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ACMP battle continues over initiative Proponent position that state needs coastal zone program; opponent position that proposal on ballot too favors coastal districts Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell’s multi-city coastal zone hearing rolled into Anchorage July 9, providing an opportunity for proponents and opponents of the initiative to state their positions and answer questions from the public. The initiative, on August’s Alaska primary ballot, would establish a coastal zone management program to replace the one that died last year. Legislators had added a sunset to that program and were unable to agree on an extension which involved changes to the program in existence in 2011.
The coastal zone initiative is the first under a new law which requires hearings on initiatives, Treadwell said.
The Alaska Coastal Management Program which the initiative would establish would be housed in the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, he said, and would develop new state and local standards to review projects in coastal areas of the state which require state or federal permits.
The program would require federal approval and after that was received, Alaska would be able to participate in the federal Coastal Zone Management Act.
Treadwell said the coastal policy board established under the initiative would have 13 members appointed by the governor, nine from coastal areas and four state commissioners. The board would approve local coastal district plans and coastal management regulations, coordinate implementation of the program and review and approve regulations.
View of proponents Rep. Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau, who spoke on behalf of proponents of the initiative, said that for five years she was the attorney for the Alaska Coastal Management Program, or ACMP.
There are still resources worth developing in Alaska, Kerttula said, and the state needs an efficient process for development with conflict resolution occurring early in the process.
Under the old ACMP, she said, Red Dog Mine was developed, all of the North Slope — except last year — and the Kensington Mine.
She called the program “our most powerful tool against the federal government,” and said the ACMP had “proven very powerful” in getting the federal government and federal regulators to come to the table.
She said the program gives communities a say in, not veto power over, state and federal decisions, and provides permit coordination for everyone from homeowners to ExxonMobil.
The initiative program is pro community, giving communities an effective voice and an efficient process by balancing competing demands in a “commonsense sort of process” which is not a veto process, Kerttula said.
The opposition Judy Brady, a former Department of Natural Resources commissioner, spoke for those opposing the initiative.
She said the initiative doesn’t simply restore the old coastal management program, but creates a new resource management agency with new powers which would delay project approvals across Alaska and called it a threat to Alaska’s economy.
Brady said those opposing the initiative “either strongly supported or were neutral” on the compromise bill that would have extended the program, the compromise that took “months to work out” and passed the House 40 to zero last year.
“Unfortunately, some people started a strategy to get more” and the bill failed “because of new demands on the Senate side.”
This initiative, Brady said, contains the very pieces that broke down the compromise.
The problem the vote no group sees with the initiative is not the coastal management program, but a “poorly drafted” initiative which creates new uncertainties for resource development, she said.
By 2001, the old program was such a mess the question was should it be dumped or revised, Brady said, and it was revised in 2003 and again in 2005.
The initiative does what broke the program to begin with, isolating it in an agency without any permitting authority which resulted in power struggles between agencies, she said.
Enforceable policies issue Bill Jeffers, who was with the old program prior to the 2003 revisions, asked how the initiative limited local enforceable policies which could be more stringent than state or federal law.
Kerttula said districts were limited under the initiative and with four commissioners on the policy board they would have the ability to say a new policy went too far.
Brady said that language wasn’t new, but wasn’t effective and led to fights among agencies over issues of whether something overrode state or federal law.
Kerttula said there was more experience today on issuing policies that don’t conflict with state or federal laws.
Brady said the initiative changes coastal policy decision making, and with nine public members on the board and four commissioners and just a simple majority vote required, the district representatives could always outvote the commissioners.
Kerttula said there would be balance on the board, but Brady said board membership was one of the issues that blew up the compromise. With a simple majority vote, she said, the coastal districts rule.
The bill which passed the House had a nine-member board, with four commissioners and five public members, and required a two-thirds vote, which meant that if the district members voted as a block, one commissioner would have to join them for a measure to pass, Brady said.
Role of regulations Lois Epstein, an engineer with the Wilderness Society, asked why perceived deficiencies in the ballot measure couldn’t be addressed through regulation.
Brady said at first it was thought you could fix things, “but you can’t.”
The initiative can’t be significantly amended until it’s been in effect for two years, so by the time you can make changes, the program will be embedded and the board in place, and “nobody will give up,” she said.
The compromise blew up in the Legislature over about three pieces, Brady said, and if the legislators couldn’t fix it, “we’re not going to be able to fix it now.”
Brady said her recommendation was to vote the initiative down and tackle the issue in the Legislature next year and next time around, “don’t blow it up.”
Kerttula said the state doesn’t have a coastal zone program and needs one. Regulations will put meat on the bones of the program, she said.
Without the initiative Alaska won’t have the strongest seat at the table, Kerttula said, and is missing a coordinated permitting effort for smaller projects.
She also said she wasn’t sure how well the Legislature would pull together to do anything.
Deantha Crockett, executive director of the Alaska Miners Association, asked if legislators wouldn’t hesitate in making changes because they wouldn’t want to overturn an initiative.
Kerttula said she thought legislators “will want to honor the intent of the initiative.”
Brady said her understanding is that the things you could change within the first two years are relatively minor, things that would probably be done through regulations.
What you can’t change, she said, is the 13-member board “with coastal districts controlling and with no sideboards” on the powers they have.
Who are you afraid of? Tom Lohman, with the North Slope Borough, asked what people were so afraid of with the nine public members.
“They are us” and districts are not anti-development, he said, asking if the concern was that coastal districts would be co-opted by environmental groups.
Brady said she wasn’t afraid of anti-development, but of giving management decisions for state lands to the board. State agencies go through public rulemaking in administering the state’s public lands, she said, adding the issue with coastal zone is to make sure coastal districts don’t trump state management or set aside lands belonging to everyone.
Out on the end Rick Rogers, executive director of the Resource Development Council for Alaska, said the RDC had worked hard to get consensus on the House compromise bill, and asked Kerttula why, in drafting the initiative, they didn’t craft something closer to the measure that had broader support, rather than “out on the extreme end.”
Kerttula said, referring to the bill coming out of the Senate that didn’t pass, “we hear broad support,” but ultimately the support wasn’t there. The coastal districts didn’t have a lot of support for it, she said.
Rep. Mike Hawker, R-Anchorage, raised the same issue in public testimony, calling the bill which passed the House a “delicately crafted balance.”
The initiative, he said, “is not a balance of interests.”
He also said the initiative “usurps authority vested in legislators” and places authority in nine people who are not elected and then adds an “unaccountable and undefined bureaucracy.”
Hawker said he respected the initiative process, but said “this is not the way complicated policy decisions should be made.”
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