Credit Where Credit Is Due

Wed   4 Feb 1998   15:01 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [My Two Cents]

Governor Tony Knowles and his transportation commissioner have heard the voice of the Interior’s voters—er, I mean, people—and placed the Badger-Richardson intersection high on the state’s list of transportation priorities. Besides being politically wise in a year where his lease on the Governor’s Mansion is up for reconsideration, it’s a good move for the Interior, for residents of the Badger Road and North Pole areas, and for that portion of the Fairbanks tourist volume that pilots its way up the Alaska Highway instead of being crammed aboard a cruise ship. It’s such a good move that we can surely expect Gov. Knowles to take credit for it this summer and fall on visits to the Interior that will outnumber all his trips to these parts over the last three years. Not to be cynical or anything… The real credit for the interchange belongs to residents who use the existing, sub-standard highway intersection, who organized and carried to obvious success a petition drive to get an interchange built. Sparked by a fatal accident at the intersection last August, they put pressure on state and local officials. Knowing how important the Interior is to his re-election hopes this fall, Knowles had no choice but to hear and obey. The elation over this one righteous act should not drive from our minds the Governor’s established pattern of shorting the Interior of highway funds to shower the south-central region with improvements and new road-building during 1995, 1996 and 1997. Tony Knowles may be doing the right thing now, but how can we know that he won’t fall back into his old ways if re-elected? Thank you, Governor, for finally doing right—but my vote’s not for sale.

California Initiative Demonstrates Value of Aiming High

Sat   24 Jan 1998   19:04 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [My Two Cents]

Last year’s Fairbanks North Star Borough mayoral race showed—albeit not by design—that it is possible, by forcing one’s political opposition to devote its energies to one issue or campaign, to open the way for victory on other issues or for other offices. So intent were the Interior’s organized labor and radical Leftist interests on preventing the election of Pete Kelly to the borough mayor’s office that they were unable to secure victory in any other competitive race. This year, California conservatives are consciously applying this strategy with a number of initiatives that aim at the very heart of that state’s labor-Left coalition. And the keystone of that strategy—the Campaign Reform Initiative, which would require labor unions to request permission from members before using their dues for political purposes—is every bit as likely to win as was 1996’s Proposition 209, despite a probable investment by organized labor of millions of dollars to defeat it. According to Christopher Rapp, writing in the January 26 issue of National Review, “Even if the unions defeat the initiative, doing so will likely cost them some $25 to $30 million, reducing the resources they have available to oppose other reforms.“ In other words, they will have saved the king and lost the kingdom—rather like what happened here last year. I have spoken to one or two Fairbanks political figures about formulating a deliberate strategy for 1998’s municipal elections, adapting the serendipitous outcome of 1997 to the borough assembly seats that will be on this year’s October ballot. The idea is to force the labor-Left coalition to concentrate on a single race, diminishing its ability to win other races. Municipal politics in Interior Alaska have far too often been a haphazard affair, at least from our side of the aisle. Our opponents have been better organized and more inclined to think their political thoughts in the long term while we have looked upon elections as impromptu personal duels. Admittedly, my own temperament leaves me inclined by nature to concentrate on the target my opponent considers most precious, so the effect of last year’s borough mayor race on the assembly, school board, and even city council elections was obvious to me from the start. That our counterparts in California are about to make effective use of the same principle suggests to me the Golden State’s Democrats are in for hard times. How nice it would be if the Fairbanks labor-Left axis, which controls three of the four borough assembly seats on this year’s ballot, could look forward to the same. There is one such seat more precious to them than the others, and if its occupant chooses to seek re-election he should be the target of a high-profile, well-organized challenge. Let’s start taking these municipal elections to them where they live.

Borough wants to supplant Rescue Mission???

