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Coastal management hearing schedule out
Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell has announced the schedule for a series of 10 hearings around the state on a ballot proposal for a new Alaska coastal management program, or ACMP. After the failure of the state Legislature to renew the state ACMP that expired on July 1, 2011, the program reverted to operation by the federal government. A group of Alaska residents subsequently garnered the necessary signatures for a citizen initiative to re-create the state program. The initiative will be voted on in the upcoming Aug. 28 primary ballot.
Hearings required But, under a state statute passed in 2010, the lieutenant governor must hold at least eight hearings up to 30 days before the election in which an initiative appears, with at least two hearings taking place in each of Alaska’s four judicial districts. Each hearing must include written or oral testimony of one supporter and one opponent of the initiative.
“I am taking this law seriously and plan to attend each one of these hearings personally,” Treadwell said in a June 5 release announcing the hearings. “We are working to make sure that some of these hearings can take telephone testimony, as the legislature does, so they will be accessible to all. Alaskans will have their opportunity to debate the issue.”
The hearings will take place on July 2 in Kenai/Soldotna; on July 3 in Bethel; on July 9 in Anchorage; on July 9 in Wasilla; on July 10 in Kotzebue; on July 11 in Fairbanks; on July 12 on Kodiak; on July 23 in Barrow; on July 25 in Ketchikan; and on July 26 in Juneau.
—Alan Bailey
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