Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins
Alaska State Legislature
We have a bill!
We’ve co-prime sponsored bills. We’ve cosponsored bills. We’ve written bills and passed them off to other offices. (Ronald Reagan: “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets credit.” Amen.) Now, we’ve written a bill of our own and we’re carrying it ourselves.
Our bill (HB 189) defines and criminalizes hazing, adding it to a list of similar offenses such as harassment and bullying, and has already attracted a charismatic and bipartisan cast of seven cosponsors.
It’s personal. Not terribly long ago, I was in high school. I was never a victim of hazing, but it happened around me, to my friends and peers, and I still remember some of their stories. They are not pleasant.
I am especially disturbed by the notion of entitlement. I am disturbed that someone’s position of power or seniority could make him feel entitled to hurt someone else. Equally disturbing is that perpetrators feel entitled to hurt victims because the perpetrators themselves were once victims, and that it’s somehow justified to do what was done to them. I can’t imagine a more twisted interpretation of “paying it forward.”
We are chaperoning HB 189 through the legislative process with tender care and affection, and we are hopeful! But I’ve been advised many times: don’t get married to your legislation. I might like HB 189, I might even really like HB 189, but we haven’t exchanged any vows!
We have a survey!
Your thoughts and opinions will be gratefully received. We actually read these. Here it is, a civic version of the SAT with no wrong answers: http://akdemocrats.org/kreiss-tomkins/survey.php
Tragedy
If the Greeks taught us anything, it’s that tragedies make for good drama.
The governor’s (at least) $1 billion oil company tax cut (SB 21) passed the Senate on March 20. The vote was 11 to 9. This is the most significant piece of the legislation the Alaska Legislature will consider in this session and probably many sessions to come. To me, the passage of SB 21 is a tragedy.
I’ll be darned if I wasn’t going to be there myself watching from the Senate gallery. The floor debate started at 11 a.m. and culminated with a roll call vote at 8:59 p.m.
The debate was amazing; history was being made. Sen. Bill Wielechowski (D-Anchorage) stood and delivered for an incredible 42 minutes. Sen. Lyman Hoffman (D-Bethel), who speaks only on seldom occasions, declared his vote one of the most important of his distinguished 26-year legislative career.
Sen. Bert Stedman (R-Sitka) was also impressive, in his own inimitable way. As Finance Committee Co-Chair the last six years, Sen. Stedman has developed a formidable fluency with the complexity of oil taxes. Most of the floor speeches, both for and against SB 21, were emotional or anecdotal or rhetorical. Sen. Stedman’s was factual. In unflattering numerical detail, he showed SB 21 to be a raw deal for Alaska.
Despite all hope, however tantalizing, and despite bipartisan opposition, the $1 billion tax cut passed by the slimmest of possible margins. SB 21 moves to the House. I’ll let you know what we do with it.
Walking Wellness
Dear Editor: Students and staff at Mt. Edgecumbe High School have been participating in a walking wellness program this semester called “Walk to New York.” This program has encouraged participants to get up and walk, and track their progress each day. Generous donations of prizes from community businesses have helped make the program more fun, and have helped sustain participation. We would like to thank The Cellar, Russell’s Sporting Goods, Agave Restaurant, Orion Sporting Goods, Blatchley pool, Harry Race Soda Shoppe, and Katherine Sayer for their donations.
Mt. Edgecumbe High School
recreation staff
Herring
Dear Editor: With closure, this year’s Sitka commercial sac roe herring fishery has failed to meet even this season’s significantly reduced expectations and hopes; i.e., the herring, in fact, did not come.
The bad news is that we will all now have an opportunity to begin to explore answers to the no-longer rhetorical questions of the immediate impact of this no-show on the commercial fishery and subsistence. And, we may begin learning as soon as this summer, in perhaps small, barely detectable ways, just how critical herring is – not as the harvest of a commercial fishery, but as a forage fish – to the Southeast Alaska ecosystem and bioregion, to “seabirds and lions, and bears and whales, and eagles and ravens and, perhaps above all, to ‘forests that grow salmon on trees.’”
The only good news is this: ADF&G now has two years of significantly depressed herring numbers to work with, with which to better attempt to understand what has happened, why it is happening, and how things may unfold in the future.
Neither this nor my previous letter should in any way be construed as an attack upon ADF&G. The folks on the hot seat this week, Mr. Dave Gordon and his colleagues, are scientists but, in addition to, and depending upon the issue, before that, they are career government resource management officials. They do not make policy; they execute policy. They formulate, implement, and execute management procedures, systems and methodologies that most satisfactorily carry out policy that is made by politicians and their appointees (and the people, organizations, and corporations who buy and sell, and thus control, own, and operate them.)
The better news is that this may provide the opening of a window of opportunity for all stakeholders in the Southeast Alaska herring fishery to stop and consider: So what? Now what? What has happened? Why did it happen? What do we do now? What can we do now? And, perhaps, most critically, Who is going to do it?
As I understand the situation, there are at least three separate questions that need, initially at least, to be addressed, or at least seriously considered: is the Policy working and for whom, and for whom is it not working? And, the equally critical question of: is the Science that the policy is based on still valid, and on what basis? And finally: is the current Economics of extraction of this resource working in a way that is optimally sustainable and ecologically responsible, and again, on what basis?
Lots of things that seemed to work well and made sense over the last 40 years no longer seem to be working quite so solidly: this nation’s banking system comes immediately to mind.
Just as circumstances forced the industry this week from a competitive to a cooperative fishery in order to salvage at least something, anything from this year’s fishery, perhaps the time has come for each, every, and all stakeholders in the Southeast Alaska herring fishery to finally set aside history, and to think about the future.
Something has happened to the herring…. what does that mean?
Perhaps it’s just another, albeit sterner, friendly warning that unless and until we realize that it is not just OUR ocean, and begin to act accordingly, we may stay in that “tipping zone,” more and more subject to more and more tipping points, and thus further, consequent, subsequent zones.
Thank you for your consideration, and may all be well with all that you love.
J.G. Moebus, Master Sergeant
US Army (Retired), Sitka
