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Sitka High, Mt. Edgecumbe take state titles at Drama, Debate, Forensic meet in Anchorage. Voucher issue, lack of committee referrals create a stir in state capitol. Alaska House unanimously approves resolution opposing genetically-modified salmon.

Federal spending and resource development drive much of Alaska's economy but both are threatened as perhaps never before, Alaska's senior U.S. senator said Thursday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in an annual address to the Alaska Legislature, said years of deficit spending have generated unprecedented debt that jeopardizes the federal government's ability to meet its obligations. At the same time, she said years of government overreach have limited access to resource development in the state, which could help reduce Alaska's reliance on federal funds.

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By RUSSELL STIGALL

After its companion House bill passed easily through committee Wednesday, Senate Bill 7, Corporate Income Tax, waits in the Senate Finance Committee after a Thursday hearing. The tax restructuring and relief legislation won't be scheduled for a committee vote until at least Friday.

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State and federal officials are holding a meeting in Petersburg today (2/21) to gather initial public input on a proposed road connection between the two communities as well as other options for improving access to and from Kake.

The Federal Highway Administration is just getting started on the environmental impact statement for the project which could accompany a power-line from Petersburg to Kake. That electric intertie is undergoing a separate E-I-S, which is being overseen by the US Forest Service. The draft study for the intertie is expected out sometime this spring.

As part of a story that we originally aired in December, Matt Lichtenstein asked the Federal Highway Administration for an update on the Kake road study, which is well behind the separate study for the intertie.

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Potential routes for a road and ferry link between Petersburg and Kake

“The Kake Access project is only in its infancy. It’s just beginning,” said Doug Hecox, spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration which is the lead agency responsible for the Kake to Petersburg Road EIS.

The Alaska Department of Transportation has already proposed several potential alternatives for road and ferry crossings between the two towns. According to Hecox, those options could change:

“The existing information that the state has put out is useful. But I wouldn’t want anybody to believe that those are the final choices because again the entire process we are about to begin on is to find the best way or the way that the public is most supportive of and it may require some modifications of the existing routes, or the recommended routes.”

The state’s preference for a route on Northern Kupreanof Island has generated controversy because it could end up putting a ferry terminal and road in the heart of the roadless city of Kupreanof, a small community of about 30 people just across the Wrangell Narrows from Petersburg.

Like the intertie, the road would run along Tongass National Forest land. So, Hecox says it will be the Forest Service, not Federal Highways, that will make the final decision on whether the project is approved:

“Our job is simply to make sure the environmental documentation and all the rules ad requirements have been satisfied and that some recommended route appears to be the logical choice for a variety of reasons.”

Transportation, not power is the focus for Federal Highways and Hecox says the agency has been asked to evaluate how to improve access to the very rural community of Kake.

But along with access, road supporters have promoted the project as a way of lowering the cost of constructing and maintaining a powerline.

The State legislature appropriated 40 million dollars for construction of a basic, one-lane gravel road with turnouts on the North end of Kupreanof. That did not include money for the intertie, which has been estimated to cost around the same amount. It also did not include any money for a ferry crossing from Petersburg to Kupreanof Island.

Today’s meeting runs from 3:30 to 6:30 pm in Petersburg’s Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall. Another meeting planned for Kake has been postponed. For more information, you can visit the project website.

Parents can get some help preparing their young children for kindergarten during a workshop tonight at Stedman Elementary in Petersburg. This is the second of three Kindergarten-ready workshops the district is holding this year and tonight’s focus is language. Local educators are encouraging parents with kids from a zero to seven-years-old to take part. Matt Lichtenstein spoke with Elementary School special education teacher Barb Marifern:
The Kindergarten-ready workshop takes place tonight (2/21) from 6 to 7:30 in the Elementary School library. There will be pizza and free childcare at the Petersburg Children’s Center.

Petersburg’s tribally-owned restaurant will be shutting its doors for good next week. That’s according to Petersburg Indian Association Administrator Bruce Jones. He said Wednesday that Seaside House is just not doing enough business to stay open.

“After getting back to work here and looking at the financials for the month of January I have decided and have informed the board that I’m going to close the restaurant effective the first of March. Our last day of operation will be February 28th which is next Thursday,” Jones said.

Jones just returned to work at the PIA in January. He was initially hired as tribal administrator last summer but then fired a couple months later after the Tribal Council, at the time, disagreed with his decision to fire an employee. The council membership has since changed substantially with January elections, a resignation, and an appointment to fill the vacant seat. The new council rehired Jones late last month.

Seaside house opened nearly two years before. The PIA spent several hundred thousand dollars to purchase and renovate the building on Sing Lee Alley Bridge.

Seaside House Restaurant, Petersburg

According to Jones, the restaurant has a staff of six.

