Cleansing Of The Pole, Then Changing Of Command To Adjuntant General Hummel

This is the 'honor pole' in front of the Alaska National Guard Headquarters.  Today, prior to the Changing of the Command ceremony from Acting Adjutant General Mike Bridges to Adjutant General Laurel Hummel, was a ceremony to cleanse the pole that had been dedicated a few years ago.  Tlingets and local Athabaskans from Eklutna joined together to cleanse the pole after the scandal the National Guard has gone through.

A member of the St. Elias Dance Group.

Lt. Governor Mallot at the cleansing ceremony.  I'm not using the word totem because there are some questions about combining the old and new traditions and the recognition that this pole doesn't necessarily meet the standards of a traditional totem pole.  So the decided to call it an honor pole instead. 

New Adjutant General Hummel dancing after the cleansing ceremony.

The crowd then moved inside and the Hearts of Oceana Club - West High students mentored by the Polynesian Community Center - danced before the Change of Command.

Gov. Walker was there as well.

Adjutant General Hummel in her speech which ranged from personal to inspirational.. She talked about how her army dad answered her six year old self about her desire to follow him into the army, that  while West Point didn't take women at the time, they would when she was ready to apply.

She talked about how when the governor-elect asked her to be the Adjutant General, she was taken aback.  She said she hadn't applied because her husband worked at the guard, so she would have a conflict of interest.  But the governor and her husband insisted.  And in a few days, her husband heads for a year in Kosovo where he'll be head of intelligence for NATO there.  She then turned to the members of the Alaska National Guard - how honored she is to work with them, how much she values and trusts them, and how together they will make the Guard a better organization.

This is an interesting confluence of two stories I've followed here.  One began when I covered Laurel Hummel's interview to be director of the Alaska Redistricting Board.   The other is the story of the Alaska National Guard scandal.  The links each go to one post.  There were a number of posts on each and you can get to the others by clicking on the appropriate labels.  This was a positive event, I'm sure the governor would like to spend more of his time doing this sort of thing.

Hummel Story Makes LA Times Leads Me To Thoughts About Online News Issues

The headline, "Alaska - Woman named to lead Guard," probably explains the interest.  It follows up with discussion of the sexual abuse scandal.  (I wrote about Hummel's appointment yesterday.)

The article itself exemplifies one of the issues I've been having over online news (including ethics of updating blog posts).  In this case, the online stories and the print stories don't match.
Here's the link to the online LA Times Story.

The first two paragraphs are the same, but the print story capitalizes Department of Veterans and Military Affairs while the online version doesn't.  Maybe I noticed that because capitalization is one of my problems here.

The two seem to be the same until the end of the paragraph that starts "In September . . ." and ends " . . .confidentiality had been breached."

The online version adds that she was a professor at West Point and doesn't mention that she's a Democrat.  Neither mentioned her PhD in geography.

The print version ends abruptly:

"Hummel graduated from West Point in 1982 and served 30 years of active duty.
A Democrat, Hummel ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the state House of Representatives in November."

I find the last sentence interesting because I suspect that a lot of folks will say, "Another unsuccessful politician gets a helped by the party into a cushy job."  But that would be a very wrong conclusion.  First, party stuff is all mixed up in Alaska now that we have an 'independent' former Republican governor teamed up with a Democratic Lt. governor.  But much more than that.

This is a story I know better than most stories.  I met Hummel right after the 80% Republican Redistricting Board rejected her and two other candidates for their Executive Director position - a non-partisan position for which she was exceedingly well qualified.   I talked to Hummel shortly after that - I was so impressed by how she handled herself that I contacted her because I just wanted to meet this well qualified and well-spoken woman.  We kept in contact while she was recruited by the Democrats to run for the state house in her district.  She laughed at them at first, but as she met some of the other Democratic legislators in Anchorage who came to persuade her, she was impressed with them.  They appealed to her sense of duty and public service and she finally agreed. (Really, I know this sounds like a pr piece, but that's really what happened.)   She'd never been involved in a political campaign and was particularly displeased about the having to ask people for money.  But she put herself totally into it and lost to an incumbent by 2l3 votes, less than 1% of the vote.

Is this a cushy job for Hummel?  It's one she's excited about and also a little anxious about.  She's never been in the National Guard and there's a lot of stuff to do.  She also doesn't believe the Adjutant General should be head of the National Guard AND the state head of veteran and military affairs. Because it's a military job, she has to forego her military pension and disability* payment.  Even more problematic is that her husband, who works in the Army National Guard in Alaska, has to resign his position.  But, she told me, he insisted this was an opportunity she couldn't pass up.

But let's get on to other questions, questions I ask myself as I blog, both as a blogger and as a user of online news.  Some differences between online and print and how I feel about them:

1. An online piece can be longer than a print piece so you can include more than you would print.  Print stories should say if there is more online, and some do.   It would be nice if the online story content that was in addition to or different from the print story, were a different color or otherwise marked.  I suspect most print media don't keep such close track of those things and would claim it would be a big burden.
2. You can update an online piece.  You can only print a later correction in print.  I think it makes sense to update and correct only stories, but those changes that are substantive should be marked.  I do that here.  Otherwise, unless someone saves each version or finds a different version cached, there's no way to know whether a story you read - say three months later - is the same story that was there in the beginning.  This has all sorts of Orwellian possibilities.
3. Typos that have no consequence to the meaning should be fixed when spotted and don't need to be marked.  Minor word changes that clarify but don't change the meaning also don't need to be marked, but this hangs on people's interpretation of 'minor' and 'change the meaning.'

I decide it would be prudent to check what professional journalists have to say on this.  There was an article in the April 2014  American Journalism Review about a draft Code of Ethics from the Society for Professional Journalist coming out in September 2014:

The code draft acknowledges a different environment for news by advising journalists to “Aggressively gather and update information as a story unfolds and work to avoid error. Deliberate distortion and reporting unconfirmed rumors are never permissible.”

Well, that agrees with me about updating, but doesn't mention identifying the updates.  Should the story be dated as of the latest update or the original story?  This will matter later when people look back to see when something was known.  And in the competition between news companies, who gets the credit for being the first to report?  

I'd note that I tried to contact Soumya Karlamangla, the reporter on the LA Times Hummel piece.  I originally wanted to ask her questions about the differences between the online and print versions and who makes those decisions.  As I looked at other stories she's written, I was wondering how she got this story.  There was an AP story and and ADN story.  It's unlikely she was writing this as an original piece.  But there is no source identified and it's not labeled an AP story.  What is it that she did to what she found online that changes it from a wire story to one that deserves her own byline?  (I couldn't find an email address for her but I did tweet her.  But didn't hear anything back.  I'm not clear about whether a tweet to her is public or not.  When I saw it in my list of tweets much later, I took it down.  There are too many protocols on too many systems for me to keep up.  OK, I looked it up, only folks who subscribe to both me and Karlamangla would get it in their timelines.  There's a table online that tells you who can see different kinds of tweets.  Here's the relevant information from that table to my question.  It would be publicly visible on my timeline.

click to enlarge and focus

Back to the American Journalism Review article mentioned above that talked about updating online articles.  I went to the Society of Professional Journalists website to see what their revised code looked like and if it had that language.  I couldn't find any language that specifically addressed updating online articles.  Here are the four main principles.  Each then has a list of standards of practice under it.  You can get the Code as a pdf here.

