Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s version of the Sealaska lands bill has passed out of its only committee of referral.
The legislation, co-sponsored by Alaska Senator Mark Begich, was one of a dozen measures marked up this morning during an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.
The bill allows the regional Native corporation to choose about 70 thousand acres of mostly timberlands from the Tongass National Forest.
There’s no guarantee it will move any further in Congress. Its best chance is as part of a lands legislation package.
A similar bill sponsored by Alaska Representative Don Young was marked up last week in the House Natural Resources Committee.
Sealaska already has rights to chose more acreage in the Tongass. But it says logging those lands could damage watersheds and hurt fish and wildlife.
Critics say Sealaska wants to trade marginal acreage for the most valuable timberlands. They also say logging those areas would also hurt fish and wildlife, as well as damage nearby residents’ livelihoods.
The Sealaska building in Juneau. (Photo by Heather Bryant/KTOO)
The Sealaska Corporation is trying to renegotiate its land settlement under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The company hopes to select nearly 70,000 acres and revive the all-but-shuttered logging industry in the Tongass National Forest.
Congressman Don Young’s bill would let the company do just that.
“If we don’t pass this bill, they will select lands with old grown timber and harvest the old growth timber,” he said at a committee markup Wednesday afternoon.
Sealaska has been trying to select new acres for decades. If it does not, it still has the rights to land around a number of Southeast Native villages.
The Alaska Congressional delegation has repeatedly introduced the land transfer legislation but failed to pass it out of Congress.
At the House hearing, no members showed any opposition to the bill when it was introduced, so passage was a foregone conclusion. Young nodded and winked at the few Democrats who voted in favor.
As the reading clerk read the tally, Sealaska CEO Chris McNeil, who was flanked by two lobbyists in the back row, grinned.
Afterword, he said he’s happy with the movement of the bill and he predicts will pass this Congress.
“We’re expecting a markup in the Senate, possibly next week,” he said. “If it’s reported out, they’ll both be postured in a more favorable plan than it has been in the past.”
McNeil said this go-around, the corporation has the calendar on its side because it’s still relatively early in the Congressional term.
Not everyone is excited by the movement. Some, like Myla Poelstra, say Congress settled the issue back in 1976, and now Sealaska is trying to pick and choose prime logging lands.
Poelstra, who lives in Edna Bay on Kosciusko Island, said the community has about 65 year round residents. And in the village are two small scale commercial saw mills that rely on small timber sales and restoration contracts from the Forest Service.
“Sealaska is taking those same lands. It’s economic dislocation in order to give Sealaska better timber,” she said in a Wednesday phone interview.
Poelstra said the most recent legislation would allow Sealaska to take over land two miles outside of town. Poelstra runs the Post Office and general store in town and worries Edna Bay would be decimated if this land transfer goes through. Businesses, she said, need to see economic viability to operate in such a small, remote community.
“Once the numbers drop below thresholds that are practical for maintaining a business – and that’s for phones, internet – those services no longer exist,” she said. She predicted the school would likely close, too.
Poelstra, like everyone else, is left waiting.
The Senate version is slightly different from Young’s bill, but it’s expected the differences can be tweaked. There’s no indication either version will make it to the floor anytime soon.
A smaller, stopgap Sealaska land bill is on the back burner – at least for now.
But the full measure is scheduled for markup during a congressional hearing this week.
Representative Don Young’s main legislation would convey about 70,000 acres of Tongass National Forest timberlands to Sealaska.
His smaller bill would turn over only a 20th of that acreage. But it calls for a faster-than-usual transfer. Sealaska has said it would provide enough timber to keep its logging business going.
Spokesman Michael Anderson says Young wants to focus on the larger legislation.
“We have the smaller bill waiting in the wings in case there’s any sort of hang-up with the larger one as the process goes forward. The region and industry need to be sustained in the short term. So we’re looking at every possible viable option at this point,” Anderson says.
The larger Sealaska measure is one of 14 land bills before the House Committee on Natural Resources, which meets Wednesday.
The shorter measure is not scheduled for that hearing.
Robert Dillon, spokesman for sponsor Lisa Murkowski, says it’s scheduled for June 18th before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
But he says that’s tentative.
