Music blared over loud speakers set up on the curb in Downtown Anchorage on Tuesday

 ”Ready for one more?” “Yeah!” ” Hey hey, ho ho, this giveaway has got to go ” “Hey hey, ho ho, this giveaway has got to go!”

Outside Anchorage’s Denaina Center, Senator Hollis French warmed up a small crowd protesting oil tax breaks for Alaska producers.

Former Alaska Senator Vic Fisher was one of them

  “Citizens of Alaska have gotten together. We’re getting signatures signed, we’re getting people to understand that we have got to get rid of the giveaway and we are working on getting a referendum so that people of Alaska can vote and vote for Alaska’s benefit, not for the three big producer’s benefit. “

 Jamie Duhamel [du HAM el] was a Democratic candidate for House District 6 during last year’s state election

  “We’re gathering signatures now until July 15 to get the repeal on the ballot, and then we will be working really hard over the next year to get enough Alaskans to vote for it in 2014.”

 About twenty people waved signs and chanted outside, while inside Governor Parnell prepared to sign HB 21, oil tax legislation passed during the waning days of this year’s legislative session.

An audience that filled to capacity Anchorage’s Denaina Center’s main ballroom stood cheering as Governor Sean Parnell signed his name to SB 21.

  “Senate bill 21, the More Alaska Production Act, is now the law of Alaksa…..  More Alaskan opportunity,”   the governor said to cheers from the audience.

 Parnell dubbed the bill The More Alaska Production Act, telling the audience that it is his intent that Alaskans who are now 35 or under will benefit from more oil production, now that state law allows producers tax benefits aimed at enticing more investment in Alaska. He asked the thirtyfives or younger to stand and addressed them directly

   “I think about the Alaska Constitutional provision that says that Alaska’s resources are for the people’s benefit. That’s not just prior generations, that’s not just my generation, that’s your generation and generations to come. But neither I nor anybody else sitting down believes that we should be satisfied with forty years lighter production from Prudhoe Bay. We think that there is at least another forty years for you to benefit from even when we are gone. This is your chance to claim Alaska’s promise. “

The governor says the bill spurs production by eliminating the changing monthly tax rate calculations under the old tax regime. Alaska’s oil tax system will from now on be built around a 35 percent base rate, with tax incentives tied directly to new oil production.    The governor was generous in his praise of the legislature, calling this year’s session the most productive one in decades.

  “Lawmakers deliberated and debated, offered improvements and ideas. And then, they acted in good faith and for our future. So I thank the members of the 28 Alaska legislature.”

Parnell alluded to three things the legislature accomplished.: getting the state’s fiscal house in order, approving oil tax reform and creating a corporate structure empowered to carry the state’s interest in a natural gas pipeline with the goal of getting Alaska gas to Alaskans first.

The other energy bill Parnell signed into law Tuesday is HB 4, which creates the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, an independent state corporation that will represent the state’s interest in an all -Alaska gasline with off takes for local communities.

The governor also outlined his fiscal plan for the next five years which includes cuts in state spending that reflects the possibility that the price of Alaska oil can drop.

  “Spending that is more the one billion dollars less than the current fiscal year. Legislators stepped up to the budget reductions with me, and we are on a more sustainable path than just a few months ago. Five years from now, we will have saved more than five billion dollars of the people’s money traversing this new, lower level band of spending.”

 Parnell also signed Tuesday two additional bills dealing with permitting. HB 129 streamlines the state’s permitting process, and SB27 sets in motion a process that would allow the state to assume primacy over and manage federal wetlands permitting.

David Wilcox, 14, and his father, Brett, are running across the United States next year. The pair hopes to raise awareness about genetically modified foods, which they say are a danger to the global food supply. (KCAW photo by Ed Ronco)

A Sitka man and his 14-year-old son are hoping to convince you that genetically modified organisms are bad for your health, and for the environment.

Agriculture companies modify the DNA of plants that enter the food supply, to help them grow faster or bigger, or be more resilient to pests. Brett and David Wilcox are channeling their opposition into a demonstration in Sitka this weekend.

The Sitka demonstration is called the “March Against Monsanto.” It coincides with other similar events around the world and is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday atop Castle Hill.

But Brett and David Wilcox also hope a big journey next year will help bring attention to their cause.

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“We’re going to be running across the country,” says David Wilcox, 14. “We’re starting somewhere in California, and we haven’t really thought of an ending point yet.”

