Category Archives: news

McGuire requests Senate Finance re-appropriate tennis-court money

In a rather gutsy move, Anchorage Sen. Lesil McGuire has officially entered into the controversial tennis court debate by requesting that the Senate Finance Committee, which drafts the capital budget, re-appropriate the $7 million dollars to be used for courts. She wants that money to go to the Anchorage Loussac Library instead.

The tennis court project has been pushed by Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan. Both he and McGuire are running to be the GOP nominees for lieutenant governor. It’s unclear who, or if, any of the senators on the committee will offer the amendment. Protocol would dictate that either Anchorage Sens. Hollis French, Anna Fairclough, or Kevin Meyer do so.

One thing is clear: it puts the project back into the public glare. Also, McGuire is chair of the Senate Rules Committee, which wields a tremendous amount of power.

The tennis issue has “drawn a great deal of criticism, divided the Anchorage Assembly and served to drive a wedge into our community,” McGuire wrote in a memo to the committee. She also blamed the controversy on failure of the public to vote on an April 1 library improvement bond measure.

The $7 million is part of a $37 million appropriation that was intended to be used on “critical and deferred maintenance” on buildings built in the 1980s. Sullivan has pushed to have the $7 million go to a new tennis court, to be built in the Turnagain neighborhood, where he lives.

McGuire said that the money is “necessary to protect the State’s original investment in this facility.”

Read the full memo here.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Another Koch brothers’ ad making false claim about Begich’s support of carbon tax

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich has said repeatedly that he doesn’t support a carbon tax. Reputable fact-checking groups have said that those who continue to claim otherwise are wrong. Yet the Koch brothers and their various political arms continue to insist that he does. Below is the most recent ad making that claim, among other claims. This one is funded by the American Energy Alliance, a political action group funded by the Koch brothers. Along with ads targeting Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall from West Virginia, the total spend on the two campaigns is reported to be $630,000.

The other ads about Begich’s supposed carbon-tax support were funded by Americans for Prosperity, another Koch-funded group. The brothers’ insistence that Begich support something he doesn’t support is beginning to borderline on odd. It would be like insisting that he was born in Denmark, say, or maybe Kenya. Perhaps they’re counting on the fact that some people will believe anything if they hear it often enough.

Group questions fate of Assembly if Mayor Dan wins lt. governor’s race

United for Liberty-Alaska, a group run by Alaska Libertarian Party chair Michael Chambers, sent out the following “action alert,” in response to the Tuesday Anchorage Assembly elections:

We do not know the final results of the recent election completely but based on preliminary results, the left and unions will have control of the Assembly. Given this scenario, if Republicans vote to send Mayor Dan Sullivan to Juneau as Lt. Governor, Anchorage will experience Dick Traini as the interim Mayor!! We will have an Assembly dominated by the left and Dick Traini with his hands on the reigns. The consequence of 20% voter participation.

Sullivan is running for lieutenant governor against Alaska state Sen. Lesil McGuire.

The real win for unions would be if, after absentee ballots are counted, Pete Petersen’s 336 vote lead holds over incumbent Assemblyman Adam Trombley.

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Supreme Court strikes down campaign limits

The left is crying foul, but both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have much to gain from today’s Supreme Court decision which strikes down federal aggregate giving limits to candidates, parties and party committees. The maximum donation of $2,600 per election cycle for federal candidates still stands, as does the maximum amount an individual can give to a party or a candidate’s committee, which is $5,000 and $10,000 respectively.

But prior to today, a person could only cumulatively give $48,600 to all federal candidates for office during any one two-year election cycle. So, if you wanted to give the maximum amount, say, to all Democratic House members during a two-year cycle, you couldn’t do so. All told, contributions to political parties and candidate committees and candidates were limited to $123,200 per election cycle.

This should be good news for parties and maybe not such good news for super-PACS, which, since the 2010 Citizens United ruling, impose no limits. Allowing for more money to go to parties allows parties greater control of the process and the ability to impose party discipline. Because of those limits, politicians like those in the tea party, who are largely financed by rich individuals, have been able to ignore their parties. This ruling begins to even the playing field.

It also might provide a greater opening for a challenge to Alaska’s state campaign laws, which are some of the most restrictive in the country.

A long held view which informs much, but not all, of campaign finance law is that campaign restrictions are set to combat corruption and the appearance of corruption. If they don’t do that, then they violate free speech.