“The bill isn’t complete yet. And also there are a number of other bills that other senators on the committee, including Chairman (Ron) Wyden, want to mark up during that session that aren’t ready yet either,” Dillon says.
That measure is cosponsored by Senator Mark Begich.
All the bills are controversial.
Some environmental groups say they would badly damage fish and wildlife habitat. Small Prince of Wales Island-area communities say it would devastate the landscape and threaten hunting and fishing. And several sportsmen’s groups say it would limit access to popular areas.
The smaller House bill is H.R. 1306. The larger one is H.R. 740. The Senate bill is S. 340.
Sealaska CEO Chris McNeil, right, poses with Vice President Rick Harris at the corporation’s board room. Photo by Ed Schoenfeld, CoastAlaska News.
Sealaska recently sold its Global Logistics business to 20Cubed, a much-larger firm with offices in about 10 countries.
The subsidiary managed international shipping, warehousing and related services, as does its new owner.
“We didn’t believe that that particular type of logistics would be able to grow to the size of company that we expect,” said Chris McNeil, Sealaska’s president and CEO.
He said the Southeast-based regional Native corporation is reengineering its portfolio and narrowing its variety of companies. That includes those accessing a controversial federal contract-preference provision.
“Some of the smaller companies were set up to take advantage of the section 8(a) opportunities,” he said. “And where the 8(a) opportunities have existed and been strong we’ve expanded our platform. But where we think that perhaps it will not going to be able to meet our goals, then we’re moving in other directions.”
While Sealaska’s shed one subsidiary, it’s looking for another.
McNeil said the board and management are discussing an investment closer to home.
“We’re expecting that we would move forward with an operation that would more strongly reflect our Native values, more particularly capacity building and leadership (and) the possibility of competitive advantage in the sector,” he said.
“We’re very interested in the impact an operation could have on our tribal-member shareholders in the region, as well as possibly in the Pacific Northwest.”
He won’t name the company or its line of business.
But he said this and other changes could reduce revenues in the short term.
“We’re doing it from a position of strength because we have a very strong balance sheet that will support us to be able to move forward in this direction,” he said.
The ultimate goal is to be profitable within three years – without depending on 7(i) payments. Those come from a pool of all regional Native corporations’ resource earnings.
“So we sacrificed how many year for the last direction. Same leaders, different story now. I kind of think we’re still waiting for our stimulus,” Beasley said.
Beasley has authored resolutions calling for board term limits and an end to board-directed discretionary voting. He’s also run for the board before.
He said he’s frustrated Sealaska hasn’t moved faster on minerals development and other resource-extraction operations.
“Let’s just get new people in there. Let’s get some rotation; let’s get some change. It’s almost like if you just look at our operations, we could have anybody in there. If we didn’t have 7(i) right now, we’d be in a world of hurt,” he said.
Sealaska’s annual report for 2012 shows it made almost $312 million in gross revenues. That’s a 20 percent increase over 2011.
Net revenues, or profits, were $11.3 million during the same period. That’s 40 percent more than the previous year, but less than during 2010 and 2009.
The cover page of Sealaska’s proxy statement and annual meeting notice. Fourteen candidates are running for for board of directors seats.
Ten Sealaska shareholders are challenging four incumbents for the regional Native corporation’s board of directors. That’s the largest number of independent candidates in five years, although some earlier ballots came close.
Proxy statements, which include ballots, were sent to Sealaska shareholders May 10th. Voting runs through June 20th, just before the corporation’s annual meeting, which is June 22th, in Hoonah.
They can be mailed, faxed or dropped off in person. Ballots can also be cast at the annual meeting.
Corporate Secretary Nicole Hallingstad said online voting has become increasingly popular.
“The first year of online voting, about 11 percent of our shareholders voted online. The second year that rose just a little bit to 13 percent,” she said. “We’re early in the proxy process, so it’s impossible at this point to say where that final percentage will fall. But higher levels than that have already come in through online voting for this year’s proxy season.”
This year’s online voting is done through a new shareholder-information system called “My Sealaska.” The secure site also includes stock information and dividend payment history.
No resolutions are on this year’s ballot. Prior years’ measures addressed term limits, discretionary voting and stock for shareholder descendants. (Hear a report on last year’s issues.)