His father, 52-year-old Brett Wilcox, says they’ll include a stop in St. Louis, headquarters to the agribusiness giant Monsanto. The company has become a lightning rod for the debate over genetically modified foods. Among other things, it markets modified seeds to farmers. The seeds are patented and farmers who keep extra seeds for replanting can find themselves taken to court.

That bothers Brett Wilcox, but his bigger worry is about the environmental impact of genetically modified foods. He says his spiritual beliefs are opposed to modified organisms, but also that he has unanswered questions about their scientific safety.

“We’re going to gather seeds from the world, and we’re either going to have them in a backpack and we’re going to carry them as we cross the country, or if we get so many seeds that we put them in a trailer and pull them behind us, we will do that,” Brett Wilcox said. “Those seeds will be the symbol for the run, saying this is why we are running. This is the purpose. We are here to say that we honor these sacred seeds, and we don’t want people messing with them.”

Monsanto is no stranger to the criticisms. The company has an extensive website built entirely to respond to common arguments people make against its practices. One page is titled “Why does Monsanto sue farmers who save seeds?” The company says it’s simply protecting its patents. Another is titled “Farmer suicides in India,” and denies claims that the modified cotton has driven farmers on the subcontinent to kill themselves.

Messages we left with Monsanto were not returned.

The history of agriculture is full of developments in technology — things that have increased the amount of food farmers were able to send to plates. Tractors replaced horses. Fertilizers boosted crops. But Brett Wilcox says what Monsanto and other companies are doing is different.

“What they are producing is not meant to feed the growing population,” he says. “It’s meant to feed cars and cattle. Very little of the research is designed to do anything that would provide any sort of enhanced nutrition. It’s all designed to give them a patent — a legal hold on seeds — so that farmers are then brought into a modern-day slavery system.”

Brett Wilcox says farmers have become too beholden to Monsanto. So, he and David are preparing for their run.

“David has done two half marathons and he’s going to do another half this summer,” he said. “He’ll do his first full marathon this summer for Sitka’s inaugural full marathon. We’re excited about that coming up on August 3rd.”

Brett Wilcox also runs marathons, although he didn’t come to running until his 40s.

“I kind of grew up with the belief that I didn’t have the heart to run,” he said. “That’s not true. I do fine running, and I enjoy it. I’ve done a couple of marathons, and it helps keep me relatively sane.”

The two Wilcoxes plan to leave on their journey sometime in January. They estimate it will take about eight months.

Gov. Sean Parnell approved the state’s budget today, and he was light with his veto pen — he hardly used any red ink at all. Every veto made to the operating budget had to do with fixing calculation errors, and not a single dollar was trimmed from the capital budget. Only $2.5 million was vetoed from a $13.2 billion budget.

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At the bill signing, Parnell said that he didn’t need cut the legislature’s spending because lawmakers stayed within the limits he set out.

“Now given that legislators met my target of dropping spending by over a billion dollars, you will see only modest reductions in the budget,” said Parnell.

Vetoes can be used as a political weapon of sorts when a governor doesn’t like what a legislature is doing or how it’s spending the state’s money. When Parnell started his term in office, he cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget.

Anchorage Republican Kevin Meyer co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee, and he says he wasn’t expecting to see the capital budget make it through the governor’s office totally intact.

“I’m a little surprised because sometimes there are items that get by us that we didn’t realize were unconstitutional for one reason or another, and apparently, there wasn’t any items like that. So yeah, I think this is very unusual not to have at least something vetoed.”

Meyer adds that he wasn’t planning for any huge vetoes, though. That’s because the governor and the Republican majority in the legislature were pretty aligned in their priorities this year.

Democrats in the minority didn’t share that same agenda. Les Gara serves on the House Finance Committee, and he says there probably would have been a clash if his party had been in charge. He says Democrats are still disappointed that their push to get an increase to the education funding formula didn’t go anywhere.

“You know, if we had succeeded in getting enough funding in to reverse the fourth year of cuts in a row on education staff across the state — classroom funding across the state — the governor might have vetoed that. But his party joined him in not allowing any classroom funding increase.”

Instead of increasing the funding formula, the legislature approved $21 million for school security grants. The state will be spending $1.25 billion for K-12 education next year, which is a slight increase over last year.

The operating budget also includes $40 million for the Power Cost Equalization program and $5 million for new state troopers and village public safety officers. The overall operating budget went up by just 1 percent this year.

The capital budget was significantly smaller. Last year’s was about $3 billion, while this year’s was $2 billion. A good chunk of the money in it is going toward energy projects, like the Susitna-Watana hydroproject and the natural gas trucking plan for the Interior.