• SEEK TRUTH AND REPORT INGJournalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.Journalists should: 
• MINIMIZE HARMEthical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.Journalists should:
• 􏰀 ACT INDEPENDENTLYJournalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.Journalists should:
• 􏰀BE ACCOUNTABLEJournalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other. Journalists should:  

Doesn't really address my questions.  

*I asked Hummel during the campaign about what her disability entailed.  On the one hand, it's none of my business, but I suspected that some voters would wonder how she could hold the job of legislator if she was disabled.  Her response was that it was not a payment because you were so disabled you couldn't work, but rather compensation for injuries caused by your service in the military.    She was at West Point ages 18-22 and then in the military until she was 51.  She said hers were mainly orthopedic; "running too many miles with a heavy rucksack and jumping out of too many airplanes."  There is a very specific protocol for doctors to determine the injury and the percent of disability for each injury.  You can see how they calculate it precisely here.

West Point Grad Laurie Hummel To Be New Alaska National Guard Adjutant General

The ADN has a good report on this up already so I'll try to add what I know about Laurie Hummel.

I first 'met' Laurie Hummel when she was interviewed by the Alaska Redistricting Board to be their executive director.  I was so incredibly impressed by how perfectly her background qualified her for the job AND by how well she presented herself and her knowledge.  She was both assertive and respectful.  In that interview she was asked to describe her managerial experience as it related to the job.  It was all impressive and you can see my very rough transcript here.

A part that particularly warmed my blogger heart was when she spoke about confidentiality and public information.  She said you have to set up categories:

"what you have to share, should share, can’t.  Things that have to be shared with the public [you share]  and that’s how it should be.  I come from climate that values ethics.  I hold the highest ethical standards. I see a big difference where there’s an enemy.  Here I see no enemies.  Press and people are not enemies."

I was blown away by Hummel that day and wrote one of the most enthusiastic posts I've ever written about anybody on this blog.

Second Applicant Incredible: Laurel Hummel, Vet and Geographer

When the Board decided not to fill the position, I was seriously disappointed and wrote a two part post exploring possible reasons why.

• How Could Redistricting Board NOT Hire Laurel Hummel? Political Neutrality Appears Ripped To Shreds - Part 1
• How Could Redistricting Board NOT Hire Laurel Hummel? Political Neutrality Appears Ripped To Shreds - Part 2

The last post I did that focused on Laurie Hummel was about her announcement to run for State House.  

Laurie Hummel Announces Bid for State House Seat - Laurie Who?

I was (and still am) so impressed with Hummel that I decided I had to help her win.  People complain about the lack of good politicians all the time.  But there won't be any unless the rest of us work hard to elect those who are willing to run.  It was time for me to get directly involved.

After I became involved in her campaign  I felt I could no longer report on the race.  Sure, I could have declared my involvement and written, but I didn't want this blog to be a billboard for one candidate.

Hummel ran a great campaign and came very close to beating an incumbent in her first race.  
Today I learned of her appointment to be Adjutant General of the Alaska National Guard by Governor Walker.

I called Hummel today to congratulate her.  She told me she hadn't expected this.  Her husband, Chad Parker, is a colonel in the national guard and when the governor asked her to take the position, she decided she'd ask to be deputy.  That's a civilian, state position, that wouldn't put her directly over her husband.  But Chad told her she couldn't turn this opportunity down.  Accepting the position requires her husband's resignation from the Guard.

In October, during the campaign, she'd written an op-ed piece in the ADN on how to reform the national guard. (I'm assuming my readers know about the scandal which played a role in defeating our former governor's reelection bid.)  She listed six steps to heal the Guard, which I'm abbreviating here.  You can read the whole piece here.

1. Immediately hold legislative hearings -- with witnesses under oath -- to independently investigate malfeasance in the Guard.
2. Appoint an independent special prosecutor to address criminal actions not currently enforceable by the Guard’s antiquated, ineffective state version of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
3. The Legislature must create a viable UCMJ. The Guard must advise and guide but the state’s Military Code is a state statute. This is the province of our Legislature. The heavy lifting for creating a meaningful and effective code is done in committee. This would appropriately be accomplished by the House Committee on Military and Veterans Affairs. But again, nothing is happening on that front.
4. Separate the adjutant general (TAG) position from the commissioner, DMVA position. Tom Katkus and his predecessors were dual-hatted as the TAG and commissioner.
5. Fill the existing military legislative liaison position to the Alaska Legislature.
6.  The commander-in-chief (our governor) must demand, receive and embrace unfettered access to Guard issues and take a personal and active part in restoring a culture of transparency. 

She was hoping to work on these as a legislator and these focus on what the legislature and governor need to do.  But now she gets to work on these from the inside and from the top.

Side note:  Hummel will become the first female adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard.  She told me there had been women heads in Vermont and Ohio, but they have left office.  Other states are appointing their heads now as well and she wasn't sure if there would be another woman among them.

As I explore google's offerings on "women adjutant generals national guard" I get
Ohio's Maj. Gen. Deborah Ashenhurst and Vermont's Major General, Martha T. Rainville and Alaska's Col Laurel Hummel in the first five hits.  Moving down the lists there are a number of male adjutant generals whose page mentions "the fine men and women."  


But then up popped up BG Mary Kight who became California's first female, African-American adjutant general in 2010.  Are there others?  If Hummel pops up already, I'm guessing that if there were other women appointed to be their states' adjutant generals recently, they would show up.  But proving there are no black swans is harder than proving there is one.

Alaska Election 2014: What Does It All Mean?

Your guess is as good as mine.  I guess in today's internet style I should have titled this "The Ten Takeaways From Yesterday's Election and How You can Lose Ten Pounds (or Organize Your Life, or Become Financially Secure in Two Weeks.)"

This post is just my thinking out loud after the election.  Since my foot is still in a boot I can't go run or bike or even walk too much (trying to just let it relax and heal).  So I'll try to write my way out of this.


1.  Republicans won most offices that were up for grabs.  But there are still absentee and maybe early voters to count.

• Republican Dan Sullivan  is ahead of Democratic incumbent Mark Begich by 48.7% to 45.1% (102,054 votes to 110,203) in the US Senate race.  This morning's ADN headline is "Sullivan holds lead;  Begich won't concede."  Begich was behind Stevens at this point in 2008, but not as far behind.

• Republican incumbent Don Young handily beat Forrest Dunbar by 25,000 votes (51% to 40%, a margin that didn't change all night) in the US House race.

• The so called Independent/Unity Ticket of Walker/Mallot is ahead of Parnell/Sullivan (different Dan Sullivan) by 3,160 votes (47%-46%).  The ADN says "Too close to call."  But even if the Walker/Mallot lead stays through the absentee votes, we'll have a governor who was a Republican until he changed to undeclared before joining up with the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mallot to run as independents.  

Republicans kept most of their seats and took a few they didn't have in the state house and senate.  They picked up one Senate seat in Anchorage

• (Rep. Mia Costello took Hollis French's seat.  He had originally been the Democratic Lt. Gov candidate before the Unity ticket.) 

The House apparently has one seat switching from Republican to Democratic:

• Democrat Adam Wool beat incumbent Pete Higgins in Fairbanks' District 5 in the House. 

Other House races are still too close to call. 