Wed   21 Jan 1998   18:27 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [My Two Cents]

At Thursday night’s Borough Assembly meeting, members will deal with a proposal to spend $60,000 of taxpayers’ money on a program “aimed at helping habitual inebriates turn their lives around.“ Due to the fact I have night classes on Thursdays, I’m unable to attend the Assembly meeting, but I hope any of you who are interested in this issue will attend and speak out. The borough shouldn’t put itself into the role of enabler for people who surrender themselves to alcohol. Nor should the government insert itself into privately developed programs so that it can tie political strings on them and interfere with their effectiveness. If the people who support the borough’s proposed ordinance were to hold a fund-raiser among themselves I’m sure they’d come up with $60,000 in short order—and by giving the money privately to an existing program they would do much more good for the people in need of help. The borough’s proposal is an empty “feel-good” gesture that will hurt both the alcohol-dependent, and the taxpayers. Please go to the Assembly meeting Thursday night and just say no! The borough building is at 809 Pioneer, behind Pizza 4 Less. The meetings start at 6:30 p.m.

Off the Deep End Already?

Fri   2 Jan 1998   9:25 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

As if it weren’t bad enough that the first day of 1998 brought the first death of a Fairbanks police officer in the line of duty. Even throw in the downtown Fairbanks house fire that almost claimed two lives, the fact the News-Miner sports editors have decided we don’t need to know how the Orange Bowl turned out, and the latest atrocity by Jack Kevorkian, and it still doesn’t cover it all. The writer of the News-Miner’s Jan. 2 editorial suggests it might be reasonable to suspect the oil industry and legislative Republicans of engaging in a conspiracy to depress oil prices for the sake of making a political point, then disavows such suspicion only because the oil price slump is worldwide. Isn’t it a little early in the year for the News-Miner’s editorial writers to go off the deep end into the realm of extremist paranoia? We’ve seen numerous examples of people with strong political inclinations exploiting this or that news opportunity to make a point for their side, but it doesn’t take a conspiracy to do it—one might as well accuse the proponents of a city sales tax in Fairbanks of setting up the fatal shooting of Officer Kevin Lamm to demonstrate that Fairbanks supposedly needs more cops. It would certainly be on a par with today’s editorial. Someone at the News-Miner, who has been trusted with the task of establishing for public consumption the editorial stance of Fairbanks’ newspaper of record, is clearly having difficulty keeping things in perspective. My advice to those at the News-Miner who care about the newspaper’s reputation: Get the author of that editorial a full-spectrum desk lamp and take him (or her) off editorial-writing for the remainder of the winter.

The ‘Aginners’ Chorus Bashes Wood Boulevard

Wed   31 Dec 1997   7:25 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [My Two Cents]

While I don’t particularly care whether Airport Way gets named for Dr. William R. Wood, I do have to admit that the inordinate bashing the idea has received in News-Miner letters to the editor has caused me to become more sympathetic to the renaming proposal. The gist of the letters, some of which exhibit the sort of puerile nastiness we’ve come to expect of the extremist Left of Fairbanks, seems to be that if Airport Way is renamed, people will be unable to find the airport. As if following the landing path of the Lufthansa Cargo 747 [passing just a couple of hundred feet overhead] won’t lead one right to it… In a way the aginners do have a point—after all, we have University Avenue which leads to the university. Sort of. And Phillips Field Road leads to Phillips Field—or would, if that old airfield still existed. But the point only extends so far. After all, Illinois Street does not lead to Illinois. Perhaps these Leftist aginners think the Parks Highway was so named because it leads motorists to the entrance to Denali Park…? In many places in America, airports are easily found despite the access roads not being named some variant of “Airport Road.“ In fact, in my erstwhile hometown of Sacramento, the road to the commercial airport is an Interstate Highway! And no, the highway isn’t designated “Airport Freeway,“ either. Nor was that newer airport’s predecessor located on a road named for leading to the airport—it was named for leading to a tiny riverside community, a mere wide spot in the road actually, many miles beyond the airport. How did people—in a metropolitan area of a million souls (which any student of statistics will know must include a great many people dumber than the dumbest Alaskan)—find either of these airports? Signs! The transportation authorities in Sacramento came up with an ingenious innovation whereby they placed signs next to important roads in town, directing people which turns to take to find the airport. Such an unlikely scheme couldn’t possibly work, but it does. Maybe it can work here too. So if Airport Way doesn’t get renamed for Dr. Wood, that doesn’t mean the option of renaming it at some future date is dead. In the meantime, though, maybe we need to save our street funds to extend Illinois Street a few thousand miles…