In total, the state will be $1 billion over last year’s $12 billion budget, even though the operating budget saw little growth and the capital budget shrunk. Most of that increase comes from federal spending and from parts of the budget the legislature can’t control. Spending from the state’s unrestricted general fund went down by a billion dollars, which was part of Parnell’s goal to stop the growth of the budget over the next five years.

The Senate Energy Committee is holding a series of so-called “forums on natural gas.” To the uninitiated, they sure look like typical Congressional hearings. For insiders, they look like Congressional hearings without the usual five minute speaking limits.

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Tuesday’s round table focused on the pros and cons of exporting LNG. Senator Lisa Murkowski said Alaska missed the window on selling LNG to American markets, and the window is closing on Asian ones as well.

“Some 63 different projects around the globe are up for consideration” she said. “In Alaska we like to think our gas, our oil is better than everyone else’s. But at the end of the day, we’re in a world market.”

Not all 63 projects up for consideration will snag the billions of dollars in financing – or pass government muster – to become liquefaction facilities and export terminals.

On Friday, the federal government granted conditional approval to a facility in Texas to export LNG to non-free-trade countries. That includes Asian powerhouse Japan – a would-be buyer of Alaska’s piped LNG.

In Washington Tuesday, industry executives, perhaps to pressure federal regulators sitting across the table, said they need the okay to export while conditions are ripe.

“Customers need reliability of supply,” said Sempra Energy executive Octávio Simões. He said foreign companies try to lock in as much LNG for a period of several years.

“If they feel that the U.S. government is not going to supply reliably, they will sign at a higher price, from Australia or Russia or somebody else, that is willing to give the assurance that the supply is there,” he said.

Sempra operates an LNG import terminal in Louisiana that it hopes to convert to an export facility. It’s waiting for approval.

Larry Persily, the federal coordinator for the Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline, said Alaska is now competing with British Columbia, Eastern Africa and pending projects in the Lower 48.

“There’s a crowd trying to get through this window. The question is how much Alaska wants to work to see if they can get this through this window, or the next opening,” he said in a Tuesday phone interview.

Persily said this window is for the chance to sell gas to foreign companies in the 2020′s, but there will certainly be more windows in the future.

A massive sheet of winter ice is holding back hundreds of thousands of gallons of silty Yukon River ice roughly 12 miles upriver from Fort Yukon.

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“The sheet of ice is acting like dam,” says Plumb, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks. ”And it’s causing the Yukon River to flood over its banks and flood a large portion of the area upriver from the ice jam so reports are that the water has spread out over several miles on either side of the Yukon river out into the forest and into the flats.”

Plumb says high water along the river has already caused minor flooding in Fort Yukon. He says likely, flooding will get worse after the ice jam breaks.

“One other concern that we have too is that downriver from Fort Yukon, the ice is still in place and hasn’t moved out yet,” he explains. “And so after this jam releases, and ice and water start moving down river again, it could jam below Fort Yukon and if that happens, Fort Yukon could see major flooding if water starts to back up behind an ice jam that may form downriver.”

Plumb says it’s only a matter of time before the ice jam gives way.

Other villages in the middle Yukon River region are bracing for high water and breakup-related flooding as the weather starts to warm in interior Alaska.

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The hearings about the grounding of the drilling rig Kulluk continued today in Anchorage. In the morning, the investigators heard from the contractor who towed the rig up last summer without incident. In the afternoon, Shell emergency response executive Norman “buddy” Custard returned for more questioning.

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The Kuskokwim fishermen trials continued today at the Bethel Court House. More fishermen were found guilty for illegal fishing last summer during King salmon closures. The fishermen’s defense attorney continued to ask the court to dismiss the cases and the judge continued to find the fishermen guilty. The fishermen took turns on the stand, some breaking down when they talked about what subsistence meant to them.

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James Albrite was one of them. The 33-year-old choked up when he spoke of growing up in a subsistence lifestyle.

“We used to go to fish camp every summer. . .right after school,” Albrite said through tears. “As long as I can remember, I can remember subsistence fishing. That’s our life, our way of eating. Our way of putting away food.”

Albrite’s father is a Moravian minister but he says their Yup’ik beliefs and Christianity go together. Like other fishermen, Albrite spoke about Ellam Yua, the Yup’ik word for the creator or spirit of the universe. Ellam Yua is in all animals which give themselves to hunters and fishermen. It is up to Ellam Yua if a hunter catches the fish or not and if the hunters don’t take what they are given, the creator is not pleased.