Here’s Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority:

This Court has identified only one legitimate governmental interest for restricting campaign finances: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. We have consistently rejected attempts to suppress campaign speech based on other legislative objectives. No matter how desirable it may seem, it is not an acceptable governmental objective to ‘level the playing field,’ or to ‘level electoral opportunities,’ or to ‘equalize the financial resources of candidates…’ The First Amendment prohibits such legislative attempts to ‘fine-tune’ the electoral process, no matter how well intentioned.

It’s unclear how some of Alaska’s state finance laws will stand up to such scrutiny. For instance, state law restricts a non-incumbent gubernatorial candidate from soliciting campaign contributions in Juneau during the legislative session. Recently, the Alaska Public Offices Commission ruled that Democratic candidate for governor Byron Mallott couldn’t accept money from Juneau residents while he was in Juneau during the session, even though he lives there.

I’ve got a few phone calls in today about that, and will update when I get a better idea of potential challenges.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Sullivan’s new radio ad defends against residency attacks

U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan released a radio ad on Tuesday entitled, “Fighter.” In the ad, Sullivan talks about his time in Alaska as the state’s attorney general. But the bulk of the ad is spent defending himself against questions surrounding his residency.

“After the September 11th terrorist attacks, my Marine Recon unit in Alaska did not get deployed. So like hundreds of my fellow Alaskans, I sought other ways to defend our country,” Sullivan says. “Although it meant my family had to leave our home in Alaska, I was honored to serve in the White House and State Department under Condoleezza Rice as part of the war on terror, and was later recalled to active duty by the Marine Corps.”

Put Alaska First, a pro-Begich super-PAC, recently bought $72,613 of more air time for its commercial questioning Sullivan’s residency claims. Anchorage resident Jim Lottsfeldt, who’s running the PAC said on Monday that the group is putting the money into ad “because it’s a good idea.”

Sullivan moved to Alaska in 1997, where he practiced law until moving to D.C. in 2002. He moved back to Alaska in 2009 to be the state’s attorney general.

The ad ends with a line that’s emerging as a theme in Sullivan’s campaign: “I’m Lt. Colonel Dan Sullivan, and I approve this message because Alaskans need a fighter again in the United States Senate.”

Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

For fifth time this year, Coast Guard evacuates patient from King Cove

For the fifth time this year, the Coast Guard performed a dangerous rescue operation out of King Cove. On Monday night, a fisherman’s eye was injured while on board the Seattle-based processor near Unimak Island in the North Pacific Ocean. The safest deep water port was King Cove on Alaska’s Aleutian Chain. However, there is no ophthalmologist on King Cove, and as many Alaskans know, the road that could have been used to transport the fisherman to the all-weather airport in Cold Bay, from where he was eventually medevaced to Anchorage, has been blocked by the Interior Department and by environmentalists.

The fisherman made it to King Cove at 11:30 a.m. Due to high winds and seas, the Coast Guard didn’t make it to King Cove until 3 p.m.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has been fighting vigilantly to get the Interior Department to allow the road, which would cut through a slice of a wildlife refuge. According to her office, each Coast Guard transport costs as much as $210,000.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Reinbold’s bill adds transparency to regulatory process

I’ve been known to be hard on Rep. Lora Reinbold, a Republican from Eagle River, but I do want to give credit where credit is due. HB 140, which Reinbold sponsored, passed the House on Monday. All 37 House members present voted for the bill. It’s a good bill.

Hundreds of regulations are enacted each year by the State of Alaska that greatly affect businesses and private individuals, who are often taken off guard, have no idea how and why they originated and how they can speak out about them. The bill puts more transparency into the process by changing the Alaska Administrative Code. As it is now, an agency proposing a regulation must estimate the cost to the agency itself. This bill, if it becomes law, will also require state agencies who propose a regulation to estimate cost to individuals and to businesses, to justify the reason for the regulation and who, exactly, proposed it.

Finally, when federal law is given as a justification for a regulation, the exact federal law, executive order or decision now needs to be identified.