Leadership Vacuum Leaves Assembly in Shambles

Mon   27 Oct 1997   12:33 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [My Two Cents]

Last Thursday evening, confused by muddled legal advice from borough attorney Ardith Lynch, and by the knee-jerk obstructionism of Assemblyman Jay Quakenbush, the Borough Assembly failed to carry out its obligation to the voters of the borough, and left five duly elected men and women in limbo, their elections uncertified. As a result, presiding officer Hank Hove has been forced to scramble for political cover on the eve of the Borough Mayor runoff election tomorrow, by calling a special Assembly meeting tonight to clean up the mess he allowed to be made of the borough’s governing body. A modicum of leadership, at the right moment, could have avoided all this. The last thing a candidate for Borough Mayor should have let happen at this particular moment, is for the Assembly—his Assembly—to appear to display a casual attitude toward the will of the voters. A similar miscue just three months ago resulted in a last-minute decision by a bare majority of Assembly members not to usurp the authority of the voters to affirm or reject term limits. That issue was settled October 7 as voters once again approved term limits by a two-to-one margin. Even given the complaint filed by Jeff Weltzin, four borough races should also have been settled October 7—with the elections of Rick Solie, Mike Young, Royce Chapman and Cynthia Henry to the seats they sought. Even if the Assembly had any authority to delay acceptance of Mike Prax into their midst, they have no authority to leave these other four candidates hanging. But do they even have the authority in Mr. Prax’s case? I’ve heard, just yesterday, that there are strong legal precedents that they do not. But wait—if the Assembly doesn’t have the authority to refuse to certify an election, why is it given to them to certify election results? Is it just a formality? Well, as a matter of fact… Just as the Queen of England is constitutionally empowered to appoint that country’s prime minister—yet has no real say in who the prime minister shall be—the Assembly is empowered to certify election results. Its members have no say over what those results are. The act of certifying results is merely obedience to the de jure sovereign of the borough: its electorate. Through such an act of obedience, the Assembly demonstrates that the sovereignty of the electorate is more than a technicality. By balking at certification Thursday evening, the Assembly struck a clumsy blow against its own legitimacy—and Hank Hove, as its leader, wasn’t enough of a leader to prevent it. As a result, the Assembly is in violation of the law, and its members potentially subject to recall. Anybody can preside over the Assembly and look good doing so when everything runs smoothly. It takes a crisis like this one to expose the deficiencies of a presiding officer. Crises, however, come somewhat more often on the administrative side. Should the man who has only lately let the Assembly become a shambles, be hired to make a daily shambles of the whole borough?

Fairbanks Tour Operator Is Part of the Problem

Sat   18 Oct 1997   19:48 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [My Two Cents]