• Republican Anand Dubey is 35 votes behind Democrat Matt Claman in House District 21, held before by Democrat turned Republican after the 2012 election Lindsey Holmes.
• Independent Daniel Ortiz is 19 votes ahead of Republican Chere Klein in the Wrangell District 36 that was held by retired Rep. Peggy Wilson.  
• Democrat Laurie Hummel is only 167 votes behind Republican incumbent Gabrielle LeDoux in Anchorage District 15.  This one would be a little harder for Hummel to pull off, though LeDoux gained 140 votes over Hummel when the last 20% of the voters were counted.  I don't know how many absentee and early votes are to be counted in this normally low turnout district.

2.  All the ballot measures passed (well sort of because in the wording on Anchorage Prop 1, a no vote was a vote to pass the proposition).  This is noteworthy because while the Republicans did well when their label was on the candidates, the Democrats did well in the ballot measures where there was no party label.

• Ballot Measure 2:  To Legalize Marijuana  - we can quibble if this was a Democratic or Republican cause because both parties had key figures leading both sides.  But the Democratic opposition seemed to be more about the commercialization of marijuana than about legalizing marijuana.   It passed 116,803 to 107179 or 52.15% to 47.85%.  Marijuana got more votes than Dan Sullivan.  But then there was no 'maybe' or other options in this election, but there were third parties in the Senate election.

• Ballot Measure 3:  Increase Minimum Wage
  Yes:  154,516 (68.8%)
  No:    70,082  (31.2%)
  While this is normally a Democratic issue, some of the Republicans supported it on the grounds that states can set minimum wage, just not the feds.  Not sure how much difference that makes with their economic argument that it messes with the free market and causes jobs to disappear. 

• Ballot Measure 4:  Protect Bristol Bay Fish (by making it harder to build the Pebble Mine)
  Yes:  143,287 (65.32%)
  No:     76,062 (34.68%)
  Note again, that Republican Senate candidate Dan Sullivan got 110,203 votes.  Dan Sullivan who vehemently opposes federal regulation, the EPA report that raised major questions about Pebble Mine, and, from what I can tell, has never seen a problematic development project.

• Anchorage Proposition 1: Keep Mayor Sullivan's Draconian Labor Ordinance
  Yes:  41998 (46.17%)
  No:  48961  (53.83%)
  Remember, a no vote essentially approved the proposition because of how it was worded:  Should we keep Anchorage Ordinance 37?  Also, only Anchorage voters had this on the ballot so the numbers are much lower.  This was heavily backed by labor unions and Democrats and opposed by Republicans.  

3.   So, what does this all mean?  Here I'm going to just hypothosize possibilities.  But who knows for sure?  Certainly not me.

• Left leaning issues did well when there was no party label, right leaning candidates did well when there was a label.

• Nationally, the Koch Brothers Party did extremely well.  It's more than money since there were left  leaning PACs as well that poured lots of money in.  

• Who's checking the voting machines?  I have no evidence whatsoever that there was any tampering with voting machines.  However, it's clear that such tampering is possible and has probably happened in past elections.  But we have no systems to vigorously guard against such tampering in each state and nationally.  We know that computer hackers can get into large corporate and government data bases.  The US government has accused China of hacking to get into trade and government secrets.  Yet as we watched the somewhat surprisingly heavy Republican victory nationwide last night, I heard none of the national new media even mention election fraud or hacking of machines in any of their attempts to explain what happened.  They can't, because they have no evidence.  But how would they get any evidence?  They don't have any way of checking except for the most obvious, clumsy attempts.  We need to have serious monitoring of all electronic voting equipment, just as we have monitoring of polling booths and voter ids.  

That's what comes to mind this morning after the 2014 election.  There are plenty of other issues to ponder and this is a quick and dirty post.  Don't take it too seriously.  I have things to do today besides blog. 

Laurie Hummel Announces Bid For State House Seat - Laurie Who?

I get emails.  Today one told me that Laurie Hummel is running for the Alaska State House in  northeastern Anchorage District 15.

I first 'met' Laurie Hummel when she was interviewed by the Alaska Redistricting Board with two other finalists for the executive director position last year.  I put 'met' in quotes because I was listening in by phone from my mom's house in LA.

The result of the interview was one of the more effusive blog posts I've written.  She had all the qualifications for the position and more.  A PhD in cultural geography which meant she knew all about mapping.  When they asked her if she knew the software program they used to do the mapping, her response was, "Well, I've never taught a class on it."  That wasn't a cheeky answer.  She'd explained that she'd taught classes in GIS in general just before.

Laurie Hummel

What about her experience with Alaska Natives?  At that point the federal Voting Rights Act section that required Alaska to get pre-clearance from the Justice Department hadn't yet been struck down by the US Supreme and so knowledge of Alaska Native regions was important.  Her answer - she wrote her doctoral dissertation on the impact of the military on Alaska Natives. 
What kind of experience did she have in dealing with sensitive situations?  Well, while in the army (she retired as a colonel), one of her projects in Afghanistan was to help integrate women into the Afghan military. 

She was ready for every question with a perfect response in a very modest and respectful tone.  For specific Alaska administrative procedures she hadn't worked with - like travel rules - she checked online and had the regulations.  I couldn't believe the Board had found such a perfect applicant.  I was  blown away with how amazingly she handled the interview.  Apparently the Board was too.  So much so that soon after they announced they decided not to fill the position.  My guess is that they were afraid of someone so well qualified, head and shoulders above most of the members of the Board to do this job.

So I found her email and asked if she'd talk to me when I got back into town.  I wanted to meet this woman.  We had a very pleasant conversation and I went away convinced that my first impression was right.  We talked a few more times over the phone and by email.  I learned that she was being recruited to run for office.  That was not in any of her life plans she said.  She was particularly turned off by the idea of asking people for money.  In the end, it seems like the appeal to service got to her.  If she thought politics was so bad, didn't she have a responsibility to do what she could to make it better?   Is Juneau easy compared to Afghanistan?

I don't know her views on many issues, but I do know that she's a well educated candidate with significant military and Alaska experience. She's spent a good part of her military career in Anchorage where she served as the Alaskan Command’s Chief of Operations Intelligence.  She's been on the West Point  faculty (her alma mater.)

People who complain about the lack of good candidates should check out Laurie Hummel.

Norm's on Bragaw and Debarr noon to one Thursday, January 23, 2014

    The email I got also said that she's talking at the      Bartlett Club tomorrow at noon.  I think I've been to one or two such meetings in the last 30 years, but I'm planning to see how she does. 

How Could Redistricting Board NOT Hire Laurel Hummel? Political Neutrality Appears Ripped To Shreds - Part 2

In Part 1, I went through a chronology leading up to the Board's decision to not hire anyone including a brief explanation of why I thought Laurel Hummel was a perfect candidate for the job.  In Part 1.5 I looked at the 1982 Supreme Court decision on public meetings the Anchorage Daily News used to get the candidate interviews public.  It appears they didn't follow the law completely in this process.

In this post I'm going to explore some reasons why she wasn't selected.
 

So, why did the Board not choose Hummel (or anyone)?


Explanation 1.   The Board wanted to hire someone they knew would do their partisan bidding and keep it all confidential. 

The Board had lined up a Republican party loyalist they would hire for this $95.000 - $113,000 position who would do their bidding and keep the partisan tampering with the district borders confidential.  They did go through a public search and had six applicants.  They were set to keep the names of the applicants confidential as well as their resumes.  They would then interview them in executive session and announce the new executive director, who would be a Republican loyalist.

But then at the last minute, the Anchorage Daily News challenged the process of keeping the names and resumes secret as well as the secrecy of the interviews.  This has all been hashed out in a 1982 Supreme Court case and the Board didn’t have much choice.

