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April 2011

Vol. 16, No. 17 Week of April 24, 2011

Herron on coastal management compromise

Bethel legislator says six more years of the same not an option; House bill gives coastal districts a voice through policy board

Steve Quinn

For Petroleum News

Bob Herron’s name isn’t publicly heard often during a legislative session, and the second-term Democratic representative from Bethel is fine with that.

He says it’s a reflection of the Yup’ik population Herron represents in Western Alaska: a reluctance to talk about oneself.

Privately Herron’s House colleagues credited him for dogged efforts in pushing for a compromise on a long contentious coastal zone management law.

Publically, the House Majority Caucus credited Herron for leading negotiations that led to a unanimously passed House bill.

Local communities have sought a strong voice in development issues; Gov. Sean Parnell’s administration sought the status quo with a six-year extension in the current plan.

A member of the House Resources Committee, Herron helped broker a deal that creates a nine-person coastal policy board.

The compromise also prevents local policies from limiting developments of “state concern.”

Before the Senate Finance Committee was to hear House Bill 106 again, Herron sat down with Petroleum News to discuss this bill as well as the Legislatures efforts to rewrite the state’s Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share tax scheme.

Petroleum News: Why do you suppose several people were giving you credit. Was it something they saw in your work?

Herron: I very much appreciate those private and public acknowledgements. I’m a bit reluctant to take credit for it. If I have to talk about myself, it’s my nature to try to find common ground.

In our society, it’s about winning. It’s the competitiveness that people seem to need. There has to be winners; there has to be losers. I think in life as well as in politics, it’s got to be win-win. Is it always going to be that way? No. That’s not a reality. We should strive toward a win-win situation.

You have to go along. You have to get along.

Did I have to privately say some things to the third floor in a particular tone? Well for example when they said time out, we need to think this through. I said, ‘no. We are going to do it now. We are going to talk about it. We are going to build toward a consensus. We are going to create something.’

Humans have a tendency to procrastinate. If we can get it done, which we are real close to doing it, then let’s make a good faith effort to do something.

Petroleum News: Where did you see a turning point that got things moving in the direction it is?

Bob Herron: It goes back to last year. Coastal Zone management had a vigorous debate, essentially in resources. That’s pretty much where it ended. Western Alaska rural legislators were obviously disappointed. We had hoped it would go further. It did not.

We don’t necessarily want to be confrontational; we want to be consensus-builders. So it was a collective yet hard decision to wait and try to deal with coastal zone management this year, the last year before it sunsets.

I recognized what the bill was. One line. It was a one-liner extending it six years. I asked where in this bill is the creation of a coastal policy board. It’s not in the bill because the bill is a one-liner.

I asked where in this proposal is the removal of designated areas. The answer was easy. It’s not in there. Of course it’s not in a one-liner that changes it from the expiration year to six years out.

The answer from the governor’s office and people from the resource industry ultimately was give us the six-year extension and then we can start talking about it. For me and other legislators with coastal districts, that’s insincere.

Once you have your six-year extension where is the urgency, where is the emphasis to have those dialogues in earnest and that are valuable?

I said no. Six years extension without any other considerations is not where I want to go.

With the two co-chairs of resources (Eric Feige and Paul Seaton) we started a very serious dialogue with the third floor (Parnell administration).

That’s how it morphed from a one-liner into a 16-page dialogue that passed the committed seven do-pass and two no recommendation.

(Neal) Foster and I were the no recs because the bill was a huge step in the right direction but it had a ways to go.

Petroleum News: You nearly lost the bill when the governor said the negotiations were at an impasse. What happened from there?

Herron: What was shared was a very direct question. What did you call an impasse on a House product, a House vehicle? The response was, it was, it was a reaction to Gary Stevens and his comments on the Senate floor. I said, ‘what does that have to do with a House product.’ We then continued our negotiations with the third floor.

Again it wasn’t just one person. It was several people on both sides crafting a compromise that I think got the governor where he had to be, got the industry where he had to be and got the coastal districts where they had to be.

Petroleum News: Why is a sound coastal management plan important? In other words why is 16-page bill more important than one-line bill?

