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Special session doesn’t save ACMP House fails to garner enough votes to save coastal management program; lawmakers promise to introduce bills next January By Steve Quinn For Petroleum News
The Senate said yes, but the House said no.
So the Alaska Coastal Management Program ends without the extension sought by Gov. Sean Parnell and without giving local governments a voice in resource development review.
The Senate and House returned to Juneau for a special session, indicating they had struck a compromise to save the fledgling program and end months of rancor and finger pointing for a failure that left both sides empty handed.
They arrived believing they had worked out the major differences, saying that any tweaks could have been addressed when the Legislature reconvened in January.
Enough lawmakers agreed they should return after learning the two most contentious points had been resolved.
They essentially were:
• That Parnell could have removed a member of a proposed nine-person Alaska Coastal Policy Board for cause, no longer needing to give written notice of the charges and an “opportunity to be heard upon not less than 10 days’ notice.”
• That standards would be based on “aggregate evidence,” a term bringing together scientific evidence and local knowledge. Previously, lawmakers debated which took precedence.
But as high-ranking lawmakers on both sides closed these gaps to extend the program, Parnell began dismantling it.
With the opt-in program scheduled to sunset June 30, he whittled an agency of 33 employees down to five.
By the time lawmakers unlocked their Capitol offices for a second special session, Parnell told them it was too late to keep the program moving effectively.
Restarting the agency would been problematic and caused delays in projects, prompting Alaska’s Attorney General John Burns to call the program “decimated.”
The state also had not applied for $2.5 million federal funding to operate the program from the Office of Ocean and Coastal Resources.
That’s essentially what kept the House from following the Senate’s lead in passing the compromise effort.
“We clearly had a sufficient alignment among the bodies on the overriding policy call,” said Rep. Mike Hawker, an Anchorage Republican credited by legislative colleagues for brokering the compromise.
Hawker said the administration presented a convincing argument that ramping up the program “simply became overwhelming.”
“The policy we have arrived at was good policy for the future of Alaska,” he said. “Good policy, (but) unable to overcome the transition problems.
“We had a sound policy solution that everyone would have been able to buy into with a few little knits to fix. I think even they (the administration) were surprised to find the volume of work it would have been necessary to continue.
“I came down here truly believing we could find a way through that transition, but truly the evidence was developed. There’s no culpability (issue). It truly has been good process and good communication.”
The House adjourned in the late afternoon June 28 following an 18-18 vote on a bill the Senate passed 11-7 one day earlier. Members left knowing it would be unlikely that the four members with excused absences would have brought the total votes to the necessary 21.
Stedman: Closure ‘premature’ That brought a close to nearly six months of hearings, negotiations, amendments and drafts.
Sen. Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican and co-chair for the Senate Finance Committee, said he’s worried about the state not having a coastal zone policy at all.
“We would have been better off with a coastal zone policy,” he said. “The state is better off. The industries are better off — oil industry, mining industry, fishing industry. Pick your industry.
“We are all better off with a coastal zone policy than none. I’m concerned with the direction of the state having no coastal zone policy. I don’t see why the industry, coastal communities and the state can’t work together. We all have the same basic goals.”
Stedman also said Parnell was too quick to scale back the coastal zone program, knowing legislators still were looking for ways to keep it operating beyond June 30.
“I think the winding down of coastal zone was premature. If nothing else we could have done a one-year extension rather than kill it completely and start all over.
“Quite frankly, next winter we’re going to have our hands full with oil taxes, retirement funding, in-state gas and energy solutions and coastal zone. My guess is coastal zone goes to the bottom.”
Parnell counters Parnell disagreed, saying that it wasn’t practical to wait until June 30 before pulling the plug and that a systematic wind down was fairer to those whose jobs were at stake.
“It took us 30 days to wind down that program,” Parnell told Petroleum News after announcing his budget vetoes. “Our representatives and senators knew there would be a wind down.
“These people have to be able to find jobs. Living with uncertainty is not something they should have to do. Many of them found additional work. We were able to place them. People’s lives should not be on hold for legislators.”
Critics of the early wind down also accused Parnell of not really wanting a coastal zone program, saying he either preferred the previous plan to be extended as is, or no plan at all.
Parnell countered by pointing to the amount of time he and members of his administration invested working with the House Resources Committee on HB 106.
Long before developments reached this stage, the House unanimously passed their version 40-0. HB 106 gave many coastal leaders hope they would have a voice and industry leaders supported the bill, as well.
Reps. Eric Feige of Chickaloon, Reggie Joule of Kotzebue and Bob Herron of Bethel were credited with protracted negotiations with the administration.
That in and of itself offered promise, given how the Legislature and the administration barely came to the table last year.
But with the program scheduled to end this year, the Legislature and the administration, plus community and industry leaders, sensed urgency.
They believed they found common ground when sending their draft to the Senate, but really negotiations were far from over.
They agreed to five more provisions, but remained deadlocked on Parnell’s removal power and the question of whether scientific research or institutional knowledge took precedent.
Those differences continued for a full 27-day special session, and as May became June, Parnell said he had to start moving forward with the inevitable.
“I spent 100 plus hours working along with the AG, the DEC commissioner and DNR,” Parnell said. “I gave myself wholeheartedly in the effort.
“We succeeded in a compromise that crossed party lines as well as for the environmental communities and the industry groups. But some other folks overplayed their hand and then they pushed everybody too far.”
Issue far from resolved Once lawmakers decided to return, resource development and industry groups quickly became worried, articulating the same concerns as the administration.
The Alaska Miners Association weighed in first before lawmakers arrived, with Executive Director Steve Borrell, saying in part: “If the program is now resurrected after more than two months of turmoil, without knowledgeable people, without files and without adequate funding, the result would be an extended period of uncertainty and delay. This delay would be across all projects requiring a coastal consistency review. There are two primary categories of impacts. First are the permits which have already been applied for, and second those parties which are now anticipating filing new applications but have been holding off because of uncertainty.”
What remains certain is lawmakers expecting new bills to restore the program.
“I absolutely expect to see legislation proposed in coming sessions that would reconstitute the program,” Hawker said. “I think again it will be another long, healthy spirited debate.
“But at the end of the day, because I believe the state is best served by having a good, functioning coastal management program, we will see one re-enacted in some form in the foreseeable future.”
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