The lead paragraph in today’s Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, filed by reporter Brian O’Donoghue, reads: Fairbanks’ largest local tour operator, the Riverboat Discovery, took a direct hit Friday as President Clinton vetoed $800,000 intended for dredging the Chena River. The riverboat’s owner, a former state senator named Johne Binkley, runs the only significant commercial boat traffic on the Chena, which runs down from the hills northeast of Fairbanks, through the city’s downtown, and into the Tanana River (a major tributary to the Yukon). The sternwheeler Discovery III is a part of just about every package tour that runs through Fairbanks under the care of Princess Tours (of “Love Boat” fame) and Westours (a subsidiary of Holland America Cruise Lines). The Binkleys employ 100 people on the riverboat tour alone, and are owners of other attractions included in the package tours. Of all the people in Fairbanks who profit from the visitor industry, only a handful—fortunate enough to win contracts from Princess and Westours—are able to tap the supremely lucrative package-tour traffic with any consistency (and with a minimum of marketing). Johne Binkley is definitely the biggest of that handful. Binkley had lobbied for the funding to dredge the lower Chena River because silt has built up near its mouth, making navigation difficult, particularly in periods of reduced flow, as occurred this summer. Binkley blames construction of the Moose Creek Dam—a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project designed to prevent a recurrence of the disastrous 1967 flood that inundated most of Fairbanks—for the fact that the Chena is flowing much more slowly than it used to. Another, earlier event, the cutoff of inflow from the Tanana River by way of a slough that runs through greater North Pole, probably also has something to do with it. The Moose Creek Dam, in fact, remains open except in periods of extremely high flow, closing then to prevent flooding downstream. In any case, the continued ability of the Discovery III to satisfy the tourists who are fed through Fairbanks each summer, does depend on the dredging out of the river’s mouth. Bill Clinton vetoed federal funding to do that, claiming the project isn’t important enough. Binkley—clearly concerned about his own bottom line—disagrees. This is one of those rare cases where I have to agree with Bill Clinton. However important the dredging may be to Johne Binkley, Princess Tours, Holland America, and the Fairbanks visitor industry, it isn’t a valid use of the hard-earned money of people living in East Endoscopy, Indiana. This project clearly does fall under the category of pork. The Binkley family ain’t destitute. That part of the channel of the Chena River they want dredged ain’t that long. They can easily hire a dredge and pay for the work out of their own pockets, or with a loan they could easily secure and promptly repay. So—why didn’t they? Why are they so unhappy about Clinton’s use of the line-item veto on this project? It’s the bail-out mentality at work once again. The resources being available—in this case, other people’s money—why not use it? I once had a friend who characterized such a mentality with the phrase, “If it’s free, it’s for me.“ This mentality, I regret to say, is pervasive in Alaska. Conservative Republicans ought not to let themselves be embarrassed by Democrats taunting them with talk of “corporate welfare.“ The income level of the welfare recipient is irrelevant. Welfare is wrong. It’s corrosive and incompatible with life in a self-governing republic. Its recipient invariably falls into the position of supplicant, dependent upon the goodwill of the hands holding the purse strings. And if the attempt is made to disguise that dependence, the recipient who doesn’t get what he wants throws a tantrum. Says Mr. Binkley: “For him (Clinton) to single out Fairbanks and veto such a modest appropriation ... it isn’t fair certainly.“ My heart bleeds (not).

What Is a Borough Worth?

Sat   11 Oct 1997   19:15 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [Media Ochre] [My Two Cents]