“You know they’re great employees,” Jones said, “They really worked hard to reduce expenses and our manager came in in September and he did a great job of revamping the menu and getting people to reschedule and getting control of the inventory and that kind of thing. I told the board if we had had him a year ago we wouldn’t be in as bad a situation as we are now. So, he’s done a great job, it’s just the restaurant business is a tough business.”

Jones said Seaside House was just barely breaking even on operations over the last couple of months and has not been able to cover its debt payments for over a year. He said those payments are in excess of eight thousand dollars a month.

“We just don’t have that kind of money floating around. Most of the money that we have comes in on grants that are specific to certain jobs and certain duties and we can’t be using grant money to cover these debts.”

So, according to Jones, it’s time to cut the losses. He expects the building will eventually go up for sale or lease. He plans to discuss the restaurant in more detail with the Tribal Council during its next regular meeting March 4th.

Southeast crabbers are out harvesting Tanner and Golden King Crab. Both seasons opened on February 17th. Tanner boats get six days to fish in the most popular “core” areas and a total of eleven days in the non-core areas.

Tanner Crab. Photo courtesy Adam Messmer, ADF&G.

The Tanner crab stocks are on the upswing in Southeast according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s annual survey, which is conducted each fall.

“Our estimate of mature male abundance, mature male biomass, was 4.3 million pounds so that was up from the 3.1 million pounds that we estimated in 2011 and the year before that was 2.9 million pounds. So we are seeing tanner stocks in the region abundance trending up,” said Joe Stratman, lead crab biologist for the region.

54 permit-holders registered to fish for tanner crab this year. Those limited-entry boats, which fish with large crab pots, land most of the catch each year. A very small portion comes from fishermen in the open-entry, ring-net fishery. 24 boats are registered to do that this year.

Participation was a little lower last year and the fleet landed a total of 1.1 million pounds, which was the largest tanner harvest in the past eleven seasons. It was worth around 3 dollars a pound or about 3 million dollars total on the docks.

Golden King Crab Fishermen get a total of 590,000 pounds to catch this year. That’s down about six percent from last year. Golden crab is managed differently than Tanner. Instead of setting a season length, state biologists set a separate guideline harvest level or GHL for each of the seven golden crab areas. The GHL is based on data from past fisheries. During the fishery, the crabbers call in their catches and managers shut each area, one at a time, as its GHL is reached. That can be a matter of weeks or more than a month depending on the area.

Golden King Crab. Photo courtesy Adam Messmer, ADF&G.

The GHL’s for the Northern, Icy Strait, and North Stevens Pass areas are down substantially from last year. Catch rates have been declining in those areas, according to Stratman.

“You know I think the intent of these GHL reductions for all three areas is to stop the decrease in commercial fishery catch rates that we’re seeing and to prevent long-term damage to the reproductive potential of the stock. So we thought it was necessary to make those GHL reductions in those areas,” he said.

However, the story is a bit different for the other four golden crab areas known as East Central, Mid-Chatham Strait, Lower Chatham Strait and Southern. Stratman says the Department has been seeing more stable catch rates and other positive data in those areas in recent years. Three of the four saw small increases in their GHL’s this year.

38 boats are registered to fish golden crab this year.

Last year, Golden crab sold for an average of around eight dollars a pound. The 600,000 pound harvest was worth a total of 4.7 million dollars to the fleet.

The Senate Transportation Committee advanced a bill Tuesday to add a 12th seat to the Alaska Marine Transportation Advisory Board, an expansion proponents say will improve local representation for communities on the Kenai Peninsula and Kodiak Island.

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JUNEAU — Human trafficking most likely occurs in Alaska, but it is unclear how prevalent the crime is in the state, according to a new study.

The State of Alaska Task Force on the Crimes of Human Trafficking, Promoting Prostitution and Sex Trafficking presented its findings to a joint session of the House and Senate judiciary committees Wednesday. Legislation passed last year called for the creation of a task force that would look at the prevalence of trafficking and prostitution, as well as the services available to help victims of those crimes.

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JUNEAU — Gov. Sean Parnell supports legislative efforts to let voters decide whether to change the constitution to allow public funds to be used for private schools, his spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Sharon Leighow said Parnell has always supported more choices in education for parents and that as a legislator, Parnell helped establish charter schools.

“In the case at hand, the governor supports legislative efforts to move the resolution to the voters for Alaskans to have their say,” she said in an email.

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A bill written to reduce state corporate taxes for certain small- and medium-sized businesses moved out of House Labor and Commerce Committee on Thursday.

House Bill 68 Corporate Income Tax is sponsored by Rep. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer. She presented her bill to the House Committee on Labor and Commerce.