Albrite testified that his family usually puts up around 100 King salmon but last summer they only got half that. He told the court it is his God given right to fish for his family.

“It’s our tradition, it’s the way we live,” Albrite said. “It’s not every day we can wake up in the morning and say, ‘Honey, should we go to the supermarket and go buy a salmon, can we go buy a steak?’ It’s not easy for us. We have to wake up and look in our freezer to see what we can eat.”

Another fishermen to take the stand was David Phillip of Tuluksak. The 48-year-old admitted to fishing during a closure last summer, when he was questioned about it.

“If I got the means to do it, I will do it,” Phillip said.

“Even if you are breaking the law?” asked his lawyer, James Davis Jr.

“Well, if it comes down to feeding my family, yes,” Phillip answered.

When asked what subsistence meant to him, Phillip talked about his spiritual connection to the land and the animals. Like Albrite, Phillip’s family didn’t put up enough Kings last year and he said it made him feel bad.

“Spiritually, it brought me down,” Phillip said. “It’s like um. . .it did not fulfill me.”

Phillip and Albrite, like most other fishermen, were found to be sincere in their beliefs that they are spiritually connected to the fish.

Judge Bruce Ward repeated, “the court’s going to find, based on his testimony that he sincerely believes in this religion, however, the court finds that there is a compelling state interest in monitoring the amount of harvest allowed.”

There were a lot “howevers” in the sentencing process. Most fishermen were sentenced to $500 dollars with half of it suspended. Their nets were returned but the fish seized was forfeited to the state. They were also put on probation for one year.

The defense plans to appeal the fishermen cases to the Alaska Supreme Court.

A federal judge has denied bail for a 61-year-old man accused of killing two men at the Coast Guard station on Kodiak Island.

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James Wells wanted to be released to detention and electronic monitoring to third-party custodians as he awaited trial for the fatal shootings of Coast Guardsmen Petty Officer 1st Class James Hopkins and retired Chief Petty Officer Richard Belisle in April 2012. Wells is charged with murder and is set to go on trial in February 2014.

Wells appeared before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge John D. Roberts in Anchorage Monday.

Roberts said he was not “at all convinced” that bail was appropriate in the case.

Wells’ arrest in February came after an investigation led by the FBI and the Coast Guard Investigative Service.

Individual news stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @aprn.

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Parnell Approves State Operating Budget

Alexandra Gutierrez, APRN – Juneau

Thirteen billion dollars — that’s the cost of running the state next year. Gov. Sean Parnell approved the state’s budget today, and APRN’s Alexandra Gutierrez reports that the he was light with his veto pen.

Governor Signs SB21, HB4 Into Law

Ellen Lockyer, KSKA – Anchorage

Governor Sean Parnell also signed into law Tuesday two bills that he says will have a huge impact on young Alaskans and on Alaskans of  the future.  SB 21, the hard fought oil tax reform bill, and HB 4, a bill authorizing an in – state gasline.

Crowd Protests Oil Tax Cuts

Ellen Lockyer, KSKA – Anchorage

Outside Anchorage’s  Dena’ina Center,  Senator Hollis French warmed up a small crowd protesting the oil tax breaks for Alaska producers.

Executives Push Feds For Export Approval

Peter Granitz, APRN – Washington DC

Leaders from energy companies say they’re worried the window for exporting liquefied natural gas is closing.

As APRN’s Peter Granitz reports, they’re sounding off less than a week after the federal government granted the second export license in the Lower 48.

Ice Jam Above Fort Yukon Could Mean Disaster

Emily Schwing, KUAC – Fairbanks

A massive sheet of winter ice is holding back hundreds of thousands of gallons of silty Yukon River ice roughly 12 miles upriver from Fort Yukon.  Ed Plumb is a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks.

Yukon River-Area Villages Voice For Flooding

Emily Schwing, KUAC – Fairbanks

Other villages in the middle Yukon River region are bracing for high water and breakup-related flooding as the weather starts to warm in interior Alaska.

Kulluk Hearing Continues In Anchorage

Steve Heimel, APRN – Anchorage

The hearings about the grounding of the drilling rig Kulluk continued today in Anchorage.  In the morning, the investigators heard from the contractor who towed the rig up last summer without incident.  In the afternoon, Shell emergency response executive Norman “buddy” Custard returned for more questioning.