In today’s Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, on Page B4, there’s an interesting item in the section titled “Looking Back in Fairbanks.“ It reads: Oct. 11, 1972—Bob Parson’s proposal to shrink the size of the Fairbanks North Star Borough was rejected by the borough assembly last night, but it will come before the assembly again at the next meeting in a slightly modified form. Parsons introduced a resolution directing the borough mayor to prepare and file a petition for detachment that would reduce [...] the borough to about one seventh its present size if approved by the state. The immorality of taxing people without providing services and the chance to aid the work of the Unification Charter Commission were cited as the reasons for the action. The more things change… Back then, I guess, the borough didn’t even have dumpsters in the outlying communities, and didn’t send a library van down the highway or out Chena Hot Springs Road. What a difference 25 years of progress have made! Now the borough even takes credit for ballparks it didn’t build! The troubles besetting the City of Fairbanks led some to drag the issue of unification back into the debate kicking and screaming, despite the fact there are far simpler ways for the city’s problems to be resolved—ways that don’t involve increasing the centralization of municipal government. Ironically, had Bob Parsons’ 1972 proposal succeeded, it’s entirely possible the city and borough would have been unified back then, and most of the present borough’s rural residents would either be much happier, or would be petitioning for annexation. We’ll never know. Instead, a quarter-century of alienation and neglect, which provoked the doomed North Pole Borough effort, has supposedly ended with a year or two of guilt-laden goodie-giving by the Sampson Administration. The borough does listen to us out here, just long enough to figure out what tangible thing we want from it so it can pop a cookie in our collective mouth, pat us on the head and go on about its business. Heaven forfend we should be so rude as to complain with our mouth full. [The borough’s business doesn’t seem to involve maintaining borough facilities in a timely manner, I notice. No wonder the Assembly’s leading member(s) have expended so much energy bashing the GOP-led majority in the Legislature—said majority is unlikely to bail out the borough’s deferred maintenance as the borough obviously wants.] I sometimes wonder if anyone really knows just how important the 1997 borough mayor election is. On October 28 [in a runoff election for borough mayor] we will choose between two candidates. One who is in step with the times, and one who is in denial. One who sees the need to bring the Interior’s economy into the 20th century before the dawn of the 21st, and one who has aligned himself with those who would rather padlock the whole state. One who recognizes that there is more to keeping the borough together than putting a shelter over the dumpsters, and one whose management of the borough would almost surely resurrect secessionism. What is a borough worth? I believe the borough is worth enough that it makes good sense to put Pete Kelly in the mayor’s office. In my worst moments, I fear that too few others share that belief. Some of the things I’m hearing about why people did what they did (or didn’t do) last Tuesday, leave me thoroughly disgusted and exasperated. We get the government we deserve. Do we really deserve another three years of the last 25 years? That’s the question we have to answer on the 28th.

Delusions of Relevance

Tue   9 Sep 1997   16:37 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [My Two Cents]

August 14 was a busy night for Borough Assembly presiding officer Hank Hove. Not only did the Assembly that night vote down Ordinance 97-034, which would have repealed borough term limits outright, but it also postponed action on Nancy Webb’s highway planning resolution without giving her a chance to speak. During a break in testimony on the term limits repeal, Hove was told that if the Interior Taxpayers Association didn’t qualify its term limits initiative for the October 7 ballot, the association might aim for timing a special election to coincide with a mayoral runoff—the same runoff Hove expects to be in, opposing Rep. Pete Kelly. Hove clearly hadn’t considered the possibility of having to share the runoff ballot with an initiative on term limits, which would have ensured a large, right-leaning turnout. At the time of the conversation, there was still some question of whether the repeal ordinance might manage to get the six votes necessary to be adopted. In the end, it did not. Now, in the wake of the ham-handed treatment of Webb’s proposed resolution, Hove has terminated the transportation committee Webb had chaired. He claims it was because the committee infringed on the prerogatives of the grandiosely named Fairbanks Metropolitan Area Transportation Study (FMATS) Committee—a committee consisting of Hove, Mayor Sampson, Fairbanks Mayor Jim Hayes, North Pole Mayor Lute Cunningham, and DOT/PF Northern Region director Tony Johansen. Webb argues that FMATS isn’t as accountable as her committee, since FMATS conducts many of its meetings behind closed doors instead of in the open. Hove retorts that closed-door meetings enable the participants—including the man he wants to succeed as Borough Mayor—to be “honest with each other.“ There’s what government is all about, eh? High-ranking government officials acting in secret so they can be honest with each other, and forget about being honest with the taxpayers, the voters, the people. Webb told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, “It’s basically gotten down to what the mayors and presiding officer decide they want DOT to fund.“ At a time when one of the western borough’s most dangerous highway intersections has been upgraded, while one of the eastern borough’s deadliest highway intersections—in the district of a House member against whom Hove campaigned last year—is on an indefinite waiting list, such an allegation casts doubt on Hove’s self-proclaimed high degree of integrity. Hank Hove not only exploited his borough office in endorsing a legislative candidate last year, he has seized numerous opportunities this year to attack the Republican-led majority as the Legislature has attempted, over the objections of borough officials and Gov. Knowles, to impose fiscal sanity on the state government—which makes me wonder what he’s really running for. On one memorable occasion at an Assembly meeting last spring, Hove intoned that the Legislature was bound to listen to the people; in almost the same breath, he added that the Borough Assembly had to do a better job of telling the people how it is. Were he a brighter man, he would, I’m sure, have noticed the irony—but he was completely straight-faced, and nobody’s that good an actor. He is behind the curve on addressing the state’s fiscal crisis—where is he on the borough’s fiscal future? Where would the borough be after three years with him in charge? Given his habit of bashing the Legislature at every opportunity, I can’t imagine that a Hove-managed borough would have any better relations with the Legislature than is the case right now. Our borough doesn’t need to be drawn deeper into irrelevance than it already is. The borough will suffer for it, the Interior will suffer for it, and Alaska will suffer for it.

