Expanding Legislature Constitutional Amendment Committee Hearing

House State Affairs Committee
Feb. 2, 2010
8am - 10am
On House Joint Resolution 38

 

 The session began with Rep. Peggy Wilson (R-Wrangell) in the witness stand (I better find out what that's called here) presenting an overview of her resolution to amend the Constitution.  On the panel are the State Affairs Committee members, from left to right, Craig Johnson (R - Anchorage), Carl Gatto (R - Wasilla), Paul Seaton (R-Homer), Committee Chair Bob Lynn (R - Anchorage), Rep. Max Gruenberg (D - Anchorage), (space is Rep. Wilson's place), and Pete Petersen (D-Anchorage.)

You can read the resolution and the sponsor's statement in the earlier post today.  Going through my notes of the 90 minutes or so of meeting, I saw the following issues surfacing.  

1.  The size and nature of rural districts.  This appears to be the motivation behind the resolution.  Rep. Wilson is listed above as being from Wrangle [Wrangell], but the district she represents includes Petersburg, Sitka, and a lot of small villages.  She said she'd been flown on 90 Alaska Airlines flights, charter flights, and ferries to visit her constituents.  One spot she'd only been to once because it cost her $1000 to charter a plane there.

[Second picture shows Committee Chair Bob Lynn and witness Pamela A. Varni, Executive Director  Legislative Affairs Agency.]

Wilson also mentioned Rep. Kookesh's district as the largest in the United States with half the school districts in the state.  "It's easy to represent a town with only one school district and one municipality," she said.

In such districts, constituents are not well represented because there are so many different local situations, such great distances and no road system that maintaining contact with constituents and knowing their issues is difficult.  Also the cost of campaigning is extremely high.




2.  Alaska Constitutional requirements for the make-up of districts.  The Alaska Constitution sets forth standards for how districts should be created. 

Section 6.6 - District Boundaries.

The Redistricting Board shall establish the size and area of house districts, subject to the limitations of this article. Each house district shall be formed of contiguous and compact territory containing as nearly as practicable a relatively integrated socio-economic area. Each shall contain a population as near as practicable to the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the state by forty. Each senate district shall be composed as near as practicable of two contiguous house districts. Consideration may be given to local government boundaries. Drainage and other geographic features shall be used in describing boundaries wherever possible.  [Emphasis added.]

3.  Impacts on Current Districts - The testimony and the questions revealed several layers of issues here:

a. The intent of the resolution is to preserve existing rural districts so that level of representation is not diluted further than it is. The new Census is expected to show increases in the Matsu and Anchorage areas. Witness Gordon Harrison said that without increasing the number of legislators, some rural districts would be be swallowed up and this problem would be even greater. 
[Third picture, committee member Rep. Paul Seaton listening to witness Gordon Harrison.  The Alaska Law Review 2006 bio of Harrison:

The author was the executive director of the Alaska Redistricting Board. Previous employment includes director of the Alaska Legislative Research Agency, associate director of the Alaska Office of Management and Budget, and associate professor of political science at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He is the author of ALASKA'S CONSTITUTION: A CITIZEN'S GUIDE (4th ed. 2002). He has a Ph.D. in International Relations from Claremont Graduate School and a Masters of Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. This Comment seeks to lay out both the history and the author's opinion of redistricting in Alaska. Comments on the opinions expressed herein should be sent directly to the author. - Click on the link to access Harrison's Law Review article on the 2001 Alaska redistricting.]

b.  The additional districts are expected to be in the Matsu and Anchorage areas.   How this will impact specific existing legislative districts may have been a sub-theme of some of the questioning.  It would appear that most districts might have some nibbling around the edges, but in the urban areas with the most population gain, the biggest changes might occur. (I'm consolidating what I think I heard from a number of people here.)  While Rep. Gatto said he stands to gain, at this point no one can predict how individual districts might look at the end of redistricting. 