If they cancelled the interviews because they were required to do things publicly, it would look like they were trying to hide something.  In the end they interviewed three candidates. 

• The first was ok, but didn't have particular expertise in this area.  
• The second candidate turned out to be a superstar perfectly matched for the position in terms of technical GIS experience,  Alaska Native experience, and management experience.  And a vet!  What could be better?  
• The third candidate, a former Republican legislative staffer,  who chaired his unsuccessful primary candidacy in 2012, totally bombed the interview - his answers showed no preparation or ability to think well on his feet. 

Clearly Dr. Laural Hummel was by far the best applicant and fully qualified for the job.

And then the bombshell.  Suddenly they decided, out of public view, that they wouldn’t hire anyone.  The only reason an organization doesn't hire after they've interviewed candidates is that none of the candidates was good enough.  But in this case, they had a super candidate based on their job description. 

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that they had assumed that they would simply be able to pick their preordained candidate.   As an anonymous commenter on the previous post noted - they didn’t want someone truly competent who they couldn’t control inside the sausage factory when they made the districts.  Not only was the super-applicant very skilled in all aspects of the job which meant she might be able to figure out totally fair districts, the Anchorage Daily News found out she was a Democrat.  There was no way they wanted a competent Democrat in the middle of the process. (They seemed to have worked out something with the lone Democrat on the Board - if they work with her on the Native districts, she'll ignore other issues.  I'm not blaming her; she had a very difficult job here.  And her cultural norms likely are to avoid public conflict.)

So, they just decided to not hire anyone.  Without an open interview, we wouldn’t have been any wiser and they could have hired their political crony. 

Of course, this is all conjecture, but it seems to make the most sense. All the facts are consistent with this narrative and the other explanations (see below) don't make sense.

The Board hasn’t publicly offered any more plausible alternative explanation.  Actually, as I pointed out in the previous post, the decision to not hire anyone should have - by law - been made in a public session and the reasons and the vote should have been public.  But they weren’t. 

I emailed the Board Chair and several other Board members to get some explanation but no one has replied, even though this blog has covered the Board meetings since they first got the 2010 census data in March 2011.  It's been more than three days now with no reply.   
 
Rich Mauer at the Anchorage Daily News got a couple of short responses from two Board members.

Explanation 2:  "there wasn't much need for an executive director now because of a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court that could influence Alaska's redistricting."  from Board member Bob Brodie.

Let's see now.  They've known about the Supreme Court case since at least October or November.  The Board met February 12.   Their attorney discussed the Supreme Court case at length with the Board and they went on with planning to hire an Executive Director.  The March dates were right on schedule based on their plan.

It's true that they did make their decision before the case was heard on February 27 and before the press speculated that there was a good chance that the conservative majority on the Court would take action to somehow modify Sec. 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

But then why didn't they just cancel the search earlier?  Why wait until after the interviews?  Because in the interviews it became clear that, because the interviews were, at the last minute, forced into public view, they wouldn't be able to hire their pre-ordained candidate.  He just came off so poorly - both his experience and how he related it - that even they knew they couldn't be that blatant.  Dr. Hummel was just way too good to pick anyone else over her.  But deciding not to hire anyone is almost as blatant.

They actually do need an Executive Director but they didn't want to hire someone who could make their partisan machinations harder to pull off.  Deciding they didn't want a director was just an excuse for not having to hire Hummel.

Whatever the US Supreme Court decides on Shelby County v. Holder, the Board does have to first make a map of the districts based only on the criteria in the Alaska Constitution.  Only then, do they adjust those districts to also meet the Voting Rights Act.  So, a director who knows about mapping and has great management, supervisory, and coalition building skills would be a great asset. If the Court changes the Sec. 5 requirements, then they could still use a competent director to wrap up all the work they have left. 

Explanation 3.   "the most important job now is mapping, and that requires an expert in geographic information systems software." - from Board member PeggyAnn McConochie

Again, the obvious flaw in this argument is that they waited to make this decision until after they'd interviewed the candidates.  If all they needed was a GIS expert, they should have cancelled the Executive Director search earlier.  It is true they need someone who can do the GIS mapping.  And they told each applicant that they plan to hire one.  But last time around they relied on their Executive Director to do a lot of this work.  And Dr. Laurel Hummel can do this.  She's got a PhD in geography and knows the software.  They need an Executive Director - to mange all the day-to-day things like keep the website working and deal with all the administrative stuff the Board needs taken care of.

This sounds way too much like an after-the-fact cover up explanation as does Brodie's.  


I've pounded my head to figure out other possible explanations.  Maybe they'd offered her the job, but couldn't offer her enough pay and she turned them down.  But that makes no sense for several reasons:

1. The pay was on the job announcement so she would have known what was available before applying, and it's a very good salary for this position.
2. It's a temporary job.  And for Dr. Hummel a perfect job for her skill set.  The money is more than sufficient.  She wouldn't have turned it down. 
3. If she had turned down the job, they would have told us that and avoided this bizarre turn of events.

So, Steve, (you ask) how can you be so confident this is about partisan gerrymandering?



It's no secret that redistricting is highly political.  The stakes are no less than who wins the elections and thus gets to make policy.  The New York Times wrote as the census data was coming out  in spring 2011:

"Beyond hiring lobbyists, major players in Washington — including high-priced lawyers, union officials, House leaders and national party operatives — are spending time and money to influence how officials in state capitals design the political maps that will affect the balance of power in Congress for the next decade.
The stakes are enormous, with Republicans looking to use their control of a majority of statehouses to cement their hold on the House in 2012 and beyond."

Alaska's redistricting doesn't affect Congress since we only have one member of the House of Representatives, but it does affect how the oil companies are taxed and that's a giant issue here.

The Charleston Tea Party website stated it more bluntly:

"Activists should lobby their governor and their state legislatures.  Demand that they exact the full price of reapportionment.  Demand that they exact the full price of their newly gained redistricting powers.  Nothing less is acceptable." 

Yet, the Board's guidelines, set out by their attorney Michael White early in the process, and approved by the Board, included four federal Constitutional principles, including no political gerrymandering.

The Alaska Redistricting Board shall use the following criteria in order of priority listed  in adopting a redistricting plan for the State of Alaska.

1.   Federal Constitutional Redistricting Principles A.  One Person, One Vote”. Standard established by US Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr & Reynolds v. Sims. According to “one person, one vote”, legislative seats must be apportioned exclusively on the basis of population and the populations of the respective legislative districts must be substantially equal. B.   Districts of as nearly as equal size as practicable. Maximum overall deviation of no more than 10%, (i.e., plus or minus 5%).  Deviation is the measure of how much a district or plan varies from the ideal. Good faith efforts to make deviations as small as practicable must be made. C.  No purposeful discrimination against a group that has been consistently excluded from the political process. D.   No political or racial gerrymandering.

from Redistricting Board Webiste

So, if gerrymandering is part of the equation, the Board can't talk about it, because it's illegal.  But it's also hard to prove.  Unless you have a professional on the staff, who is also a registered Democrat who might be willing to blow the whistle if they illegally give Republicans an edge in the mapping. 

I wasn't watching previous redistricting boards ten or twenty years ago, so I don't know how this board operated compared to previous boards.