Reinbold introduced the bill last year and has been working hard to pass it since. She gathered letters from across the state, she compromised and got bipartisan support.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Mallott calls on Parnell to accept Supreme Court subsistence ruling

On Monday, the State of Alaska lost a big case involving federal subsistence rights. Here’s a summary of the case from the Anchorage Daily News:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a long-running dispute over management of Alaska’s waterways.The decision effectively upholds a lower court’s decision in what’s become popularly known as the ‘Katie John case.’ This continues the federal government control’s over hunting and fishing on navigable state-owned waters adjacent to federal land. The decision, a blow to the state and a victory for the Alaska Federation of Natives, upholds a 2013 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The state of Alaska had petitioned the high court, seeking review.

In a release, Alaska Native leader and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Byron Mallott praised the decision and called on Gov. Sean Parnell to abide by it:

Rather than pursue senseless litigation, the state should engage in meaningful dialogue with its rural residents and Native peoples to protect the subsistence way of life. I call on Governor Parnell to accept the Supreme Court’s decision and direct his administration to work constructively towards a solution that is fair and lasting.

In 2001, when Gov. Tony Knowles was governor, the state also lost its challenge in the Ninth Circuit. Knowles declined to take it to the Supreme Court.

Many in the state were puzzled when Parnell decided to revisit the issue, which outraged many in the Alaska Native community, who described it as an “assault” on their subsistence rights.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com.

Begich rides through NPR-A in third TV ad of campaign season

On Monday, U.S. Sen. Mark Begich released his third TV ad of the election season, featuring Begich riding a snow machine through the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or NPR-A, the source of an ongoing development battle between D.C. and the state.

“We had waited decades to drill here in the National Petroleum Reserve, but Washington was still saying no, all because they didn’t want to build a road here…” Begich says. “It took five years before I got the road approved. Next year, the oil starts flowing,” he continues after stepping off the snowmachine.

If approved and drilling begins, it could produce as much as 45,000 barrels a day, and would be the commercial production of oil from the reserve.

The end of the ad says “To be continued.” In other words, watch for a serious of similar action ads.

GOP candidate Dan Sullivan is also releasing two ads this week.
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GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan hits the airwaves

GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan is on the air with two ads this week, his first televised broadcast ads of the campaign. The first, below, highlights Sullivan’s experience in the military, as DNR commissioner and attorney general. The second, narrated by his wife Julie, highlights a more personal side of the candidate. See that one here.

In the meantime, the pro-Begich super-PAC, Put Alaska First, disclosed on Friday that it was spending another $72,613 to extend its most recent ad questioning Sullivan’s Alaska residency. The ad is working, according to Jim Lottsfeldt, who runs the super-PAC. “If we’re doing it, it’s because it’s a good idea,” he said. This brings Put Alaska’s First total spend to date at $758,994.
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Loose Lips: Smith falls out of GOP favor? Palin up to her tricks? Happy B-day Dexter!

— Randy Ruedrich isn’t the official chair of Alaska’s Republican Party anymore. But everyone knows that he’s still highly involved, if not still in charge. An email from him is as good as getting an email from the party itself. Anyway, a reader alerted me to the following:

At 5:42 pm, Randy R sends out an email endorsing local candidates in the muni race. In that email, he says, ‘Your votes for Dean Williams and Don Smith will remove liberal Democrat spenders from the School Board.’ At 10:53, he sends out the same email, except now it says, ‘Your vote for Dean Williams will remove a liberal Democrat spender from the School Board.’ Wanna bet that he didn’t hear about Smith’s comments until after 5:42 p.m. and then retracted his blessing?

Most know by now that Don Smith said some offensive things about refuges, people of color and those with special needs during an Alaska Public Media interview. He might have survived to get the Republican’s endorsement even after that had he been contrite. He wasn’t. He came back swinging and blaming liberals.

— It appears Sarah Palin is up to her old tricks of getting media attention by criticizing all the attention the media gives to certain issues and politicians, not so much her these days. In a Facebook post on Saturday, she slammed the media for “ridiculous overkill” in covering Gov. Chris Christie, who she initially called “Chris Christy.”

Good Lord, media — distract much? The Middle East isn’t a tinderbox today? Our economy isn’t in the tank today? Scandalous liberal politicians aren’t getting busted in rapid succession today?” she wrote.

And Palin herself has a new reality show that involves guns and people who aim them at animals and call themselves patriotic for doing so.

— Rep. Bob Lynn’s cat had a birthday. Lynn is my favorite legislative Facebook poster and a cat lover to boot. Who knew? Read all about Dexter on Lynn’s Facebook post here.