If passed, the bill would change the ranges of the state’s 10 corporate tax brackets for type C corporations — the change would not affect limited liability corporations or S corporations.

“We have about 5,000 C corps that this would apply to,” Hughes said.

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Sitka High and Mt. Edgecumbe students captured several titles at the state Drama, Debate, and Forensics meet in Anchorage last weekend (Feb 14-16).

For Sitka, it was a chance for last year’s underclassmen to move into the limelight following the graduation of a strong senior team. For Mt. Edgecumbe, it was a first taste of victory for a growing program.

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Jesse Bartelds and Michael Boose celebrate their state title in Duet Acting. (Kevin Lane Photography)

The state Drama, Debate, and Forensics meet takes over the University of Alaska Anchorage campus for the weekend. Nearly thirty schools participate. They send hundreds of kids to compete.

“Yeah it’s amazing. It’s like the Oscars.”

Donovan Gurule is a senior at Mt. Edgecumbe High School. He helped carry his team to a second-place finish in the small-schools Forensics sweepstakes, by reaching the finals with a solo acting piece called “Lloyd’s Prayer.”

Donovan – “Me, I was a preacher. A black preacher. And I did a duo interp that was a married couple piece. And I did a Reader’s Theater with Doug that was ‘Piggy Pie,’ which is a children’s story.”

Doug – “It’s about a dysfunctional newscaster…”

This is Gurule’s teammate Doug McClenahan.

“…I play an anchor with a real ditzy female co-anchor, and we try to watch all our pieces on a screen but we don’t have video clips, so we act them out.”

“Newscast Live!” also reached the state finals in small schools. As did McClenahan’s Dramatic Interpretation of “Flowers for Algernon,” which took second.

Sitka High senior Jesse Bartelds also competed in Dramatic Interpretation, with a piece about Judy Garland. Many students find their way into drama competition with lighter pieces. Bartelds say DI offers an actor room to work.

“You can either be very sad with it, or just plain dramatic. It offers a lot of variety with what you can do with the piece.”

Bartelds teamed up with Michael Boose to take a state championship in duet acting. Their performance has been honed in monthly regional meets, with hours of practice time on top of that. She’s earned the right to reflect on what has been a long road to the top.

“I remember the first time me and Michael sat down in my house and read over our duet. That was months ago. And it’s crazy now to think, Wow I’m never going to perform those again. But all’s well that ends well, really.”

Her partner, Boose, also tackled a solo performance, selecting a piece that he hoped would give him an edge.

“So my solo is basically an actor forgetting his lines. It’s a hilarious piece. I basically get to stand in front of a judge and say ‘ahh’ and ‘umm.’ Which is really handy when you’re first learning it because if you actually forget a line you can say ‘ahh’ or ‘umm’ until you remember it, and it still works with the piece.”

Sitka High came in third behind Mt. Edgecumbe in the Forensics sweepstakes, but for the second year in a row won the Drama sweepstakes, the Debate sweepstakes, and the overall small schools championship. Bartelds says it was a chance for the younger performers and speakers from last year’s championship team – which won all three sweepstakes and the overall competition – to step out from behind the long shadows of the seniors that dominated the team in 2012.

Mt. Edgecumbe in the not-too-distant past dropped DDF, but later reconsidered and restarted the program a few years ago. Donovan Gurule wishes he had gotten into DDF sooner. Just the practice of settling himself may one day be useful if he ever does make it to the Oscars.

“You take deep breaths before you go in. And you have to be prepared mentally. And you can do that with your teammates. We do games – that really helps.”

Teammate Doug McClenahan has a similar ritual, and the same hard edge.

“Play a lot of games and focus and think about my piece and how it goes. And focus in on that I need to win this judge over if I want to do well.”

KCAW’s Holly Keen contributed to this story.

MEHS State DDF Individual Awards
2nd place – Dramatic Interpretation – Doug McClenahan with “Flowers for Algernon”
3rd place – Solo Acting – Donovan Gurule with “Lloyd’s Prayer”
5th place – Duet Acting – Anneliese Moll & Doug McClenahan with “Newscast Live!”

MEHS State DDF Team Awards
2nd place – Forensics (small schools division) – Mt. Edgecumbe High School

Sitka High State DDF Team Awards
1st place – Drama Sweepstakes – Sitka High School
1st place – Debate Sweepstakes – Sitka High School
3rd place – Forensics Sweepstakes – Sitka High School
1st place – Overall Sweepstakes (small school division) – Sitka High School

Sitka High Individual Awards
1st place – Duet Acting – Jesse Bartelds and Michael Boose
1st place – Mime – Ryan Apathy and Emma Bruhl
3rd place – Reader’s Theater – Emma Bruhl, Ahna Cushing, Celia Lubin
3rd place – Foreign Extemp – Annemarie Pike
4th place (tied) – Public Forum Debate – Annemarie Pike/Celia Lubin and Ryan Apathy/Chaya Pike
Listen to these two teams debate! From a KCAW broadcast on February 11, 2012.
8th place – Speaker Points – Ryan Apathy
3rd place – Speaker Points – Chaya Pike
Command Performance at Finals – Original Oration – Annemarie Pike

Members of the Alaska Legislative Centennial Commission, a group of lawmakers and public members responsible for planning for the 100th anniversary of the Alaska Legislature in Juneau, reviewed a draft itinerary Thursday for a three-day celebration at the Rockwell restaurant in downtown Juneau next month.