Emotions Run High As Fishermen Testify On Religion

Angela Denning-Barnes, KYUK – Bethel

Emotions ran high as the Kuskokwim fishermen trials continued today (Tuesday) at the Bethel Court House. More fishermen were found guilty for illegal fishing last summer during King salmon closures.

Bail Denied For Defendant In Coast Guard Killings

The Associated Press

A federal judge has denied bail for a 61-year-old man accused of killing two men at the Coast Guard station on Kodiak Island.

James Wells wanted to be released to detention and electronic monitoring to third-party custodians as he awaited trial for the fatal shootings of Coast Guardsmen Petty Officer 1st Class James Hopkins and retired Chief Petty Officer Richard Belisle in April 2012. Wells is charged with murder and is set to go on trial in February 2014.

Wells appeared before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge John D. Roberts in Anchorage Monday.

Roberts said he was not “at all convinced” that bail was appropriate in the case.

Wells’ arrest in February came after an investigation led by the FBI and the Coast Guard Investigative Service.

Pavlof volcano continues to ground flights in Southwest Alaska. Pen Air put 6 flights on hold Tuesday due to an ash and steam cloud extending up to 20,000 feet.

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Flights to Dillingham and King Salmon resumed this morning. Flights to Sand Point, Cold Bay, and Unalaska are still on hold.

Grant Aviation has not sent aircraft across the bay towards Togiak due to the ash cloud. No flights went to Port Heiden, Chignik, Nelson Lagoon, or Port Moller Tuesday.

No Alaska Airlines flights have been cancelled.

Gov. Sean Parnell signs budget bills in Anchorage Tuesday as Budget Director Karen Rehfeld handles paperwork.

Governor Sean Parnell left Southeast Alaska project funding intact when he signed the capital budget Tuesday.

But he blocked the transfer of money from one older project to another.

The Legislature’s capital budget called for taking $5 million out of $17 million set aside for a cruise-ship dock in Hoonah. Lawmakers transferred that money to a planned aquatic center in Sitka.

During an Anchorage press conference, Parnell said it was a bad idea.

“That dock is still needed. The growth in passenger traffic, travel-industry traffic, is creating jobs in Hoonah, right down to our high-school age level. That money needs to stay there so they can continue to build their economy there,” he said.

He said it’s unfair to let one town, quote, “rob” another of its capital-project funding.

Sitka’s aquatic center, which has other funding, will be part of the state-run Mount Edgecumbe boarding high school.

Money for Hoonah’s dock was in the 2011 capital budget. And Hoonah’s municipal government and the local Icy Strait Point tourist attraction have clashed over its location.

Parnell’s Budget Director Karen Rehfeld said the project is still on track.

“The mayor and others have been in touch with us to let us know that they are doing some of the geotechnical work now and that it is moving forward,” she said. “And clearly if the $5 million had been reapporiated from the project for another community’s project, they simply would not be able to move forward with it.

The governor did allow $2 million from the dock project to be transferred to the Hoonah Health Center. The Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium facility needs matching funds to begin construction of a new building.

Rehfeld said Hoonah leaders told her office they supported that change. And since it was in the same community, the governor kept it in the budget.

The legislators representing Hoonah and Sitka could be reached for immediate comment.

Sitka resident Mike Alfred reads the newspaper at Totem Square on Tuesday afternoon. Temperatures reached 61 degrees on the cloudless day. (KCAW photo by Ed Ronco)

The cover page of Sealaska’s proxy statement and annual meeting notice. Fourteen candidates are running for for board of directors seats.

Ten Sealaska shareholders are challenging four incumbents for the regional Native corporation’s board of directors. That’s the largest number of independent candidates in five years, although some earlier ballots came close.

Proxy statements, which include ballots, were sent to Sealaska shareholders May 10th. Voting runs through June 20th, just before the corporation’s annual meeting, which is June 22th, in Hoonah.

They can be mailed, faxed or dropped off in person. Ballots can also be cast at the annual meeting.

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Corporate Secretary Nicole Hallingstad said online voting has become increasingly popular.

“The first year of online voting, about 11 percent of our shareholders voted online. The second year that rose just a little bit to 13 percent,” she said. “We’re early in the proxy process, so it’s impossible at this point to say where that final percentage will fall. But higher levels than that have already come in through online voting for this year’s proxy season.”

This year’s online voting is done through a new shareholder-information system called “My Sealaska.” The secure site also includes stock information and dividend payment history.

No resolutions are on this year’s ballot. Prior years’ measures addressed term limits, discretionary voting and stock for shareholder descendants.