Will Alaska Buy ARCO’s Way to the Far Eastern Natural Gas Market?

Wed   3 Sep 1997   16:48 by Kevin McGehee in North Pole, Alaska 0 comments [Alaska] [My Two Cents]

ARCO, one of the big oil companies pumping crude from Alaska’s Arctic coast, has just signed on to a big natural-gas project in Indonesia, at a time when a natural-gas pipeline across Alaska is being promoted to sell North Slope gas to the same Far East markets that will be served by the Indonesian project. The trans-Alaska natural-gas pipeline can only be profitable, its promoters have said, if the state provides “incentives” (read: “concessions” or, better yet, “subsidies”) to the builders. Profitable to the builders, yes, but to Alaska as a whole, which will have to go into debt to bring it about? If the State of Alaska goes along with this trans-Alaska boondoggle, ARCO will naturally be one of those selling the gas that goes into the pipeline—in addition to having a share of the natural gas developed off the shores of western New Guinea. What ARCO stands to gain from involvement in both of these natural-gas projects is a massive advantage over other would-be suppliers to the Far East. Should the people of Alaska pay for that? The difference between the two projects is simple, and huge: New Guinea is in the Far East, while Alaska is not. The New Guinea project will not require the construction of an 800-mile-long pipeline to carry the gas to the ships that will carry it to its buyers. To the extent that the Indonesian government is investing in the New Guinea project, it’s mainly money obtained by President Suharto from such wealthy citizens as Mochtar Riady (who’s so rich he owns Bill Clinton). If our state government invests in a trans-Alaska natural-gas pipeline, that money will have to come out of our own pockets—either by some kind of direct tax on sales or incomes, or a cap on the Permanent Fund Dividend. The dividend, by the way, is widely regarded by those in state government (and their political allies) as the government’s money, paid to individual Alaskans in a show of great forbearance and generosity. In reality, the dividend represents profits from the sale of mineral resources owned in the aggregate by the people of Alaska—profits to which we are rightfully entitled in any event. Capping the dividend would place an artificial limit on our received share of those profits, while giving the government a virtually unlimited and ever-expanding source of revenue by which to complete the expropriation of the few paltry samples of private property and enterprise that exist up here. The fact that state support for the natural-gas pipeline is even being considered is a consequence of the upside-down fiscal situation that exists in Alaska—because of the money chasing Alaska’s mineral resources, particularly oil, there has not been any need for a direct tax on the people up here. Instead the goverment takes its cut of our profits before we ever see the check, and has succeeded in conditioning many to think the money they get (a pittance compared to what they should get) is a subsidy from Uncle Soapy. Because no one in Alaska files a tax return to the state, few people realize that they do in fact pay taxes, and those few are often jeered when they speak out. Since there are no direct taxes, few Alaskans realize what’s at stake to them, personally, in the plans for this natural-gas pipeline. Surely the most corrosive concept ever introduced in politics is that of “someone else’s money.“ Billions in federal pork spending have been justified by arguing that it’s being paid for by someone else. I’ve heard that for every dollar Alaskans pay in federal taxes, Elmer Fed spends seven dollars in the state. Some Alaskans think that’s a good deal. I call it welfare. Nowhere is the danger of this concept better illustrated than right here in Alaska.

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