Economy

The legislative session begins in Juneau today (Tuesday), with a lot on the plate of lawmakers. Casey Kelly spoke with Juneau Senator Dennis Egan and has this preview.

Juneau Senator Dennis Egan is feeling good heading into the 2012 legislative session.

He’s in the second year of his first full term, after being appointed to the seat on the last day of the 2009 session. More importantly, Egan starts off the year with a clean bill of health, after undergoing heart surgery just two and a half months before the start of last year’s session.

“I didn’t have a medical procedure this year,” says Egan. “I feel great.”

In addition, Egan is the only Senator who won’t have to run for re-election this fall due to redistricting, or the redrawing of legislative boundaries every 10 years according to the U.S. Census.

Under the Alaska Redistricting Board Plan, Egan won’t run again until 2014, though next year his district will pick up several new communities, including Skagway and Petersburg. Egan says the extra time will help him to get to know those communities a little better, but he doesn’t expect it to change the way he serves.

“I’ve always represented Southeast, and people from those communities have always come in to our office, and we’ve worked very hard in trying to get their issues resolved, and their requests for capital projects and issues that directly affect their communities,” he says.

Egan is squarely in the middle of the biggest issue facing the Senate this year: The governor’s proposal to cut taxes on oil companies. The bill ended last session in the Senate Labor & Commerce Committee, which Egan chairs. During the interim the committee held four days of hearings on the bill in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Egan says the Senate still has concerns about the lack of Alaskans employed on the North Slope.

“The people own the resource,” says Egan. “And we as a Senate Bipartisan Working Group think that we should get something in return. We’re not opposed to providing some kind of an incentive for the industry. But we need something in return.”

To get a better handle on employment in the oil industry, the Senate hired Juneau-based McDowell Group to do a study. Egan expects the analysis to get at least one hearing early in the session.

“It shows there is a lot of non-resident hire, and we want to address that issue,” he says.

Egan is one of six co-sponsors of a bill that would exempt a proposed natural gas pipeline from property taxes during construction. He says the idea came from discussions Senators had with the industry.

“Trying to reach some sort of a conclusion to providing an incentive for industry and Alaskans to increase our portfolio,” Egan says.

Another bill Egan worked on during the interim would give public employees the option of choosing either a defined benefit or defined contribution retirement plan. Alaska was the first state to do away with a traditional pension, or defined benefit for state workers. Since 2006, all new hires have been set up with a defined contribution plan, similar to a 401(k) savings account.

Egan’s bill has 10 co-sponsors – including two Republicans – who feel the defined benefit is a better deal for Alaska’s retired public employees, because it guarantees them a pension check every month.

Egan’s office is currently trying to get the Parnell administration to agree on a cost estimate for the bill. The administration’s actuary says it would cost the state more to offer a defined benefit option. Unions and other backers of the bill hired their own actuary, who says it would not increase costs. At a hearing during the interim the two actuaries were asked to work together to settle the discrepancy.

“We’re trying to make it as close to revenue neutral as we can,” Egan says. “We want people to retire in Alaska, and I think Senate Bill 121 allows those folks to do that.”

Egan says he’s happy with Juneau projects in Governor Parnell’s proposed capital budget, especially ongoing funding for the State Library Archives and Museum, or SLAM project, as well as renovations or repairs to the Douglas Island Office Building, the State Office Building parking garage, and the Juneau Pioneer Home.

He says other priorities for the Senate Bipartisan Coalition will be affordable energy, expanding Alaska’s infrastructure and pre-kindergarten through post-secondary education.

TSA will begin using Advanced Imaging Technology at the Juneau International Airport on January 23rd.

 

Transportation Security Administration officials demonstrated the newly installed machine Thursday. It began with a TSA officer giving these instructions to some would-be passengers:

“You guys want to make sure you take everything out of your pockets.”

Like the current system, passengers must take off their shoes, belts, coats and unload their pockets; all that stuff goes through the standard security x-ray.

Then the person walks into the circular unit and is told to raise arms above the head. The TSA officer presses a pink or blue button, depending on the gender, then gives these directions:

“You’ll face this direction. Look at the photo on the wall and assume that stance. Hold it until I ask you to release it. Go ahead and release. Step this way,” and the passenger exits.