— GOP Senate candidate Mead Treadwell’s last fund raiser of the quarter will be held Monday evening at the Embassy Suites from 5:30 – 7:30 pm. His host committee is: David and Connie Morgan, Lynne Curry, Patricia Kriendler, and Dr. Adrian Ryan.

— Insiders say DNR Dan Sullivan continues to rake it in and that he’s on track to be the ~~first~~ second candidate in the state’s history to have back to back seven figure totals. FEC reports are due April 15th. The first one was Begich in 2008.

— Going into the final weekend before the local elections in Anchorage, Sen. Mark Begich has doubled down in his support of D.C. Ward 6 candidate Darrel Thompson., according to CQ’s Roll Call. Read more here.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

GOP Senate candidate Sullivan doubles down on repeal of ObamaCare

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday that more than 6 million people across the country, including more than 6,000 Alaskans, have signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the act that all three GOP senate candidates have vowed to work to repeal if they were elected to office. Enrollment is surging as the initial deadline to sign up approaches.

Candidate Dan Sullivan again sent out a press release, doubling down on his promise to work to repeal ObamaCare if elected.

What would happen to those more than 6 million who have signed up? Who knows? What would it be replaced with? Market based reforms, he said, but he shied from specifics. Tort reform is one such solution that’s often talked about in Republican circles. But most states have enacted some form of tort reform and it hasn’t helped. Alaska passed tort reform in 1997, and according to the American Medical Association, Alaska was one of five states where, between 1998 and 2007, an increase in population did not lead to a proportional increase in the number of doctors.

Buying insurance across state lines, is another GOP idea. It sounds good. Except experts roll their eyes when you mention it. Alaska has the highest medical costs of any place in the country, and we’re a sick bunch to boot. No reputable insurance company based in Virginia, say, or Delaware, who doesn’t already have a presence in this state is going to want to take Alaskans on.

If Sullivan focused on this issue, he might join the group of more thoughtful lawmakers who are talking about finding fixes for the law, fixes that wouldn’t leave those 6 million and many millions more who have yet to sign up, out in the cold.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Murkowski votes in committee against Suh. Begich will likely vote against her on floor.

UPDATED: U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted in committee on Thursday against approving Rhea Suh to be assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks at the Interior Department.

The Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where Murkowski is the ranking minority member, voted to approve Suh along party lines, 12-10. Suh’s nomination now heads to the Senate floor, where she needs 51 votes to be confirmed. U.S. Sen. Mark Begich’s office said that he would likely vote against her confirmation. Begich is up for relection. A vote for Suh would ~~likley~~ be used against him by his Republican opponents. GOP candidate, Dan Sullivan, put out a release in February urging him to vote against Suh.

“Given his blind support for President Obama’s earlier Interior Department nominees, and his record of voting with the President 97 percent of the time, I won’t hold my breath,” Sullivan said.

If confirmed, Suh would head the Interior Department division that has decided against allowing a potentially life-saving road from King Cove to Cold Bay. Eleven miles of that road would cut through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The road has received much attention in the state recently, largely thanks to Murkowski.

Suh has also in the past been critical of oil and gas development. While working for an environmental foundation, Suh said in 2007 that “the pace and magnitude of this [natural gas] development is easily the single greatest threat to the ecological integrity of the West.”

However, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who chairs the committee, said that Suh has assured the committee that she would “absolutely support the responsible development of natural gas and other fossil fuels from our public lands.”

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

More on the Dittman annual legislative poll: School choice has support

Last night, I wrote about Dittman Research’s annual poll commissioned by the Alaska state House Majority. The sample was 800 Alaskan residents from all over the state, and across party lines. It showed that marijuana legalization has the support of 52 percent of the public, with 44 percent opposing it. Raising minimum wage, another initiative on the upcoming ballot, has the support of 69 percent of the people. Gov. Sean Parnell has good job performance ratings at 54 percent, but not nearly as good as last year’s numbers.

What I left out, because I didn’t have the poll then, was what the public felt about education. Now I do. Despite what you might think and have heard, allowing for the use of public funds to go to private schools appears to have wide support across the state.

Here’s the intro paragraph into one set of questions, for which the polling sample was split:

A school choice program allows parents the option of sending their child to the school of their choice, whether that school is public or private, including both religious and non-religious schools. The goal is to improve overall performance by creating healthy competition among the schools. If this program is adopted, a portion of state funds that are currently allocated to a student’s school district would instead follow the student to the school of their parents’ choosing.

