSS to do prevention work in a way not previously allowed by statute. - More...
Wednesday PM - August 08, 2018   

Alaska: Alaska Supreme Court alters Ballot Measure 1 language, but protects Alaskans’ voice in stronger salmon habitat protections By MARY KAUFFMAN - The Alaska Supreme Court issued its decision on the Yes for Salmon Ballot Initiative today, altering the measure’s language but ensuring its constitutionality, allowing it to go before voters in the November 6th election asking the Lieutenant Governor to remove two sentences from Measure 1 and then put the measure on the ballot.

The court asked that two lines be severed from the original ballot measure, to make it completely consistent with the Alaska Constitution. The severed lines remove Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s ability to reject a permit if a development would “substantially damage” salmon habitat or if the project requires certain practices that will leave habitat permanently damaged. The court left intact the remaining provisions of the measure. Those include science-based habitat protection standards to guide responsible development in salmon habitat and public involvement in permitting processes in salmon habitat. 

Quoting a news release from the Alaska Department of Law, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled today that Ballot Measure 1 - also known as the Stand for Salmon initiative - is unconstitutional because it makes an unconstitutional appropriation of state resources.

“The Alaska Supreme Court today confirmed our understanding of the initiative power and its limitations,” said Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth. “That limitation extends to the legislature’s power to allocate the State’s resources - including fisheries and waters - among competing uses.” 

According to Lindemuth, in this case, Ballot Measure 1 would have prohibited development of any project that would substantially damage anadromous waters (i.e., waters that support migrating fish such as salmon) and presumed that all waters are anadromous unless proven otherwise. The Alaska Supreme Court agreed with the State that this effectively allocated use of the waters for fish to the exclusion of other uses, such as mining. The Court has instructed that the offending provisions need to be removed. 

As directed in the opinion, the Alaska Division of Elections will strike the parts of the initiative that the Alaska Supreme Court has identified as an unconstitutional exercise of the initiative power and will revise the summary for the ballot to reflect the amendments.

Quoting Stand for Alaska's news release, the actions taken today by the Court are without precedent and should concern voters across the state. Even with today’s changes, this measure still replaces our science-based habitat management system with untested regulations that will result in job loss and kill current and future, vital projects. Stand for Alaska remains strongly opposed to the misguided measure that threatens our jobs, communities and way of life.

Stand for Alaska assembled a broad and diverse coalition of more than 400 Alaska businesses and organizations under the Stand for Alaska banner, including major resource industries, Alaska Native corporations, organized labor, the construction industry and countless small businesses from across Alaska. The top contributors to Stand for Alaska are Donlin Gold LLC, Anchorage, Alaska, ConocoPhillips Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska, and BP Alaska, Anchorage, Alaska.

Stand for Alaska said they remain confident that Alaska voters will make the right decision for Alaska's future by voting No on November 6.

Another diverse group of Alaska-based individuals, businesses and organizations known as Yes for Salmon said in a news release important salmon protections have been lost with the removal of Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s ability to reject a permit if a development would “substantially damage” salmon habitat or if the project requires certain practices that will leave habitat permanently damaged.

The Supreme Court rejected the state’s argument that the initiative was wholly unconstitutional and agreed that Alaskans should have a right to vote on the issue.

Yes for Salmon said the initiative will update an ineffective, outdated state law governing development in salmon habitat. Yes for Salmon says if passed this fall, the initiative will better protect salmon and promote responsible development in a state where the salmon fishing drives 30,000 Alaskan fishing jobs and generates $2 billion in economic activity annually.

"Today's court ruling affirms what over 40,000 Alaskans have asked for - the right to vote on this timely ballot initiative,” said Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, Measure 1 ballot sponsor, executive director of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and a former biologist at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “Despite removing some of the stronger provisions in the measure, this update to our habitat law is a tremendous improvement over our current vague, ineffective law. Alaskans are ready to take matters into their own hands and vote yes to protect salmon for future generations."  - More...
Wednesday PM - August 08, 2018

Southeast Alaska: No Property Taxes in the City of Craig? A Referendum May Make this a Reality By ARTHUR MARTIN - Andy Deering and Lisa Radke have taken the initiative and went to the City of Craig to create a petition, that with enough signatures, will become a referendum in the upcoming election this year to get rid of property taxes.