There were some actions that suggested this board was tinkering with district lines to give Republicans an advantage.  Most notably in Fairbanks.  The first stab at Fairbanks was presented by Board member Holm and approved by the Board with almost no discussion.   Holm, a former Fairbanks legislator who'd lost the previous election to Democrat Scott Kawaski, claimed that he had no idea how the map affected incumbents.   Yet the map had carefully cut out from Kawaski's district, an address listed in the phone book as S. Kawaski.  (It turned out to be Scott's sister's place.  Her name is Sonia.)  Later Fairbanks maps split the City of Fairbanks into different Senate seats (for the first time ever) and had protrusions that included or excluded people in a way that clearly was intended to favor Republicans.

Anchorage's Democratic Senator Davis, Alaska's lone African-American legislator, had a  much more conservative Eagle River district added to her district and lost her reelection bid.  There were a number of other such little adjustments where intention is hard to prove, but the results - such as the toppling of the Senate bi-partisan coalition - would seem to demonstrate.

Plus, long time Republican party chair Randy Ruedrich was a regular presence at Board meetings and often hung around afterward discussing the political implications of district lines with the staff.  I know because I watched him do it on occasion.  The Democratic party chair was also at many meetings, but didn't seem to have the same rapport with the staff, including Executive Director Taylor Bickford who had worked as the 2010 Republican Victory Director for  Ruedrich, just before becoming the deputy director of the board. (He later became director after the unexpected death of director Ron Miller.)

So, given the close ties the previous Executive Director had to the Republican Party chair, it is not stretching it too far to think that the majority of the Board was looking for a similar type of person for the position now.  Not only would this mean that the new director would be amenable to tampering with district lines to favor Republicans, but it's also a good state job for a year or so for a party loyalist.  And the remuneration is nothing to sneeze at.  The job announcement lists the annual salary at "$95,316 to $113,364 depending on experience."

The Alaska Human Rights Commission  does not list political affiliation as an illegal reason to discriminate.   However, it is customary in labor relations that you cannot reject an applicant for a factor that is not listed in the job announcement or job description.  The Board's job announcement did not mention party affiliation as a required or even desired factor for the job.

And the  Alaska Constitution says:

"Appointments [to the Board] shall be made without regard to political affiliation."

This refers to appointing Board members, not staff, but if that standard is there for the board members, it would be reasonable for it to apply to the staff as well. 


Absent any more plausible explanation from the Board, I'm left to conclude that they expected to do this in private and the Daily News' demand that it be public caught them with their pants down.  With everything in view, everyone could see that Dr. Hummel was not only the best qualified, but a perfect fit for the job.  They could also see the political choice they most likely were expecting to hire after a secret process without names made public, was clearly the least qualified of the three.

That meant they couldn't pick their favored candidate and they were afraid to have such a competent Democrat in their inner workings so they wouldn't be able to diddle with the lines enough to keep a healthy Republican majority in the legislature.

I hope the Supreme Court keeps this in mind when they have to evaluate whether this Board can do their job without political gerrymandering. 

Someone I talked to suggested that perhaps the Board would do another search later, waiting for Dr. Hummel to take another job first. We should all be watching. 

Did The Redistricting Board Violate Alaska Public Meetings Law?

I was writing Part 2 of this post on the Redistricting Board, when, I got sidetracked on the Supreme Court decision the Anchorage Daily News relied on to challenge the Board's decision to withhold the names of the applicants.  Maybe this should be called Part 1.5. 

While reading the case, I began to believe that the Board did not comply fully with the decision's interpretation of the Public Meetings Act.  I'm not a lawyer, but I know that the law is not always straightforward and that there might be other cases that have modified the original decision, though it is regularly cited in situations like this.  But as a blogger I can raise the issue. And if I'm right, it points out a reason why the Board needs a competent Executive Director who knows the Alaska Public Meeting laws. 

City of Kenai v. Kenai Peninsula Newspapers, Inc.  is the 1982 Supreme Court decision referred to in the Anchorage Daily News article about the Alaska Redistricting Board's decision to NOT hire an Executive Director.  This is probably a good time to pull out some of the decision and remind people just how public our government is supposed to be.   And also to consider whether the Redistricting Board fully complied with the law.

The case consolidates a case from Kenai and a case from Anchorage where high level public officials' names and resumes were requested by news agencies and the cities refused to furnish the information.  In both cases the courts favored the media.  

The court summarized the Kenai case this way:

During June of 1979, the City of Kenai began soliciting applications for city manager. Subsequently, the City Council met, without notice to the public and without keeping minutes, to review applications and interview applicants. Max Swearingen, the publisher of the Peninsula Clarion, a daily publication of Kenai Peninsula Newspapers, Inc., asked the City to release a list of names and a summary of credentials of the applicants. This request was considered by the City Council on August 2, 1979, and rejected. In a letter written to Swearingen, the mayor voiced a concern that such disclosures would jeopardize the applicants' personal privacy, deter future applications from qualified people concerned about public exposure, and compromise the council's moral obligation to respect the privacy interests of individual applicants.

Kenai Peninsula Newspapers filed suit to require the City to allow inspection of the applications and to enjoin the City Council from further review and action upon the applications except at a public meeting.

The Court summarized the Anchorage case this way:

In February of 1980, the Municipality of Anchorage began soliciting applications for police chief. The nationwide search was conducted through written advertisements which promised that applications would be held in confidence.

From June 1, 1980, through July 8, 1980, Don G. Hunter, a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, sought access to the names and qualifications of the applicants. The Municipality refused to honor these requests on the grounds that disclosure was prohibited by municipal ordinance, and because confidentiality had been promised to all applicants. The Anchorage Daily News filed suit on July 9, 1980 alleging that the applications and resumes were public documents subject to disclosure and requesting injunctive relief and a temporary restraining order restraining the Municipality from appointing a police chief until a hearing on the merits. Mayor Sullivan appointed a new police chief the next day before the hearing on the temporary restraining order. After the hearing, the court ordered the Municipality to refrain from any action confirming the appointment until a hearing on the merits. The appointee subsequently declined the appointment after disclosures reflecting adversely on his qualifications were made.  (As I recall, the Anchorage Times discovered that the new appointee had been let go from his previous position for sexual harassment.)

The Court focused on the balance between the public's right to know and the applicants' right to privacy.

They determined that for important policy positions, the public's right to know trumped the applicants' right to privacy.   They noted that since the resumes requested had been submitted by the applicants, there wasn't likely to be any information prejudicial to the candidates.  But they also recognized that some applicants might not want their current employers to know they had applied for a job elsewhere.   So they allowed for the jurisdictions to notify applicants they could withdraw their applications if they didn't want them disclosed. The court also noted

Of the 89 original [Anchorage] applicants, 8 withdrew their names. An additional 19 could not be reached within the time frame prescribed by the stipulation and their names were also considered to have been withdrawn.

The Court cited a couple of sections of AS 44.62.310 which give considerable weight to the presumption of openness:

FN28. AS 44.62.310 provides: Agency meetings public. (a) All meetings of a legislative body, of a board of regents, or of an administrative body, board, commission, committee, subcommittee, authority, council, agency, or other organization, including subordinate units of the above groups, of the state or any of its political subdivisions, including but not limited to municipalities, boroughs, school boards, and all other boards, agencies, assemblies, councils, departments, divisions, bureaus, commissions or organizations, advisory or otherwise, of the state or local government supported in whole or in part by public money or authorized to spend public money, are open to the public except as otherwise provided by this section. Except when voice votes are authorized, the vote shall be conducted in such a manner that the public may know the vote of each person entitled to vote. This section does not apply to any votes required to be taken to organize the afore-mentioned bodies.

