|
Phillips departs EVOS Trustee Council Reopener clause allows state and federal governments to seek additional $100 million for continuing, unforeseen spill impacts The Associated Press
The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council will be seeking a new director.
Gail Phillips, a former speaker of the Alaska House, is departing the state-federal council, state officials said Dec. 19.
Phillips worked for nearly three years as the council’s head. She is leaving Jan. 3 under a “joint decision of everyone concerned,” said state Fish and Game Commissioner McKie Campbell, one of three state trustees on the six-person council.
He would not elaborate, other than to praise Phillips’ work with the council.
Michael Baffrey, a career federal employee who is a liaison to the council from the U.S. Interior Department, will step in as interim director.
Phillips is leaving so she can devote her energies to the Alaska Statehood Celebration Commission, where she is the unpaid chairwoman, according the council. The commission was created by the Legislature to organize a celebration for 2008, culminating in the 50th anniversary of Alaska statehood on Jan. 3, 2009.
“It’s nice to be going into something that’s real meaningful for the state,” Phillips said. Appointed by Murkowski Phillips was appointed to the $100,000-a-year council job in March 2003 by Gov. Frank Murkowski, replacing director Molly McCammon.
A five-term legislator from Homer, Phillips ran briefly for governor in 2002.
When Frank Murkowski entered the race, she stepped aside and ran for lieutenant governor. She lost to Loren Leman in the Republican primary.
Phillips is a longtime advocate for resource development and a promoter of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The council was charged after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill with using the $900 million settlement with Exxon for research and restoration. Just more than $100 million of that settlement is left.
“Having a strong advocate for oil development managing an oil spill restoration effort seemed a mismatch from the start,” said one critic, University of Alaska Anchorage marine biologist Rick Steiner. He was concerned that the council, under the Bush and Murkowski administrations, understated long-term damage from the spill to promote oil development elsewhere.
Steiner, however, said Phillips appeared to do a good job.
“She seemed like an amiable person and was willing to listen,” he said. Council adopted different work plan Council members — three trustees representing state agencies and three from federal agencies — sometimes differed with the executive director.
At a meeting last August, council members adopted a work plan for the coming year that they introduced at the last minute, setting aside the plan that Phillips and her staff had drawn up.
Trustees are trying to focus the council’s energies on “resources most directly impacted by the spill,” Campbell said. “We want to make sure that it’s not just funding academic science.”
Campbell and Phillips said Dec. 19 that they had agreed on that direction. Campbell attributed the blind-siding of staff last summer to “logistical problems in communication.”
Hanging over the trustee council is the deadline next summer for the spill settlement’s reopener clause, which would allow the state and federal governments to return to federal court seeking up to $100 million more for continuing and unforeseen spill impacts.
The decision on whether to seek more money will not be up to the trustees but will be based on research undertaken by scientists working for the council.
| 