Tribal members can vote a specific number of shares for up to four candidates they support. Or they can vote “discretionary,” turning their ballots over to the board, which supports its own members.
Most of this year’s 14 board candidates are in their 50s, 60s or 70s. But three are between 30 and 40.
Hallingstad, also vice president of communications, says that includes Ralph Wolfe. He was last year’s appointed youth representative on the Sealaska board.
“This year’s slate does include some of our younger shareholders and it’s great to see that successive generations of shareholders for Sealaska are seeing this as a mechanism to serve the Native community,” Hallingstad said.
Sealaska added several thousand younger shareholder descendants after a 2007 vote.
The regional Native corporation is headquartered in Juneau and has more than 21,000 shareholders. Most are of Tlingit, Haida or Tsimshian descent. Close to half live in Southeast.
• Mick Beasley, Myrna Gardner and Ernestine Hayes of Juneau.
• Frank Jack III of Angoon.
• Angela Michaud of Anchorage.
• Ralph Wolfe of Yakutat.
• Will Micklin of Alpine, California.
• Edward Sarabia Jr. of South Glastonbury, Connecticut.
• Richard “Jack” Strong of Bonney Lake, Washington.
• And Bonnie Jo Borchick of Tucson, Arizona.
This year’s board incumbents are:
• Patrick Anderson of Anchorage
• Jodi Mitchell of Juneau.
• Jackie Johnson Pata of Fairfax, Virginia.
• And Richard Rinehart Jr. of Bellevue, Washington.
Alaska Rep. Don Young oversees a Thursday House Committee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs hearing on Sealaska land-selection legislation. Image courtesy the committee.
A new, smaller Sealaska land-selection measure faces opposition from the federal government.
The legislation would transfer 3,600 acres of the Tongass National Forest to the Southeast-based regional Native corporation.
Sealaska’s timberlands have been logged of much of their harvestable trees. Officials say the acreage will keep timber operations going.
At a Congressional hearing Thursday, U.S. Forest Service official Jim Peña objected to a requirement to transfer the land within 60 days of passage.
“These two parcels would be conveyed without the carefully negotiated replaced to special use authorizations and public access that many stakeholders view as essential,” Peña said.
One parcel is on the Cleveland Peninsula, between Wrangell and Ketchikan. The other is at Election Creek, on Prince of Wales Island. (Read the measure.) (See maps of the parcels.)
The acreage is also part of a much larger measure that would transfer about 70,000 acres to Sealaska. (Scroll down to read earlier reports on both bills.)
“First introduced over six years ago, this bill has undergone an extensive vetting process throughout the region. It has resulted in meaningful changes, such as providing for continued public access to lands, and modified certain lands among them,” he said.
The Forest Service’s Peña said the larger measure is much improved. But he wants further changes before the administration lends its support.
He said the bill “leaves out key provisions essential to a balanced solution and adds others that make reaching a solution more difficult. Consequently the Department of Agriculture does not support enactment.”
Some environmental groups and towns near areas to be logged oppose the measure.
Southeast hunting guide Jimmie Rosenbruch spoke for sportsmen’s groups against the land transfers.
He said Sealaska’s logging will reduce access, as well as wildlife numbers.
“It’s kind of Sealaska to offer access for guides to utilize these lands for a 10-year period after their Forest Service permit expires. (But) I don’t know there will be much benefit. Having access to clearcut areas wouldn’t be worth anything. There’s no wildlife there. They are D-O-N-E … finished,” Rosenbruch said.
Last year’s version of Young’s bill passed the House, but not the Senate.
And the Senate’s latest version, sponsored by Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, has undergone more negotiation and changes.
Sealaska board member Bryon Mallott said that measure is more likely to be the final legislative vehicle.
But he prefers the House version.
“In my personal judgment, there is more equity and justice in the House bill. But I also know from long, long experience, that what the Native community can easily and passionately feel is equity and justice for others is often very hard to ultimately make possible,” Mallott said.
Young’s Sealaska bills now head to the full House Resources Committee. If either passes, it will go to the House floor for a full vote.
It would most likely be packaged with other legislation. That’s what happened last year.