(b) If excepted subjects are to be discussed at a meeting, the meeting must first be convened as a public meeting and the question of holding an executive session to discuss matters that come within the exceptions contained in (c) of this section shall be determined by a majority vote of the body. No subjects may be considered at the executive session except those mentioned in the motion calling for the executive session unless auxiliary to the main question. No action may be taken at the executive session.

(c) The following excepted subjects may be discussed in an executive session:

(1) matters, the immediate knowledge of which would clearly have an adverse effect upon the finances of the government unit;

(2) subjects that tend to prejudice the reputation and character of any person, provided the person may request a public discussion;

(3) matters which by law, municipal charter, or ordinance are required to be confidential.

(d) This section does not apply to

(1) judicial or quasi-judicial bodies when holding a meeting solely to make a decision in an adjudicatory proceeding;

(2) juries;

(3) parole or pardon boards;

(4) meetings of a hospital medical staff; or

(5) meetings of the governing body of any committee of a hospital when holding a meeting solely to act upon matters of professional qualifications, privileges or discipline.

(e) Reasonable public notice shall be given for all meetings required to be open under this section.

(f) Action taken contrary to this section is void. [emphasis added]

And

AS 44.62.312 provides:

State policy regarding meetings. (a) It is the policy of the state that

(1) the governmental units mentioned in AS 44.62.310(a) exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business;

(2) it is the intent of the law that actions of those units be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly;

(3) the people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them;

(4) the people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know;

(5) the people's right to remain informed shall be protected so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.

(b) AS 44.62.310(c)(1) shall be construed narrowly in order to effectuate the policy stated in (a) of this section and avoid unnecessary executive sessions.

The Court also ruled that discussions of the applicants' qualifications should be held in public with one caveat.  Kenai argued that discussing applicants in executive session was necessary so they wouldn't "prejudice the reputation and character of any persons" (one of the exceptions allowed.)

But the Court found that discussing the applicants' qualifications relating to experience and education and background shouldn't prejudice people's reputation.  HOWEVER,  discussing personal characteristics or habits might be prejudicial.  So the Court ruled that when discussing personal characteristics or habits the body could go into executive session.    Here's the court's discussion:

In Kenai the court enjoined the City from “any deliberations toward appointment of a city manager unless those deliberations are held in compliance” with the public meetings law, AS 44.62.310-.312.[FN28] The court held that such deliberations “are not within any of the exemptions of AS 44.62.310(c)” relating to subjects which may be discussed in executive session. The City of Kenai appeals from this ruling, contending that s .310(c) (2) which permits the discussion in executive session of “subjects that tend to prejudice the reputation and character of any person” is applicable. . .

The appellee does not contend that the City Council may never go into executive session when discussing city manager applicants. It argues that generally such discussions do not have a tendency to damage the reputation of the applicants, and that the City erred in routinely convening executive sessions.

Appellee's reading of the statute is not without a degree of merit. Ordinarily an applicant's reputation will not be damaged by a public discussion of his or her qualifications relating to experience, education and background or by a comparison of them with those of other candidates. However, a discussion of personal characteristics and habits may well carry a risk that the applicant's reputation will be compromised. Such a risk is especially acute where the qualities of several applicants are being compared. We believe therefore that the City Council was authorized by s .310(c)(2) to meet in executive session while discussing the personal characteristics of the applicants.[FN29] To the extent that the order of the court prohibits this, it must be reversed.[FN30]    [Emphasis added.]

With that in mind, let's look at what the Board did.


When confronted with the ADN's challenge, they:

• notified the applicants and allowed them to withdraw their applications rather than have them made public
• made the remaining people's names and resumes public
• held the interviews in public meetings

So far, so good.   But then they

• held their deliberations on the candidates in private
• made their decision to not fill the positions in private
• did not respond to requests for information about why they made the decision and who voted for the decision

The deliberations, according to the Supreme Court decision, should have been in public to the extent that they were discussing education, background, and experience.  Just based on those topics, without having to discuss personality or habits (which didn't seem to come up in the interviews anyway), it would be clear that Dr. Hummel was the superior candidate.  (I can't imagine there was any debate on that.)

Then they made the decision to not hire anyone.  This was not a decision that should have been made in Executive Session.  The should have come out of Executive Session, had a motion to not hire anyone, had a discussion, and then publicly voted.  They didn't do this.

Finally, at the request of the media - this blog - they should have explained their reasons for not selecting anyone and should have told me how they voted.  

How Could Redistricting Board NOT Hire Laurel Hummel? Political Neutrality Appears Ripped To Shreds - Part 1

In Write Hard, Die Free, Howard Weaver writes of his frustration as a reporter in Juneau constrained by journalistic convention from actually telling what he knew about what was going on:

"Journalists were objective, right?  Just the facts, ma'am.  I wrote a few stories that tried to poke through the public illusion of the legislature as a high-minded, public-spirited institution, but somewhere between the copy desk in Anchorage and my own constipated sense of fairness they often wound up being  'he-said, she-said' stalemates at best."(pp. 56-57)

I've been covering the Redistricting Board since March 2011.  I generally try to present the facts and let the readers come to their own conclusions.  But sometimes, like now, I feel like Weaver.  And so in these two posts, I'm going to try to explain what I think is going on here and why.  I'm going to comment on the visible facts and speculate on what we can't see.

In this post I'll give the background.   In the next post I'll move to speculation about why this has happened.


The Perfect Applicant Gets Rejected


If God herself had wanted to intervene in the Alaska Redistricting process, She could not have created a more perfect candidate to be the Board's Executive Director than Laurel Hummel.

Yet they chose not to hire anyone.  How could that be?

The job requires knowledge of geography and mapping including GIS.  

Laurel Hummel has a PhD in Geography, specifically human geography which would come in particularly handy when the board has to determine things like socio-political [economic] integration of districts.  She was modest about her GIS skills - she hadn't taught a class on GIS.  She'd only used it and only knew the names of various software that was used to do GIS.  And the kind she had used was the kind the Board used.  The previous director had gone to classes to learn GIS as part of his on-the-job training, and she's apologizing for not having taught it!  [GIS is geographic information systems]

This job requires knowledge of Alaska Native culture.  

Laurel Hummel did her doctoral dissertation on the impact of the US military in Alaska on the Alaska Native population. As part of her dissertation she traveled around Alaska meeting Alaska Native leaders to discuss those impacts.  She's a human geographer and talked about how by understanding that different people had different 'truths' one could hope to understand them and find ways to consensus.

The job requires management skills including working with the press and consensus building and understanding confidentiality.   

Laurel Hummel went through a long list of examples of situations in her 30 year military career where she displayed these skills, including the integration of women in Afghan institutions (I didn't quite get the details here - it may have been the Parliament [a reader emailed it was the army]) and the fact that she worked in Army Intelligence had given her lots of understanding of   confidentiality.  She pointed out that in the Board's case, there was certain information that must be made public, other information that should be public, and information that has to be confidential.  She also said that unlike in some of her military situations, here there were no enemies.  That she regarded the public and the media as part of the process.  (Maybe that's what got her in trouble with the Board.)

There were things that she didn't have personal experience actually using - like the Alaska Public Meetings Law, or the Alaska Administrative Procedures Act.  Yet she had read them, discussed them knowledgeably, and had dealt with similar laws at the federal level.  It wouldn't take long to get up to speed.  Like a day maybe.  Compared with the need to get up to speed with the GIS software, which the Board all had to do, but which Hummel already has used.  This is a non-issue.

There was nothing about this candidate not to love for this job.