4.  The Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Rep. Wilson and others pointed out that most, if not all, of Alaska's redistricting plans have been challenged in court.  One factor is the Voting Act. Alaska is one of a small group of States that gets special scrutiny over voting.  I understand this only vaguely and expect I'll learn more as this process unfolds.  Wikipedia gives us some background on the Act.  Footnote 52 of the Harrison article says

Alaska is covered by Section 5 of the Federal Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973© (2000), which requires all political jurisdictions in the state to seek prior approval from the Department of Justice ("DOJ") for any change in electoral laws and procedures. The DOJ objected to the reduction of the Native voting age population from 55.5% to 50.6% in House District 36.

The important part is that whatever the State does, must comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which in our case seems to revolve around whether Alaska Natives lose representation.  What exactly that means and how that is determined, I really don't know.

 [Attorney Jim Baldwin, who was in the Office of the Attorney General and closely involved in the 2001 redistricting, responding to a question from Rep. Peggy Wilson.]


5.  The Costs - This is probably the easiest issue to understand.  Pam Varni testified that they estimated start-up costs of $6.14 million to remodel the Capitol to accommodate the new legislators and after that $4 million a year for the expenses of the new legislators.  The issue of building a new Capitol was raised by Rep. Gatto who then offered Matsu as a perfect spot.  After the meeting, under questioning from reporters, Rep. Gatto said, he was only raising the capital move issue to test the motivation of those supporting the resolution. 



Here, after the hearing, Rep. Peggy Wilson talks with Rep. Craig Johnson while Rep. Paul Seaton listens.  Chair Bob Lynn consults with a staffer.



Rep. Lynn said he would keep public testimony open and there would be further testimony on this issue. 

I missed getting reporter Bob Tkazc's photo yesterday, so here he is questioning Rep. Gatto after the meeting. 


This is starting to feel like blogging the Film Festival in Anchorage.  There are little booklets that come out - maybe everyday, I'm not sure - with lists of hearings and meetings taking place.  Some happen at the same time, but even so, if you go to something, there's not much time to write about it AND go to something else.  I feel like I should be doing a lot more with this report, but time moves on and more is happening, so you'll have to make do with this.

And the marmot did NOT see his shadow in Juneau today.

Late Afternoon Juneau

State Affairs Committee chair Rep. Bob Lynn (R - Anchorage) declared this morning's meeting on Rep. Peggy Wilson's (R - Wrangle) proposed Constitutional Amendment to expand the size of the Alaska Legislature to be one of the most interesting.  I'm writing that up now, but in the meantime, here's a shot I took yesterday as I came out of the State Office Building after the library there closed at 4:30pm.

It's almost the same view from the post of the Juneau Douglas City Museum, but the difference in weather and time give it a totally different look.

House State Affairs Hears Constitutional Amendment

Here 's the House State Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Bob Lynn's letterhead for this week's schedule. 

The committee meets Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8am-10 am.  The Uniform Rules [note:  I couldn't open this page while I was writing the post] which regulate how the House and Senate operate, sets up ten standing committees (Rule 20) including State Affairs and the areas it covers:

State Affairs (programs and activities of the Office of the Governor and the Departments of Administration, Military and Veterans' Affairs, Corrections, and Public Safety, and programs and activities of the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities relating to public facilities)

This was the committee I was originally assigned to, so I'm going to try to attend the meetings, at least as long as there isn't something else of more interesting happening at the same time, and I can get up early enough to attend.

Here's this week's schedule.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010  8:00 – 10:00am

+*    HJR 38  CONST. AM: INCREASE NUMBER OF LEGISLATORS

= Bills Previously Heard/Scheduled
+Teleconferenced

Thursday, February 4, 2010  8:00 – 10:00am

+=    HB 76  LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL & LB&A MEMBERSHIP
   
= Bills Previously Heard/Scheduled
+ Teleconferenced


Saturday, February 6, 2010 8:00 – 10:00am

No Meeting Scheduled

Tuesday (today) it hears a proposed Constitutional Amendment offered by Rep. Peggy Wilson (R - Petersberg.)  [Actually her district covers much more than Petersberg.)  