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Anchorage Democrat Sen. Bill Wielechowski Wednesday defended Alaska’s oil production tax structure and criticized Republican Gov. Sean Parnell’s proposal to overhaul the system during the biweekly Native Issues Forum sponsored by the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

Wielechowski gave an abbreviated version of his presentation entitled “Debunking Myths About ACES,” which leans on graphs, charts and tables to dispel criticisms of ACES, the Alaska oil tax regime, at the event.

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The Senate Transportation Committee advanced a bill Tuesday to add a 12th seat to the Alaska Marine Transportation Advisory Board, an expansion proponents say will improve local representation for communities on the Kenai Peninsula and Kodiak Island.

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The Ketchikan Medical Center Auxiliary recently awarded $45,000 for new equipment at the hospital, including $26,000 for a single item.

The Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter is an intravenous method used for patients with difficult IV access or who require long-term IV antibiotic or drug therapy.

The portable unit will be used throughout the hospital as well as in the Transitional Care Unit.

The auxiliary operates the Ketchikan Medical Center gift shop, which is staffed by volunteers. Profits from the gift shop are used each year to help purchase equipment at the hospital.

The items approved for purchase this year are:

• $26,000 for a Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter
•  $5000 for Education Materials for Surgery, Orthopedic & Sports Medicine and Women’s Health,
• $2800 for an Enhanced Standing Aid for the Transitional Care Unit,
•  $1800 for an Adult Platform Walker in ICU,
• $2000 for a Temporal Thermometer for Home Health,
• $5700 for a Bilirubin Meter for Pediatrics, and
• $2550 for a machine to monitor blood coagulation levels in Primary Care

The U.S Forest Service is conducting a five-year review of the 2008 Tongass National Forest management plan. A big part of that process involves public meetings throughout the Tongass to gather feedback and input.

A meeting in Craig is set for Wednesday evening. It starts at 6 p.m. at the Craig Tribal Association Hall. In Ketchikan, a public meeting is set for 6 p.m. Thursday at the Ted Ferry Civic Center.

Forest Planner Sue Jennings said the five-year review was written into the plan when it was drafted, and public input is an important element to the process. At each meeting, Forest Service officials start with an introductory presentation about the plan, and then open up the meeting for comments and questions.

She compared the forest plan to a municipal planning and zoning document.

“It’d be the same as a zoning map for the City of Ketchikan, where some areas are industrial and some areas are residential and some areas are business,” she said. “It’s the same kind of thing with the Tongass National Forest. Some areas we have timber production and some areas are wilderness, where we have no improvements at all. It’s the range of what can be done on the national forest, much like a zoning map.”

Meetings already have taken place in Wrangell, Petersburg and Sitka. Jennings said that comments so far related to timber, subsistence, access and travel.

“And interestingly enough, hydroelectric projects,” she said. “That’s one of our big comments so far.”

Jennings said she hopes for a big crowd at each meeting,”and we have cookies, so it will be fun.”

The final public meeting for the review will take place Feb. 28 in Juneau .

For more information and to comment online, go to http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/tongass/home/?cid=stelprdb5367364

Sometime over the Presidents Day holiday, someone stole about $100 worth of heating oil from Edna Bay School.

Alaska State Troopers in Klawock were told of the theft early Wednesday morning. According to Troopers, the crime occurred sometime between midnight Monday and 6:30 Tuesday morning.

The investigation is ongoing.  Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact Troopers in Klawock.

It appears that Sen. Dennis Egan, D-Juneau, who expressed concern that he could be kicked out of the Republican-led Senate majority caucus for opposing Senate leadership on a procedural vote Friday, will remain in his caucus after discussions Monday and Tuesday.

Egan said after a majority caucus meeting Tuesday that everything is now “hunky-dory” between him and leaders of his caucus, a day after Senate President Charlie Huggins, R-Wasilla, met with the Juneau senator and publicly praised him as a “good friend.”

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Petersburg has a full borough assembly. The Mayor and four other elected members filled two vacant seats by appointment last night. The new members are Kurt Wohlheuter and Cindi Lagoudakis. Matt Lichtenstein reports:
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