Property taxes have been a standard way for cities (and boroughs) to get revenue for hundreds of years and is a relatively simple formula: x amount of houses multiplied by x amount of 'mills' per house value = your property tax revenue. The 2019 estimated revenue for the City of Craig, for example, based on '6 mills' is about $650,000. For a small city like Craig, which has an average budget of about $3 million, this is a substantial amount of money for the city to continue and function at its current rate. Unlike, many cities through out the country, the City of Craig has been successful at balancing it's budget for at least a decade and not having to take out substantial loans to make up shortfalls.

‘The millage rate in local government language is synonymous with the property tax rate. “Millage” is based on a Latin word that means “thousandth.” So 1 mill is equivalent to 1/1000th.

Applied to taxes, that means 1 mill is equivalent to $1 in taxes per $1,000 in taxable value. If your property has a taxable value of $100,000, and you’re assessed a 1 mill tax rate, you’ll pay $100 in taxes.

The standard way to figure your actual tax bill based on the millage rate is to take that rate, multiply it by the taxable value of your property, then divide the result by 1,000. (1.)’  

The controversy that is at play (should this referendum actually pass by the voters) is, 'Will the City of Craig actually be able to operate normally?' - More...
Wednesday PM - August 08, 2018

Southeast Alaska: Tribe Signs Memorandum of Agreement with University of Alaska Southeast - Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (Tlingit & Haida) and the University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) Juneau Campus formalized their commitment to expand communication, collaboration, and mutually beneficial partnerships through a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). The MOA was signed on August 6, 2018 by Tlingit & Haida President Richard (Chalyee Éesh) Peterson and UAS Chancellor Rick Caulfield during a regularly scheduled UAS Juneau Campus Advisory Council meeting in Juneau, Alaska.

The MOA broadly identifies areas for collaboration such as educational opportunities and equity for students and tribal citizens, increase educational attainment, promote awareness and appreciation of the region’s rich indigenous cultures and languages, build a quality workforce and promote self-determination and community self-reliance. 

“Partnerships and building areas for collaboration have been a key area of focus for me,” said President Peterson. “There are a lot of areas of overlap between Tlingit & Haida and UAS, for example our Vocational Training & Resource Center and UAS’ Technical Education Center, so it was very natural to develop this agreement. We must continue to broaden our ability to work together to strengthen our effectiveness to serve our tribal citizens and for the wellbeing of our community and our region.”  - More...
Wednesday PM - August 08, 2018

Alaska: Sikuliaq expands ways to study Gulf of Alaska ecosystems By LAUREN FRISCH (PART ONE) - New funding and the use of the research vessel Sikuliaq have revolutionized data collection in the Gulf of Alaska by increasing the space and workforce available to conduct complex experiments at sea.

With 20 years of research and data to support their efforts, scientists in the Northern Gulf of Alaska Long-term Ecological Research program strive to better understand how physical processes and climate variability influence the base of the food web in the productive northern Gulf of Alaska. Led by researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences and their collaborators, the first LTER research expedition on Sikuliaq concluded in May 2018.

This is the first story in a four-part series documenting successes and preliminary findings from that expedition.

The Gulf of Alaska supports a diverse ecosystem that includes several commercially important fisheries, as well as culturally and economically important marine mammals and birds.  All of these species are fueled by tiny organisms at the base of the food chain. Observations indicate that changes in these communities of tiny organisms are linked to climate variability, but these links are poorly understood. Researchers want to better understand these links so they can evaluate how the gulf’s fisheries and marine mammals may be impacted by changes in the environment.

The LTER program brings in $5.6 million in funding over the course of five years. Before the LTER site was established, researchers were able to study the distribution of species in each region, but had limited abilities to investigate what those species were doing or how they were affected by their ecosystem. With the new LTER funding and the use of Sikuliaq, the scope of the project has expanded substantially to study specific biological and physical processes that drive environmental variability in the Gulf of Alaska.