When a bill is discussed at a Committee meeting like this, a "packet" of relevant material is put together for the committee.  You can see these at the State Affairs link on BASIS. [I won't go into how I got to this link.  It took a while.  BASIS has lots of interesting stuff, but finding it isn't always easy.]

One of the documents is the Sponsor's Statement.  It explains in more everyday language the purpose of the bill.  Here's the Sponsor Statement for HJR 38:

Posted: January 30, 2010 : v26-LS1323\A
Status: (H) STA : 2010-01-19
Next Hearing: (H) STA 2010-02-02 8:00 am, Room 106
Contact: Rebecca Rooney, 465-3824, Committee Aide

''... Each house district shall be formed of contiguous and compact territory containing as nearly as practicable a relatively integrated socio-economic area ...'' Alaska Constitution Article VI, Section 6, titled Legislative Apportionment.

HJR 38 will put a constitutional amendment before the voters in the 2010 general election that would increase the size of the legislature to 48 representatives and 24 senators. Upon voter approval, the measure would apply to the 2012 determination of new boundary's for the election district.

In the first 50 years of statehood, Alaska has not changed the 20 senator, 40 representative size of its legislative body, the smallest bicameral legislature in the nation. In this time span, the population of the state has more than tripled. Most significantly, the population increase is disproportionate, strongly favoring large urban areas over rural and small community areas. The task then of applying the proscriptions of Article VI, above, has correspondingly become more difficult and contentious. Except for the 1960 reapportionment, all subsequent reapportionments have faced successful legal challenges, requiring boundary adjustments and on several occasions, a court constructed plan.

Federal protections of the U.S. Voter Rights Act of 1965 for large minority concentrations further complicate Alaska's reapportionment process. Indeed, they can act to counter the Section 6 requirements. Rural election district distortions are evident in the current plan. There is a probability that the new population distribution of the 2010 census cannot reconcile Section 6 and the Voter Rights Act without increasing the size of the legislature.

Between 1960 and 2006, twenty nine states have changed the size of their legislative body. For the nine states with small populations similar to Alaska (509,000 to 1,429,000), the average size of their legislative bodies is 134 members.

Another measure of the effect of the state's growth and complexity on the work of the legislature is its budget responsibilities. Legislative expenditures for government programs and projects has risen from a figure of $104 million in FY 61 to somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 billion currently. This is an increase from $2700 per capita in 1961 nominal dollars to $10,000 per capita today.

For these reasons, putting a proposal to increase the size of the legislature before the voters is timely and merited.

By the way, HJR stands for House Joint Resolution.  Resolutions are used for Constitutional Amendments (and other things) while HB (House Bill) is just for legislation as I understand this.

And here's the actual resolution as it gets heard for the first time in the State Affairs Committee. This resolution, as it moves through the committees, will accumulate changes, but ultimately it will be in this sort of language and format.  [On my computer, the resolution is cut off on the right.  You can get it in full here.]