Tribal members can vote a specific number of shares for up to four candidates they support. Or they can vote “discretionary,” turning their ballots over to the board, which supports its own members.

Most of this year’s 14 board candidates are in their 50s, 60s or 70s. But three are between 30 and 40.

Hallingstad, also vice president of communications, says that includes Ralph Wolfe. He was last year’s appointed youth representative on the Sealaska board.

“This year’s slate does include some of our younger shareholders and it’s great to see that successive generations of shareholders for Sealaska are seeing this as a mechanism to serve the Native community,” Hallingstad said.

Sealaska added several thousand younger shareholder descendants after a 2007 vote.

The regional Native corporation is headquartered in Juneau and has more than 21,000 shareholders. Most are of Tlingit, Haida or Tsimshian descent. Close to half live in Southeast.

Read the proxy and annual meeting notice, which includes candidate statements and biographical information starting on page 10.

This year’s independent candidates are:

• Mick Beasley, Myrna Gardner and Ernestine Hayes of Juneau.
• Frank Jack III of Angoon.
• Angela Michaud of Anchorage.
• Ralph Wolfe of Yakutat.
• Will Micklin of Alpine, California.
• Edward Sarabia Jr. of South Glastonbury, Connecticut.
• Richard “Jack” Strong of Bonney Lake, Washington.
• And Bonnie Jo Borchick of Tucson, Arizona.

This year’s board incumbents are:

• Patrick Anderson of Anchorage
• Jodi Mitchell of Juneau.
• Jackie Johnson Pata of Fairfax, Virginia.
• And Richard Rinehart Jr. of Bellevue, Washington.

Board members serve three-year terms.

At about 4 p.m. Saturday, Alaska State Troopers and North Tongass EMS responded to Refuge Cove Marina for a report that a man had died.

Daniel Eaton, a 61-year-old man from Kansas, had been found when a co-worker went to check on him after Eaton failed to show up at work.

Eaton was pronounced dead on the scene by EMS personnel. The Alaska State Medical Examiner’s Office was contacted and they requested that the body be sent to Anchorage for an autopsy.

With the assistance of the Gram County Sheriff’s Department in Kansas, next of kin has been located and notified. The cause of death is unknown, but no foul play is suspected at this time.

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly added $300,000 in local funding to the school district budget Monday before approving the document in second reading.

School funding was the big topic on the agenda, and generated quite a bit of discussion. The gap between what School District officials asked for and what the borough proposed giving was about $631,000. Assembly Member Bill Rotecki proposed the amendment, thus meeting them halfway.

“I chose that as approximately half of the $631,000 for the school district budget,” he said. “I would prefer to fund them the full $631,000, but knowing that they have a considerable excess, leftover from last year. They could, with that excess, I hope, reach that $631,000.”

Assembly Member Allen Bailey, speaking in support of the amendment, said he’s torn on the topic of taxes.

“This is a very difficult thing to vote upon,” he said. “And here I am again reminded of those people who may not have that opportunity. And I want those people to have that opportunity, because I know the cost to their life, the cost to their future, if they are not given a decent education. I’m sure I’ll be getting tons of phone calls on this onw, but that’s not as important as doing the right thing. And I believe this is the right thing to do.”

The amendment squeaked by on a 3-3 vote, with Mayor Dave Kiffer breaking the tie in favor of the additional funds. Assembly Members Agnes Moran, Glen Thompson and Todd Phillips voted no.

The main motion then passed 4-2, with Moran and Thompson voting no.

The district budget now tops $42 million, with a little more than $8 million from the borough. That’s nearly $4 million more than the minimum required by state law.

Later, while talking about the overall borough budget, the Assembly discussed the potential need to raise the mill rate. The borough already has proposed raising property taxes by a half mill.

Thompson suggested some possible new revenue, or savings that the borough could find in various departments. Among his ideas is raising fees at the recreation center, and cutting the reception local officials traditionally have hosted during Ketchikan’s lobbying trip to Juneau.

Bailey said raising the mill rate seems inevitable. He reminded listeners that the Assembly cut property taxes a few years ago.

“We cannot sustain our current existing operations with the existing mill rate as it stands,” he said. “I do not believe that at all.”

The Assembly postponed action on the borough budget. Staff will bring it back with some suggested changes at the next meeting, set for June 3.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division dealing with nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status, will not testify on Wednesday despite a congressional subpoena, her attorney says. She is accused of closely scrutinizing conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status.

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