To demonstrate the unit, TSA employees role-played passengers for the media. The officers are already going through training to learn how to use the Advanced Imaging Technology unit and Automated Target Response software.

Lorie Dankers is the spokeswoman for the TSA in Alaska.

“The units at this airport use what is called millimeter-save technology, which bounces harmless electromagnetic waves, essentially radio waves, off the body during the screening process,” she explains. “This is not an x-ray.”

The results are real time and the passenger sees it at the same time as the TSA officer. The computer-generated outline of a person on the screen is identical for all passengers. No body parts can be seen.

“So if a person has had a hip replacement or knee implants of some sort, it won’t detect that because it’s only looking at items on the outside of the body,” she says.

If the underwear bomber is carrying explosives in his shorts, the package will show up as a yellow image on the screen and the officer would follow-up with a targeted pat down.

“It’s not the machine’s job to tell us what the item is, it’s just to cue us that there’s something that needs to be followed up on. And so it’s not going to look different from one item over another,” Dankers says.

Advanced Imaging Technology is already in use at Anchorage and Fairbanks airports and will be installed in Ketchikan at the end of the month.

More than 540 AIT units are in airports across the U.S., but older full-body x-ray type scanners are used at other airports, including Seattle.

Federal security director for Southeast Alaska Ray Culbreath says the AIT scanners will not displace any TSA officers; Juneau currently has 54.

In addition to being the capital city and Alaska’s gateway city, Juneau and Ketchikan have been selected for Advanced Imaging Technology due to the high volume of tourists that come through their airports every summer, Culbreath says. In Juneau…

“This time of year we’re averaging between 650 and 750 passengers a day and during the summer months that more than triples,” he says.

According to Culbreath, an average of 275,000 passengers depart from the Juneau International Airport annually.

 

 

Former state Health Department official John Vowell has been named interim Chief Executive Officer at Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital.

Vowell will serve in the position for up to a year, starting in February, while the Bartlett Board of Directors searches for a permanent CEO.

The board recently approved a new consulting contract with former management company Quorum Health Resources. Under terms of the deal, the board will employ the hospital’s CEO and Chief Financial Officer. Previously those positions had been employed by Quorum.

That means current CEO Shawn Morrow and CFO Garth Hamblin will no longer be employed at Bartlett when the new contract takes effect February 1st.

Vowell retired as Director of Alaska Pioneer Homes in 2004.

The Bartlett board will use an executive search firm to help it hire a permanent CEO, who will be responsible for hiring the CFO.

Bartlett Regional Hospital is owned by the City and Borough of Juneau. The board is appointed by the CBJ Assembly. The hospital gets its operating funds from charges for patient services.

Hecla Mining Company announced a year-long closure at its Lucky Friday Mine in Idaho yesterday (Wednesday).

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration ordered the closure after investigating two deaths and several injuries at the mine in 2011. The latest incident occurred in mid-December, when seven miners were injured by a rock burst. Last week, investigators determined that conditions flagged at the mine during an investigation into the incident had not been fixed.

Over the next year, Hecla will be required to clean up sand and gravel build up in the Lucky Friday’s main shaft.

About 200 miners and contract workers will lose their jobs during that period. Hecla also revised down its projected silver production for 2012, from 9.5 million ounces to about 7 million.

Hecla also owns Green’s Creek Mine on Admiralty Island near Juneau.

The company building a mine at the headwaters of the transboundary Taku River expects a new road to be completed by the end of next year. That will allow year round access to the Tulsequah Chief Mine.

The Taku is the most abundant salmon-producing river in Southeast Alaska. But on Saturday Chieftain Metals tried to reassure members of the Taku River Fact-Finding Task Force that barging would soon cease.  

[Files relating to the task force are posted on the legislature’s committee hearing web site here. Click on the folder icon.]

Chieftain Metals’ Chief Operating Officer Keith Boyle paints an aggressive timeline for the multi-metals mine under construction in British Columbia, 40 miles northeast of Juneau. And it hinges on a proposed road.