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 38                                                                     
01 Proposing amendments to the Constitution of the State of Alaska relating to and                                         
02 increasing the number of members of the house of representatives to forty-eight and the                                 
03 number of members of the senate to twenty-four.                                                                         
04 BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:                                                               
05    * Section 1. Article II, sec. 1, Constitution of the State of Alaska, is amended to read:                          
06            Section 1. Legislative Power; Membership. The legislative power of the                                     
07       State is vested in a legislature consisting of a senate with a membership of twenty-                          
08       four [TWENTY] and a house of representatives with a membership of forty-eight                             
09       [FORTY].                                                                                                          
10    * Sec. 2. Article VI, sec. 4, Constitution of the State of Alaska, is amended to read:                             
11            Section 4. Method of Redistricting. The Redistricting Board shall establish                                
12       forty-eight [FORTY] house districts, with each house district to elect one member of                          
13       the house of representatives. The board shall establish twenty-four [TWENTY] senate                           
14       districts, each composed of two house districts, with each senate district to elect one                           
15       senator.                                                                                                          
01    * Sec. 3. Article VI, sec. 6, Constitution of the State of Alaska, is amended to read:                             
02            Section 6. District Boundaries. The Redistricting Board shall establish the                                
03       size and area of house districts, subject to the limitations of this article. Each house                          
04       district shall be formed of contiguous and compact territory containing as nearly as                              
05       practicable a relatively integrated socio-economic area. Each shall contain a                                     
06       population as near as practicable to the quotient obtained by dividing the population of                          
07       the state by forty-eight [FORTY]. Each senate district shall be composed as near as                           
08       practicable of two contiguous house districts. Consideration may be given to local                                
09       government boundaries. Drainage and other geographic features shall be used in                                    
10       describing boundaries wherever possible.                                                                          
11    * Sec. 4. Article XV, Constitution of the State of Alaska, is amended by adding a new                              
12 section to read:                                                                                                        
13            Section 30. Applicability of the 2010 Amendments Increasing the Number                                     
14       of Members in the Legislature. The 2010 amendments increasing the number of                                     
15       members in the legislature (art. II, sec. 1, and art. VI, secs. 4 and 6) apply only to plans                      
16       for redistricting and proclamations of redistricting adopted on or after January 1, 2011,                         
17       and to the membership of legislatures subject to those redistricting plans and                                    
18       proclamations.                                                                                                    
19    * Sec. 5. The amendments proposed by this resolution shall be placed before the voters of                          
20 the state at the next general election in conformity with art. XIII, sec. 1, Constitution of the                        
21 State of Alaska, and the election laws of the state.

So this is for Tuesday.  It's already Tuesday as I write 

and since it begins at 8am I need to bring this to a close. 

But note that in the schedule there is a + on this committee 

meaning it will be televised online.  I think this is the link 

to see it. Maybe I'll see you at the meeting.  Or you'll see me. 

Actually, I'm not sure how much of the audience

you'll be able to see.  I'll hide in back anyway.                                                                 

Meeting the Press

Started my first Monday as a legislative blogger by reading the Health and Social Services Budget late last night and more over breakfast. The hardcopy is about 388 pages (it's too bulky to carry around with me) and it's got seven or eight pages of ACRONYM glossary, about 365 terms. You can check it out yourself online.I'm not ready to write about it yet, I'm just telling you what today's been like.

I also got a copy of the Department of Law's budget. It's MUCH thinner, just charts and numbers. Not much explanation of the programs and goals.

Rep. Pete Petersen had suggested I come up to learn more about HB 187 "An Act requiring insurance coverage for autism spectrum disorders, describing the method for establishing a treatment plan for those disorders, and defining the treatment required for those disorders; and providing for an effective date." If that seems like a long title, it's because the bills are required to have a title that clearly explains what all is in them. I'll give you some background on that when I write about HJR (House Joint Resolution) 8, which I worked on when I was still a staffer for Rep. G.  
The Health Budget notebook is about this size.  I didn't want the whole notebook.  For now I just took copies of the Bill, the latest version of the Committee Substitute, and two studies of the costs of this.


The thing I wanted to do today was check in with the Press folks. There's a House Minority (Democratic) press office (half a room in the minority leader's three room offices) and there's a House Majority (Republican) press office that's got at least two rooms for itself.





This is Frank Ameduri of the Minority press office.   Don't get the wrong impression.  That's not his office.  His office mate had two guests in his office, so we moved into the Minority leader's office to talk.    I had heard that bloggers weren't being given press credentials.  That's not a big handicap - the main privilege is getting on the floor with the legislators when they're in session and something about being able to ask questions at press conferences.  Since those events are likely to already get the most coverage, that's not essential.  But, on principle, I think bloggers should get credentials if need be, so I had decided today to check out what it means to get a credential, how one goes about it, and who makes the rules and the decisions.

