A factory trawler that frequently participates in the Bering Sea pollock fishery caught fire Monday afternoon.

The catcher-processor Arctic Storm was working off the coast of Grays Harbor, Washington, processing Pacific whiting, when a fire started in the engine room.

The Coast Guard sent helicopters and lifeboats to the scene to help evacuate crew. According to the vessel’s parent company, Arctic Storm Management Group, none of the 120 people on board were injured. The 334-foot ship is being towed back to port so the owners can assess the damage.

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.

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. (Hear a report on last year’s issues.)

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.

By Amanda Block and Anne Gore

When you were a kid, did you go to camp? If so, you probably remember having lots of fun, making new friends, sleeping in a tent or cabin, swimming or canoeing, performing silly skits, singing songs, and telling stories around a campfire at night.

There’s no question, camp is fun.

At Camp Togowoods, girls not only learn how to paddle but also how to right an overturned canoe.

But, for girls who attend Girl Scout camp in Alaska, there’s also important work happening – the work of character development.

Although program activities like canoeing, conquering the climbing wall, and learning to build a fire certainly contribute to a camper’s confidence and growth, often it is the small, seemingly insignificant events that can most impact a child’s development.

Christopher Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, identified seven critical character traits that children need to develop into successful adults.

· A sense of wonder/curiosity about the world: Our natural, inborn fascination with the world that makes us want to explore, learn and discover all we can about it; The delight we take in seeing the wonders of the world revealed to us.

· Social intelligence: The ability to read other people’s emotions and connect with them in meaningful ways; Our awareness of others; Knowing when and how to negotiate, collaborate and compromise with others.

· Zest/love of life: An exuberance or upbeat feeling about life and the opportunity to witness the wonders of the world; Zest is key to a positive outlook on life.

· Optimism: The ability to see the positive opportunity in situations; Optimism is key to self-confidence and a positive outlook on life.

· Grit: The ability to hang in there, to tough it out, persevere and recover from a setback.

· Self-control: The ability to regulate feelings and impulses; to recognize and manage them, edit them, and not be run by them.

· Gratitude: An essential feeling of recognizing and being appreciative of what we have been given; Gratitude is key to a positive outlook on life.
At Girl Scout camp, counselors are specially trained to help girls develop and recognize these character traits.

Helping plant a garden during a Day Camp session in Angoon.

Girl Scout camp counselors not only point out when girls express one of the seven traits but also spend time reflecting on them at the end of each day. For example, girls may be asked to think about one thing they are grateful for, or give an example of a time they or another camper showed self-control.

Here are some examples of how campers have expressed their character growth:

For example, when girls live together at resident camp or spend all day together at day camp, character issues are bound to arise. Imagine the grit it takes a camper to face a 35-foot-tall climbing tower for the first time. Picture the self-control a camper develops when trying to light a fire in the rain. Consider the zest/love of life a camper experiences when she canoes across the lake and sees a loon with babies riding on its back.

How girls experience these situations (with the support of their counselors), is how character is built.

A new friendship develops at Girl Scout’s Camp Togowoods.

At Girl Scout camp, we are committed to the highest levels of excellence in health, safety, and programming. We hire staff that are great with kids and know how to make camp fun. But, we also work hard to ensure that in the course of each day, girls experience opportunities for the kind of character development that is essential for children. We want girls to leave our camps having had not just fun, but having developed the character traits that will help her succeed in life, and do great things!

The mission of Girl Scouts is to build girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place. Through our series, events, camps, and troop activities, we promise every girl the chance to discover the leader she can be.

To register your daughter for Girl Scout camp go to www.girlscoutsalaska.org/programs/camps to view the camp catalog and register online.

To find out about other ways to participate in Girl Scouts, call 907-248-2250, 800-478-7448, or visit www.girlscoutsalaska.org.

Girl Scouts is available to any girl in Kindergarten through High School. Scholarships and financial assistance is available.

Cruise ship passengers board a tendering vessel at Huna Totem’s Icy Strait Point. Lawmakers have funded a new berthing facility, which has not been built. Photo by Ed Schoenfeld, Coastalaska News.

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.

Sitka Democratic Rep. Jonathan Kriess-Tomkins said he was not involved in the reappropriation effort. Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman could not be reached for immediate comment. Both also represent Hoonah.

Photo by Daysha Eaton, KSKA – Anchorage.

Tuesday night, the Anchorage Assembly voted unanimously to postpone indefinitely an ordinance that would have changed the way that public hearings are conducted.

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The Assembly has made a habit of moving public testimony to the end of meetings. So it wasn’t a surprise that they did so with an ordinance meant overhaul the public hearing system. Richard Evans of Spenard protested and was allowed to testify earlier because he said he had to return to work. He said the ordinance was bad.

“This is retroactive justice. A gentleman in the audience told me about this earlier. Trying to justify the decisions made on AO37. What I see is an attempt by certain members of this assembly to silence descent. People who are dissenting against what appears to be a personal attack against the people of this city. When I heard about this I jetted over here just as fast as I could because this is very important to me,” Evans said.

Assembly Chair Ernie Hall crafted the ordinance with help from the ACLU of Alaska. It was a response to crowded public hearings on AO37, a law limiting unions, which was passed in March after weeks of packed public hearings that the body voted to closed before everyone had a chance to testify. The new ordinance would have required people to sign up on the first evening of a public hearing in order to testify, even if the hearing was continued. New Assembly member, Amy Demboski, said she thought the ordinance would create more order in a haphazard process. But Sheila Selkregg, a University professor and former Anchorage Assembly member, said the new ordinance was too limiting because it would not allow people to respond to laws as they are being crafted.

“I waited on AO37 because I wanted to know what the S version was. I didn’t want to speak at the beginning to something that really wasn’t full of content,” Selkregg said.

Some said requiring people to sign up on the first night of testimony would limit those with night work, family and community obligations from participating in city politics. Deborah Kelly, who wore a sweatshirt with a union logo on the back, said she works for the city, along with many who do 24 hour shift work and who might be kept from testifying if the ordinance passed.

“They’re not always able to come to Assembly meetings and I really think that they should have the opportunity too, to make their thoughts known. I mean, a person caring for an ailing family member — should they not have the same rights as other citizens. I realize that it’s a messy process sometimes but democracy’s supposed to be messy. I mean, it’s supposed to be messy, but it’s supposed to be fair. And I mean, it’s gotta look fair,” Kelly said.

After hearing from the public, the Assembly voted unanimously to postpone the issue indefinitely. Assembly Chair Hall said he was disappointed because the Assembly had not developed a protocol that addressed the issue of how to conduct public hearings involving large numbers of people … an issue that he said was sure to eventually come up again.

Watch Airmen and the Headhunters – Preview on PBS. See more from Secrets of the Dead.

Investigate the extraordinary survival story of a crew of airmen shot down over the jungles of Japanese-occupied Borneo during World War II. This film recounts the rescue of a U.S. bomber crew by Dayak tribesmen, known for taking the heads of their enemies. The Dayaks fed and protected the airmen before leading them to the base of the maverick British special ops officer, Major Tom Harrisson, who was fighting a guerrilla war against the Japanese with a band of Australian commandoes. The program features an exclusive interview with the sole surviving member of the U.S. crew, as well as interviews with a number of the Dayak tribespeople and Japanese and Australian veterans.

• TV: Wednesday, 5/22 at 9:00 p.m.

Most of the fishermen on trial were contrite, some tearful, one or two a little angry about being charged with violating a ban on fishing for Chinook salmon intended to prevent damage to the species.

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.

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.