“The mine won’t go without the road,” Boyle told skeptical task force members.

Boyle was speaking by teleconference from Toronto, Ontario, headquarters for the Canadian-owned company. He said the company expects to have a B.C. government permit for the road by the middle of this year.

Chieftain Metals purchased the Tulsequah Chief Mine and adjoining properties in 2010 after former owner Redfern Resources went bankrupt.

Juneau has terrible memories of Redfern: The number of times Redfern barges hit bottom in the Taku River; Redfern’s proposal for a hover barge towed by an amphibious vehicle; its years of promises to clean up acid mine drainage from the defunct mine.

The company nixed the hover barge idea soon after it acquired the Tulsequah. And mine cleanup is underway. As KTOO previously reported, a water treatment plant has been installed and is treating mine effluent.

When Chieftain took ownership, it acquired Redfern’s permits from B.C. regulatory agencies, except a permit for a road through Taku River Tlingit First Nation territory. The company has been negotiating a new route to the mine with the tribe, which has historically opposed any overland route.

“This past summer, we jointly hired an engineer, this engineer looked at different options, we evaluated the different options and Chieftain has now submitted an application for an amended permit,” Boyle said.

The 130 kilometer road (approximately 81 miles) would go from Atlin, B.C. to the mine site, still through some First Nation territory. It’s now up to the B.C. government to get First Nations to agree.

Months ago Chieftain Metals said barging equipment, supplies and concentrate up and down the Taku River is not an option for two reasons: It’s a difficult river to navigate, especially with its fluctuating water levels, and bankers want to know the product is getting to market.

“What were the parameters to make that decision? And secondarily to that were some of those parameters run timing in terms of the salmon run?” asked Task Force member and commercial fisherman Len Peterson.

“It had nothing to do with the salmon runs, it had everything to do with sitting in front of the bankers and saying, ‘you know we want to build a mine,’ and they looked at us and said, ‘if you think you’re going to do it with hover barges we’re not giving you any money,’ ” Boyle responded.

Before the road is built, Boyle said the company expects to haul fifteen to twenty 100-ton barge loads from Juneau up the Taku River to the mine beginning in late May. Chieftain Metals will contract with tug and barge company Wainwright Marine Services out of Prince Rupert, B.C.

“Any material, equipment, what not, it’s got to fit within 15 trips up the river,” Boyle said. “We’re contingency planning – we’re trying to figure out what it is, but you know 15 to 20 trips for the entire summer.”

Some of those loads will be road construction equipment. Boyle says construction will start simultaneously from Atlin and the mine site.

The Juneau legislative delegation created the Taku River Fact-Finding Task Force in response to concerns about mine development on both the U.S. and Canadian side of the river. Alaska has no jurisdiction over the Tulsequah Chief project, or barging up the river.

After two three-hour meetings with state and federal agencies and Chieftain, the eight-member task force seems to have more questions than answers.

It will meet again on Friday, Jan 13.

Descendents of Sealaska shareholders have until March to apply for corporate scholarships. But those submitting applications this month will receive an extra $50.

About 400 college, university and vocational school students receive the scholarships every year.

The money comes from Sealaska, the regional Native corporation for Southeast. It’s distributed by the Sealaska Heritage Institute, the businesses’ cultural arm.

Institute President Rosita Worl says the merit-based scholarships run from about $1,000 to $4,000 a year. The amount is based on each student’s year in school, as well as his or her grades.

“They have to be in good standing in their school. And we require a minimum of a 2.0 (grade-point average). If they fall below a 2.0, they go on probation for a semester and they have a semester to bring their grades up,” she says.

Applications must be filed online, through the institute’s website.

Forms, transcripts and letters of recommendation must be submitted by March 1st. Those completing paperwork by February 1st get the extra $50.

Students must attend an accredited institution full-time.

“One of the objectives is to train our future managers and employees of not only Sealaska, but our Native organizations. So in addition to the scholarship, we also have an intern program,” Worl says.

Students do not have to be Sealaska shareholders to receive scholarships. But they must prove they are a lineal descendent. The corporation has more than 20,000 shareholders, about half living in Alaska.