Saving Seafood

Alaska legislators scrutinize Dunleavy’s proposed $2,350 PFD

August 25, 2021 — State legislators are raising questions about whether the state can afford $2,350 permanent fund dividends this year, as pitched by Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

Dunleavy added proposed legislation on Thursday to the special session agenda that would pay for $2,350 PFDs, as well as other programs. If that hadn’t happened, there was a chance Alaskans wouldn’t receive a dividend at all for the first time in 40 years.

State budget director Neil Steininger said Dunleavy still wants the Legislature to pass the constitutional amendments he’s proposed that would enshrine the PFD in the state constitution and lower the state’s spending limit.

“This appropriation bill isn’t … the agenda in and of itself,” he said. “This appropriation bill is there to support the discussions and the decisions that need to be made on those bigger policy issues.”

Steininger testified on the measure, House Bill 3003, to the House Finance Committee on Friday.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Alaska House votes to avert government shutdown

June 29, 2021 — The Alaska House of Representatives voted Monday to allow the budget bill to go into effect on Thursday, July 1, averting what would have been the state’s first-ever government shutdown.

The vote was 28-10.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy said he’s reviewing the budget for any line items he may veto, and then he’ll prepare the budget for implementation.

House Speaker Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, said Monday’s vote will likely come as a relief to many, including the state workers who would’ve gotten laid off under a shutdown.

“We’ve got a lot of Alaskans that are probably jumping for joy about now, thinking that their paychecks are going to continue on coming,” she said.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Reply All: Bristol Bay associations sign new letter to Dunleavy

October 30, 2020 — We’ll be setting our clocks back this weekend, but a passionate letter-writing exchange in Alaska is making this feel like a moment from the distant past. Unlike your average political correspondence, the parties involved in this exchange are laying pretty plain how they really feel.

This series of missives between Gov. Mike Dunleavy and two state legislators, Reps. Bryce Edgmon and Louise Stutes, is one component of the fallout of the controversial Pebble Tapes, in which activists posed as potential mine investors and recorded Pebble and Northern Dynasty executives Tom Collier and Ronald Thiessen bragging about the mining conglomerate’s use of the governor’s office to launder communications for the White House.

“Your letter does not address Pebble’s blunt characterization of you and others within your administration as acting behind closed doors on Pebble’s compensatory mitigation plan,” Edgmon writes in an Oct. 26 reply to the governor, which started with a September message from Edgmon and Stutes. “Similarly, we note that your letter does not address Tom Collier’s admissions that he interfered in Alaska’s election process. Silence on these points undercuts the integrity of state government in ways that go far beyond Pebble, and we urge you to speak to them.”

The letter recognizes Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan for making direct statements against the project after the Pebble Tapes called attention to their tendency to fade into the background when it came to Pebble.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: In letter, Gov. Dunleavy makes economic case for Pebble mine while still not expressly supporting it

October 7, 2020 — While stopping short of endorsing the controversial project, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Tuesday laid out an economic argument for the Pebble mine and said he would not stand in the way of a rigorous state review of it.

Dunleavy made the case in a letter to two Alaska state lawmakers, House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, and House Majority Whip Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak. Stutes and Edgmon had written a letterasking him to withhold support for the project after the release of secretly recorded videos that showed Pebble executives boasting about their influence over the governor’s office.

The governor in his response said he is committed to a careful analysis of the project. But he emphasized the “generational poverty” and the “chronic lack of economic options” in the Bristol Bay region where the mine would be built.

He pointed out that the wild salmon fishery, which he said he won’t put at risk, does not operate year-round, contributing to high unemployment rates in the offseason and poverty levels more than twice the statewide average.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: State legislative leaders ask Dunleavy not to help Pebble

October 5, 2020 — Two Alaska legislative leaders have called on the state’s governor to stop assisting the development of a proposed copper and gold mine.

House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, an independent, and Republican Rep. Louise Stutes wrote to Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy Tuesday about the Pebble Mine project.

The legislators said the administration should not provide state land for a mitigation plan that developers hope will lead to a federal permit for the proposed open-pit mine about 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.