Based on that intro, here’s one question:

Would you support or oppose amending Alaska’s constitution to allow a school choice program in Alaska? …and is that strongly or somewhat support/oppose?

Strongly support: 32%

Somewhat support: 22%

Somewhat oppose: 9%

Strongly oppose: 33%

Unsure: 4%

Here’s the other question which was asked to the other half of the sample:

Please tell me which of the following two statements comes closest to your view:

Allowing public funds to be used for private schools will lead to an erosion of Alaska’s public school system: 31%

-or-

Allowing parents to choose where to send their child to school, and allowing a portion of the public funds to follow the child, will create a healthy competition and improve the overall performance of Alaska’s schools: 61%

Neither/Other: 5%

Unsure: 3%

The 61 percent who said that public funds going to private schools would increase performance were asked the following:

Would you support or oppose amending Alaska’s constitution to allow a school choice program in

Alaska?

Support: 74%

Oppose: 13%

Unsure: 13%

Notice that the word “voucher” wasn’t used in the poll. Even so, it appears that support is wide and deep. However, it’s still unlikely that a resolution that would put a state constitutional amendment up for vote of the people will pass the Senate this session. Sen. Mike Dunleavy, who is sponsoring the resolution, hasn’t been able to muster the votes. The resolution is in Senate Rules.

A few other issues: Only 13 percent know that oil funds 90 percent of state government. A whopping 16 percent think that it funds anywhere from 1 to 25 percent. This begs the question: why can’t the state and the oil companies do a better job of informing the citizens?

And 31 percent of Alaskans think that making deep budget cuts, at the expense of state services, is the best way to make up for budget deficits. That said, the public always wants budget cuts, until it’s a program that effects their lives.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Murkowski fights for what’s right, channels Ted Stevens for King Cove road

When the late Sen. Ted Stevens was gearing up for a fight, he wore a tie with images of the Incredible Hulk. In a Senate hearing on Wednesday where she confronted Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Sen. Lisa Murkowski channeled Stevens by wearing an Incredible Hulk scarf. In the audience were members of the community of King Cove, a village of about 900 on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. They traveled roughly 4,000 miles to petition their government.

The fight, which has Murkowski and her staff as passionate and committed as I have ever seen them, is over 11 miles of a potentially life-saving gravel road from King Cove to Cold Bay. Cold Bay has an all-weather airport. King Cove does not. When the residents of King Cove need serious medical care, they call the Coast Guard, which picks them up and takes them to Cold Bay, in all kinds of dangerous weather. So far this year, the Coast Guard has been dispatched to the village seven times. Watch the video of one of those dispatches here to see what that’s like.

The 11 miles cut through a piece of the Izembek National Wildlife Reserve, a stop-over for migrating birds who feed on the grasses there. Ironically, the feds say that bird-hunting opportunities in the reserve are “world famous.”

A land swap was proposed and rejected. The refuge covers 300,000 acres, and the community and the state were offering to add 61,000 more in exchange for the road. The road is 206 acres. On Dec. 23, Jewell refused the deal .

For two decades King Cove residents have asked for permission to build the road on a piece of land that their ancestors have inhabited for thousands of years. A frustrated Stevens was able to broker a compromise. In 2007, the community got a hovercraft to transport residents between the two communities. The problem? Weather kept the hovercraft from operating most of the time, and cost about $3 million a year. For years, the hovercraft lay abandoned.

Environmentalists are worried about the precedent. They are staunchly against the road, and have dispatched bloggers and editorial writers across the country to write that the struggle for the road has more to do with a fish processing business than the safety of the residents of King Cove.

“But despite pledges and promises to the contrary, the real purpose for building the road is the same as it ever was: moving fish and workers to and from King Cove’s canneries,” wrote former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt earlier this month. Babbitt himself said no to the road.

That the legislation which would authorize the road would forbid commercial use of it doesn’t appear to matter.

Nor, apparently, do the residents of King Cove, or the safety of the Coast Guard members.

Sen. Mark Begich, it should be noted, has also been fighting for the road, but not with nearly the tenacity of Murkowski.

She and the community will win on this, eventually, because they’ve got right on their side.

And in the process, the environmentalists who have demagogued this issue at the expense of real lives will have lost allies across the state, and perhaps across the country. Including this one.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com