“It’s kind of like we moved from working out of a tiny camper van to working out of an entire house,” explained CFOS researcher Russ Hopcroft, the principal investigator for the project. “The ship we have been using in the past could easily fit on the back deck of Sikuliaq.” - More...
Wednesday PM - August 08, 2018

Alaska: Men charged with unlawful killing of sow black bear and 2 cubs - Charges have been filed against two Alaskans as the result of an Alaska Wildlife Trooper investigation into illegal hunting practices in the Esther Island- Prince William Sound location. Troopers have also seized property that was used to facilitate the illegal activity which involved the killing of a sow bear and her two cubs.

Andrew Renner, 41 of Wasilla, and Owen Renner, 18 of Wasilla, were charged Monday, August 6 on felony and misdemeanor charges stemming from a poaching incident on April 14, 2018.

Investigation revealed Andrew Renner and Owen Renner shot and killed a sow black bear, along with its two cubs, in its den on Esther Island in Prince William Sound. The bears were a part of a USFS/ADF&G bear study. As a part of the study, the sow was collared and a motion activated game audio/video camera was set up at the den site. The video shows A. Renner and O. Renner skiing up to the den and then O. Renner firing two shots at the denning sow. A. Renner then kills the shrieking newborn bear cubs and discards their bodies away from the den.

According to the Alaska State Troopers' dispatch, two days after the animals were killed, A. Renner and O. Renner return to the kill site to pick up the shells and to dispose of the dead bear cubs.

Troopers reported that on April 30, A. Renner brought the sow black bear skin and the collar to ADF&G in Palmer and reported he killed the animal near Granite Bay in Prince William Sound on April 14. A. Renner further reported that while he realized after shooting it that the sow had teats, he said no cubs were present or located. - More...
Wednesday PM - August 08, 2018

DAVE KIFFER: Heat Stroke Musings - Having mostly survived the great Ketchikan "heat storm" of 2018 - when temperatures were in the high 70s and low 80s for almost two weeks, muskeg fires broke out and people's water cisterns went dry - my thoughts now naturally gravitate to where I will live some day when "retirement" crashes down upon me like a cedar tree killed by global warming.

In fact, it was so hot that it was too taxing the past couple of weeks for me to even sit at the computer and type out my usual random musings and digressions. 

When I tried, sweat would pour down my back, my vision would blur and I would find myself in dire need of an adult beverage. The simple of act of waking up in the morning became too taxing, because it didn't cool off enough over night for good sleep. 

That is what I got out of two glorious weeks of sunshine and no clouds and high temperatures.

So it seems like an odd juxtaposition.

How can I think about living somewhere else after two of the best Ketchikan weather weeks in anyone's memory?

What I will remember about the  "Ketchikan Heat Storm of 2018" is that for the first several days everyone basked in the great sunny orb's glory. Then for the second week, nearly everyone bitched about how it was "too hot," there were no fans to buy, if you opened windows all the bugs in creation came inside and how the only respite was to drive around in air conditioned cars. - More...
Wednesday PM - August 08, 2018

BLAIR BESS: Politicians Less Than Frank About Their Use of Franking - Let's be frank. Congressional incumbents seeking re-election have a distinct advantage over their opponents. One of those advantages is the congressional franking privilege.

For those far enough away from high school civics class to remember, franking allows members of Congress to transmit mail under their signature without paying postage. Franking legislation has a long history, dating back to the First Continental Congress in 1775. 

Franking was originally intended to allow lawmakers to regularly communicate with their constituents. In the days before radio, television, the internet, email, and social media, it was a valuable tool. Over time, however, more than a few legislators ended up abusing their privilege - especially in periods leading up to elections. 

Franking evolved into something akin to free campaign advertising. In response, federal laws, House and Senate rules, and committee regulations were tightened to curtail misuse. Despite the best of intentions, workarounds continue that allow officials to use franking as a means of self-promotion. 

Politicians on both sides of the aisle are less than frank when it comes to their use of franking. These communications are supposed to be employed when responding to constituent requests, official member activities, positions on issues, and notifications of town hall meetings among other specified uses. Yet, for many incumbents, there's a fine line between information and caged campaign communications. Those lines are often blurred in hotly-contested races. Given the stakes in the upcoming mid-terms - and the possibility that Democrats might possibly wrest control of the House - many incumbents on the endangered species list have employed this congressional perk as a means of voter outreach. - More....
Wednesday PM - August 08, 2018