Chronology of the hiring process

Feb 12  - After the Alaska Supreme Court said, in December, that the Board had to start all over because they hadn't followed the Hickel Process, the Board met to discuss its next steps.   After a lengthy legal discussion about the Alaska Supreme Court decision, the Board's Petition for Reconsideration,  and the Shelby County v. Holder decision still to be heard at the US Supreme Court then, they talked about their time line for finishing up.  This included interviewing for a new Executive Director around March 14.

Feb. 24 - The Alaska Supreme Court rejected the Board's petition for reconsideration.

Feb. 27 - The US Supreme Court heard the Shelby County v. Holder case and court watchers speculated that the conservatives on the court sounded inclined to rule for Shelby County, though it was not clear how sweeping such a ruling might be.

March 8 - The Board posted notice of meetings on March 13-14 to review applications and interview applicants on their website.  There was a link for people who wanted to listen online.

Screen shot from Board's website - click to make it bigger and clearer

March 12 - I contacted the Board to find out if there would be a back up phone-in option if the LIO connection didn't work. (This has happened in the past.)  I was told that the Chair had decided that since the meeting would mostly be in Executive Session and there would only be a brief public opening of the meeting, there wouldn't be a teleconference of the meeting. 

March 13 - I checked back in the morning and talked to the Chair pointing out that the agenda had the attorney talking about legal issues before the Executive Session and the Board member comments after the session.  I also pointed out that the teleconference link had been advertised on their website.  He said he'd think about it and shortly after I got a call saying I would be able to listen via the Legislative tv channel online. 

The Board met.  Board attorney White spoke about the Shelby County case and its possible impacts on the Board's work, then the Board went into Executive Session.

I also had asked how many applicants there were (originally six, but one had dropped out at that point) and was told that they would all be interviewed.  I knew about the 1982 Alaska Supreme Court decision saying that for high level policy making positions, applicants' names and resumes needed to be available to the public.  So I emailed back to get the names and was told that no one had asked that question, they hadn't gotten permission from the applicants to release the information.  So no I couldn't have them.

March 14 - At the meeting, attorney White explained that the Anchorage Daily News requested that the Board release the names of the applicants and referred to the Supreme Court case.  He said they had notified the applicants that their names would be released.  One applicant dropped out rather than be publicly noted.  Another dropped out, not having  realized the job wasn't permanent.  White also said it wasn't clear whether it was required to have the interviews public, but the Board had decided to do that.

So, at the last minute, the Board released the names and the interviews were public.

UPDATES:
In the next post, I'll speculate on why the Board did not choose a new Executive Director.

Actually, the next post turned out to be a look at the Supreme Court case the Anchorage Daily News cited in getting the meeting opened.  Examining it, it's clear that the decision to NOT hire should have been made in public too.  Actually most of the deliberations on the candidates should have been in public.

Why Open Meetings Act Matters

The Redistricting Board met today - and are meeting in Executive Session to select a new Executive Director as I write this - in open session to interview three candidates to be their new Executive Director.

In this case, there was one candidate whose qualifications and performance were so far above and beyond the other two candidates that I can't imagine that the Board, under any circumstances, could not have chosen her.  Dr. Laurel Hummel, retired Army Colonel and PhD in geography simply had the perfect blend of skills for this job plus she was so well prepared for the interview that she demonstrated her abilities to be prepared, to do her research, and her communications skills.

This job requires a lot of work using GIS software to map election districts.  It also helps to understand Alaska and the diverse needs of our population - particularly, because of the Voting Rights Act - Alaskan Natives.

As a geographer, Hummel has worked with GIS software - particularly the type used by the board ARC.  Her doctoral dissertation was on the military's impact on Alaska Natives.  She's traveled the state and met with Native leaders on these issues and other related issues.

The Board shouldn't have a difficult time coming to a decision.  This is one of those situations where the decision is made for the Board.

The Board is a very political body.  It makes the districts for the state House and Senate.  Of the three candidates, only one appeared to have political connections to the Board.  Brian Hove was an aide to Republican State Senator Ralph Seekins and Fairbanks Board Member Holm welcomed Hove and alluded to their acquaintanceship. 

If the interviews hadn't been public, it would not have been as obvious to the public, how significantly better qualified Hummel was than the other two.  The Board could have mumbled something about confidentiality and hinted at something in her record or interview that disqualified her.  Of the three candidates - Hummel and Morse both said they couldn't start for about four weeks.  Hove, on the other hand, said he could start immediately.  That could have been a reason given to hire him.

But after being (electronically) present at the interviews, it's clear that it would take Hove longer than four weeks to catch up with where Hummel already is today.  In fact he could never catch up with her uniquely perfect qualifications for this job.

As I said before, I don't think this Board has any choice but to select Hummel.  Even if the interviews were not public, they still would have no choice.  And I think the Board members know that Hummel will make their jobs much easier and they would select her under any circumstance.

But another body might well, and certainly have in the past, used confidentiality of personnel matters to conduct their interviews in Executive Session and this open interview process shows how important it is to do this publicly.

I applaud Rich Mauer and the Anchorage Daily News for pressing the Board to do this.  And I applaud the Board for deciding to conduct the interviews in public.


[I should mention that I had never even heard of Laurel Hummel until she began her interview with the Board.  I was just that impressed.  Doesn't happen that often.]

[UPDATE:  Board chose not have an Executive Director.]

Second Applicant Incredible: Laurel Hummel, Vet and Geographer

Here are my very rough notes, no time to clean them up a bit before the next candidate.  But I can't image them finding a better qualified person for this job.  Familiarity with Alaska, GIS, and on and on.

Warning:  Very rough notes:

12:30  - Laurel Hummel

Torgerson: All board members present.  Another Executive Director applicant. 
Hi, thanks for joining us today, taking time, how do we address you.  Dr. ? 
Hummel:  Gloria [Laurel] is just fine.
Torgerson:  First want to clarify terms of the job.  State position, but once maps approved by court, the board will dissovle and everything go away.  We expect to be done about Feb. or March 2014, lots of ifs, could go on more.  Have election plan in place for 1014 elections and filing deadline is June 1.  We want complete and approved plan at least 30 days prior to election itself.  Then job would consist of closing down the office, archiving records.  Might be a year and two months.  Whatever.  Not a full time position
Hummel:  I recognize the irony  the better you do your job the sooner you’re out of the job.
Torgerson: ------ some folks thought it was a full time position.  Just want to make it clear.  Broadcasting and people listening on line don’t have info.
Walk us through your managerial
Hummel:  30 years of mgt and leadership experience.  Retired last summer from career in US army.  20 years intelligence office.  Tenure track position in geography.  Switched tracks became educator and leader in education.  Wide variety of leadership AND staff positions.  Stints in operations, intelligence and security.  Here in Alaska. Company command positions manged ??? people through two levels of command.  13 occupations.  I’m a geographer, human geographer.  One who understands culture and people’s connection to place.  My doctoral study focused on alaska.  How did US military figure into alaska particularly in Cold War era, particularly politically.  How did Alaska of today affected by US military.  When I became a doctoral candidate and completed work at University of Colorado in Boulder.  We moved back to Alaska and looked at the 400+ installation and categorized them.  Complicated relationship the military had with Alaska Native population.  Looked at the environmental spoiling the military was responsible for and the medical experiements and how that colored the relationship, territorial guard and National Guard.  I wouldn’t call myself an Alaskan scholar, but a small piece of Alaska I studied with vigor.  Geography community and opened people’s eyes of complexity.
Also worked in advisory capacity.  Done a lot of staff work - hr, intelligence, - giving advice and opinion with discretion when asked for.  Being in intelligence requires some deft movement becuase always trying to predict the future in chaotic circumstances.
Internal consultatn to translate geographic knowledge in ??  Consultant to LA Times? 
Secretary of Defense.  A lot of high stress situations - Iraq, Afghanistan.  doesn’t faze me.  I believe this positions requires some leadership, but more supervisory, putting a great staff together.  Come to appreciate, if choice of 100% mission, but late or 90% on time. . .  Oral communication.  Legislative advocacy at national level.  Board member of Geographers group 10,000 members, on specific projects involved with legislative advocacy.  Haiti earthquake information center???  Project to bring mroe regions of the world into the geographic community.  Persuasive written communicator, know that’s important to this job, to take complex things and write them persuasively  I brought two books I co-edited.  Markers mark a couple of items I wrote at beginning - intro and prologue.  Tried to take something complex to make it not only understandable, but also interesting.  If I failed, don’t hire me, if I succeeded, please consider me.
Good at inspiring staff. Hire for energy, intelligence, and can train for skill. 
I believe in treating teams very well.  Both people working for me and others.
A lot of coalition building in my career.  Difficult in some environments.  Everyone has a different version of the truth.  From that person’s perspective, that is the truth.  But there all these facets of the truth.
Also believe that I have emotional intelligence - understanding what other people value, how they look at the world, and what they’re thinking, even if they aren’t really saying what they are thinking.  Example of coalition building - in Afghanistand I was in charge of all the programs bringing the first women into ????  Extremely difficult. 95% involved didn’t believe it should happen.  But it did.  I was able to cajole people with this is what is in it for you.  Or this is the big picture.
Discreiton and judgment.  Classified environments.  What you can share and not share.  In this position.  Category - what you have to share, should share, can’t.  things that have to be shared with the public and that’s how it should be.
Come from climate that values ethics.  I hold the highest ethical standards.
I see a big difference - where there’s an enemy.  Here I see no enemies.  Press and people are not enemies.  Educational background not just in geography, but also systmes engineering.  You mentioned shutting things down at the end.  ED really needs to be assessing what needs to be  .. . . happens every ten years.  a shame if we reinvent the wheel every ten years. 
Masters Degree in Strategic Leadership - all about astutely lead and manage public organization.  Feel very qualified for the position.  Exciting.  Natural position for a geographer.  I understand the better you do the job, the sooner you’re out of work.
Torgerson:  Thanks for your service.  An incredible resume in keeping us safe.
Hummel:  That was my honor. 
Torgerson:  Need to call back to LIO there’s a terrible echo.  Stand by. 
We’re back.  Can you tell us your experience with Alaska geographer and Alaska Natives.
Hummel:  Got to travel a lot around state and meet with Alaska Native leaders and Anchorage community and people interested in military history.  Don’t know if this is a quiz and want me to tell you what I know or whether I do have knowledge.
Torgerson: Member Greene will ask more questions.  You’ve answered a lot, go to the next one.  Knowledge of state’s travel policy, open meetings act, and administrative procedures act.
Hummel:  I know what I’ve seen on-line, I’ve read them, pretty clear cut.  We have counsel to bounce question on so we are operating properly.  Never worked in the environment of these specific rules.
Torgerson:  And we have a lot of help.
Next question on your staff work you’ve already answered well.
Next deals with numbers, excel spreadsheets, mapping.
Hummel:  Taught quantitative reserarch methods.  Now stats well.  Qualitative research research as well.  I’ve taken GIS courses, but haven’t taught them.  Have used them in work ARC and other…  At one time with ??? And Geo Express.  Worked on prject we did laser imaging detection and ranging.  Radar with ???   Familiar with GIS software which compresses  . . . Not sure what Alaska uses and I’d have to get refamiliar.  Would take me a bit to get back.
Torgerson:  Our plan is our new director would hire a GIS person to be part of the staff and we have one we’ve used in the past at the D of Labor and he will be available too.  One part time when actually drawing and one on staff.
Hummel:  These skills are very perishable.  Either someone currently working with this or just out of school.
Torgerson:  You sound like you have good skills here. 
Hummel:  Do you use ARC products.
Torgerson:  Yes, exactly.
Website design?
Hummel:  To be honest in DoD by the time we were invested in web technology I was at a rank where others took care of it.  Ancillary teaching products  - power point , spread sheets - I’m a whiz.  But websites?  Not so much.
Torgerson:  One mroe:  Any constraints on when you might start?  Just an idea.
Hummel:  I have a commitment to Lower 48 ???? aside from that.
I have to check the dates ???
Torgerson:  Close to four weeks from now? 
Hummel:  I understand you’re on a tight time line.
Holm:  Thank you for your sevice.  You were an officer?  I’m curious what a human geographer is compared to a demographer.
Hummel:  Thanks for the question.  Population geographer is one type.  Medical, ???,
Demographer studies hatching, matching, and dispatching - birth rates, mortality, death rates.  Population geographer studies all that in the context of a specifc place.  For example.  I worked in Africa, trying to use the fertility rates.  How many children per women, does that have impact on civil wars, acssesiblity of water, availability of land, and whether that predicts stability, falling apart and making war.   Demographer cares about the stats, Population geographer takes the numbers further to see how the numbers affect a place and how secure and stable theya re, their economy.  That’s one type fo human geographer.
Holm:  My question from your understanding of what we do, how does that impact what you want.  You mentioned not reinveting the whell.  What do you expect to accomplish in the job.
Hummel:  The mission of the board is to draw the fairest, legal and defensible maps of the state.  Part of that has to do with socio-economic integration - how people make their living and all these are factors that go into where these boundaries should move. 
If you apply one factor, maybe you violate another.  Determine the best fit.  Not all the categories the same importance.  I know some questions about federal or state mandates.  Have to weight this.  ????  …. population, geography, social, economic weigh all that data to come up with the best fit boundary line. 
Greene:  Thank you for joining us.  Very interesting.  I notice relationships with Alaska during Cold War, 2001 AFN, this tells me you’ve gone out to Rural Alaska, can you elaborate which regions.
Hummel:  Barrow, Nome, Shemiya, Bethel, SE, Hoonah, Sitka,
Greene:  Did you meet with local leadership in those communites.
Hummel:  I was there with back pack, camera, note taking.  I had to ask permission, I was on private property.  Place like Anderson near Clear Air base.  [missed a bunch here]  person who wanted to focus on Native ways of knowing and I picked up on that idea because it is a wondeful one.  I did a project on how the curriculum in public schools could be done better.  If you could use the concept of the fishwheel - you could teach math and art and reading and  . . = keeps kids interested.  Learning community, you learn synergistically.  Very gratified that a lot of people thought it was good idea.  Wasn’t rocket science but it was well received.
Torgerson:  Interesting
PeggyAnn McConnochie:  You already answered my question about mapping software.  I’m a software junkie.  You have no problem going back and becoming good at ARC again.
Hummel:  I’d go back and get the cobwebs off. 
Torgerson:  Other questions?  Do you have any questions for us.
Hummel:  I had a few but they’ve been answered.  I want to thank you for your service because you are volunteers in service to the public.
Torgerson:  I will call when the board makes a decision.  Probably do that subject ot reference checks.  Thanks for coming in.
Stand at ease until 1:20.  We’ll continue right on through.