Herron: Anybody who has a coastal district has been hearing complaints for years that they really have very little involvement on the decisions related to coastal areas. There is no board. The department makes the determination. If there are concerns or appeals, the DNR commissioner alone makes the final decision. If you were to go through the entire proposed legislation from (House) Resources on, there is a board that can give meaningful input. There is opportunity on the front side where the board can be instrumental in the development of a plan. Though it’s not spelled out, it’s the makeup of the board — four members from coastal districts and a fifth person who can be from a Native board or one of the industries, then four commissioners. The board can have an opportunity for relationship-building in a thought process that’s deliberative, that’s consensus building, but it’s done over days, weeks, months, years. It isn’t what’s your opinion on this? It’s a deliberative process. It’s come a long way. There are some concerns. Plus, do we really need another important part of our permitting process done by the feds only? I don’t think that’s in anybody’s best interest, but the complaints from the coastal districts have given since 2003 are saying the status quo doesn’t work. We went from a process that worked pretty good, but politicians and people in the right place changed it. Now we are at a point eight years later where the pendulum can swing back to where it’s a little more balanced.

Petroleum News: The prevailing argument was the local communities want the same consideration form the state that the state has long sought from the federal government.

Herron: In an ideal world that would be nice. You have to listen carefully to everyone. I’ve always believed and I think my fellow colleagues believe, both the state and the coastal districts are basically saying the same thing. We both would like to have control of our own coastal permitting process rather than depending on the feds thinking for us from afar. Without our successes in running our own program, far outweigh potential failures. If we let the feds do it, then successes compared to failures get closer together, those get so incredibly closer together. We’ll have as many failures as we have successes if we let the feds take over the permitting process. Now that’s an over arching opinion that maybe inaccurate. Given how the last 150 years is how we are the federal government’s favorite stepchild who was adopted. Through all of our faults, our warts and our shortcomings we can do if not a better job, we can do just as good a job as the feds in coastal development.

Petroleum News: With respect to subsistence, how important is resource development to the communities on the coast?

Herron: It is important. It’s one of the things I brought up during the debate over removing designated areas. It was a conundrum. To have a plan, you had to designate areas for either habitat or subsistence. You had to have it designated before you could comment on a project that may impact subsistence. Let’s say there is an area that sure it would be nice if you can designate it as subsistence, but historically DNR would not allow you to designate entire swaths as subsistence not knowing where there might be a project in the future or where subsistence food source is always at.

What if you have a project that requires a new airport and most rural airports require a gravel source? That borrow site is only going to be used once. That’s it. They extract the gravel, building the runway. That site is going to be used once.

Under the current law you have to designate an area as subsistence, you had to have that all figured out. You don’t know what’s going to happen in 10 or 20 years.

The conundrum was this: Why have designated areas because if you didn’t designate, when it came time for you to comment on a project, you couldn’t comment on a project whether its subsistence or habitat because you hadn’t pre-designated. It was a big circle. It was against current law.

It wraps back to an earlier question. Just give us six years and we’ll talk about it. Well we’ve been talking about it for five years and we’ve haven’t gotten anywhere. This year was a good time to talk about it. There are rural legislators on House Resources (Herron and Neal Foster) and rural legislators on Finance (Reggie Joule, Bryce Edgmon and co-chair Bill Thomas).

Petroleum News: Let’s switch to HB 110, the oil tax bill that passed the House (22-16). You voted against it. How come?

Herron: I said from day one I don’t like status quo oil tax. I don’t have the advantage of the history. Sure I read about it. I was at home watching these guys. It was almost like watching the O.J. Simpson trial and the prosecution was explaining DNA to the jury. Individuals in that jury box, their eyes glazed over. All they wanted was people to prove to them that this has scientific fact. That’s how I saw PPT and ACES. They were just overwhelmed with information.

It came from an era that’s totally different from today. It was given in a time when you had an extremely popular governor. You had this hint of corruption. Was it where people were voting to stay in line with popularity, out of line with corruption? I’m not going to question the way they voted. All the legislators at the time thought they were doing the right thing.

For this bill, I told the governor, the speaker of the House, the finance co-chairs, I told anyone who bothered to ask for my opinion, the Parnell plan? I couldn’t go there, either. I wanted to go someplace in the middle. Both sides were entrenched.

There was no place for me to go. We’re not getting an option. We made an adjustment (with ACES) and I think another adjustment is in order. We’re not getting something in between. It was a vote saying that I wasn’t given an option.

Petroleum News: Oil is still in the $120 a barrel range. That may be great for the state coffers, but how much does it hurt your district in retail fuel prices?

Herron: I would say we are guaranteed a 25 percent increase in price over the inventory we have now. If gas is $5 a gallon, you’re looking at minimum $1.50. If you live in a village that’s $10 now, it’s going to be $12.50. That’s talking to people who are wholesalers. What happens to us with other consumables — bread, milk — what happens to those? Aircraft fuel prices won’t stay the same, so it will be exacerbated. Now the OPEC people are saying there is no shortage of oil so we’re not going to increase production. Everything exacerbates it.






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