The mine would straddle salmon-producing headwaters of the Bristol Bay fishery.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

ALASKA: Gov. Dunleavy’s controversial Fish Board appointees will get a legislative hearing in September

July 15, 2020 — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s controversial selections to the state Board of Fisheries will get a legislative hearing in early fall, and the call is out for public comments.

The board oversees management of the state’s subsistence, commercial, sport and personal use fisheries. Appointments were made on April 1 and would normally go through a vigorous vetting process by the Alaska Legislature with public input. But COVID-19 sent lawmakers home early from the last session, leaving the confirmation process in limbo.

Now, state Rep. Louise Stutes (R-Kodiak) has set the date for a hearing.

“I tried to push it out as far as I thought I safely could because I know there’s a lot of guys out fishing. But I just didn’t dare push it any further than Thursday, Sept. 3, at 10 a.m. at the Anchorage Legislative Information Office,” she said in a phone interview.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Pink salmon disaster relief finally on the way

January 22, 2020 — It’s been a long time coming, but payments should soon be in hand for Alaska fishermen, processors and coastal communities hurt by the 2016 pink salmon run failure, the worst in 40 years. The funds are earmarked for Kodiak, Prince William Sound, Chignik, Lower Cook Inlet, South Alaska Peninsula, Southeast Alaska and Yakutat.

Congress okayed more than $56 million in federal relief in 2017, but the authorization to cut the money loose languished on NOAA desks in Washington, D.C., for more than two years.

The payouts got delayed again last October when salmon permit holders, who share the biggest chunk at nearly $32 million, were finally able to apply to the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission for their checks.

But when it was discovered that the way in which the payouts were calculated was badly flawed, the commission put on the brakes.

“There was a big snafu because a lot of the crew was under-reported by the skippers. So Pacific States said that until everything gets squared away, no one is going to get any checks,” said Rep. Louise Stutes (R-Kodiak) who has been watchdogging the payouts since the pink fishery was declared a disaster.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Pink salmon disaster relief payments delayed

November 27, 2019 — Federal relief payments to permit holders who participated in the disastrous 2016 Gulf of Alaska pink salmon fishery have hit another snag, and now won’t be forthcoming until March.

News of the payment delay, which was slated to be within six to eight weeks of the Oct. 31 deadline for skipper applications for relief reached Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, on Nov. 15.

Permit holders can now expect to receive their disbursements six to eight weeks after the Jan. 31 deadline, she said.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is in the process of updating information on the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission website to explain the situation and post a new timeline. Permit holders should keep an eye out on psmfc.org for changes.

According to AD&G, the delay was needed because it became apparent to the agency that there was very consistent underreporting by the skippers of crew in certain fisheries.  Additionally, only 65 percent of permit holder applications were returned to the PSMFC, the interstate compact agency named to administer these disaster funds.

Read the full story at The Cordoba Times

Alaska ports hope to keep fish tax: ‘We can’t get answers’ says Stutes

July 11, 2019 — One fisheries item that appears to have escaped Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto pen so far is his desire to divert local fish taxes from coastal communities into state coffers.

Dunleavy’s initial budget in February aimed to repeal the sharing of fisheries business and landing taxes that towns and boroughs split 50/50 with the state. Instead, all of the tax revenues would go to the state’s general fund – a loss of $28 million in FY 2020 to fishing communities.

“There is a recognition that these are viewed as shared resources, and they should be shared by Alaskans,” press secretary Matt Shuckerow said at the time. “So that’s kind of what this proposal does. It takes shared resources and shares them with all Alaskans, not just some select communities.”

The tax split remains in place, and the dollars are still destined for fishing towns, said Rep. Louise Stutes (R-Kodiak), who also represents Cordova, Yakutat and several smaller towns.

“It’s general fund revenue and that has been appropriated to the appropriate communities,” Stutes said in a phone interview. “What we can tell right now is it slipped by unscathed because it appears he did not veto that revenue to the communities that generate the dollars. So, it looks like we’re good to go there.”

What’s not so good is the nearly $1 million cut to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s commercial fisheries budget.

Read the full story at National Fisherman