Frank also sent me to Sen. Coghill's office to see a staffer who had worked on these issues  when then Rep. Coghill had been House Rules Chair.  She said she had recommended that the press police themselves.  But she didn't know if that recommendation had been taken up.

Note, the Minority Leader's office is on the fourth floor of the Capitol.  Sen. Coghill's office is on the fifth floor.  There's a stairway in the middle of the building where you see people coming and going.  The staff don't need stairmasters because they're walking up and down all the time.  (There is an elevator, but lots of people use the stairs.)

From there I went to the Republican press room on the first floor.  Sorry, I forgot to take any pictures there.  I sort of met some of these folks while I was a staffer because they're right next to the copy machine Rep. G's office uses.  Besides learning how things work, I also wanted to let this office know that I'm hoping to cover Republican legislators as well as Democrats and to get advice on that.

And then I went down to the ground floor  to find the press room.   There I found Pat Forgey of the Juneau Empire who's in this first photo.   The other two in the front room were Bob Tkacz of the Fishermen's News, and Sean Cockerham of the Anchorage Daily News.  I knew Sean from when we covere of the trials in Anchorage. 

They seemed to be interested in a blogger being credentialed and said someone from Juneau had applied and been turned down.





I forgot to take pictures until after Bob had left, but Pat thought his desk would be a good stand in.  

And here's Sean.  He says the ADN will rotate reporters down.  I think he said Lisa Demer and Rich Mauer would be down later in the session. 

There's also a backroom and I met a couple of folks from KTUU Anchorage in there - Ted Land and Daniel Hernandez.

Then I went off to finally nail down an internet option for the apartment.  Juneau Electronics, on the Juneau end of the Juneau Douglas bridge, has an agreement with ATT which let's you get a box to get the signals without having to either get a two year contract or buy the gadget for $200.   They also have Apple parts.

Juneau Beauty

My face is still red for calling the Juneau Douglas City Museum "Anchorage Douglas ..." No excuses. Here's a peace offering.

I needed my credit card to return something on my run Saturday.  Unfortunately, I stuck it into my camera case and I'm guessing it fell out when I took this picture from the Juneau - Douglas Bridge.

Or maybe it was after I took this picture of Douglas.  But when I got to the Douglas side and was ready to take a picture back toward Juneau, the card wasn't in the case.  I ran back.  I'd met a friend walking his dog on the bridge.  And there was another man following him.  I ran across but didn't see the card.  My friend hadn't seen it either.  I went through the pictures on my camera back to the hardware store.  No card.  I figured I must have dropped it into the channel.  I reported my card when I got home.  But Sunday, when I finally got to my emails, there was a message that Greg had found it with his phone number.  Nice. 

 

Breakfast view from our kitchen Sunday morning.   The outdoors was tugging at me.  I encouraged J to join me.  The avalanche danger was low last week and there hadn't been any significant changes.  We're doing Basin Road until we're ready to turn back.

 

  

 

 

 

Old mining equipment (I'm assuming) at the beginning of the Perseverance Trail.

And suddenly we're back into the inhabited end of Basin Road.

Alaska House Dems Want More Info On Pricewaterhouse Data Breach

All of the House Democrats* have written a letter questioning the Department of Law on the State's handling of the PricewaterhouseCoopers  breach of the TRS** and PERS** data bases.  They wrote (in part): 

 Under AS 45.48 the Personal Information Protection Act, PricewaterhouseCoopers is required to immediately notify every person who may be affected by the security breach by a written document mailed to the most current address or by electronic means.  We have the following questions:

• Is PricewaterhouseCoopers fully complying with the law?
• Has the state waived any requirements under AS 45.48 for PricewaterhouseCoopers?
• What does PricewaterhouseCoopers need to do to comply in full with AS 45.48?
• When did PricewaterhouseCoopers lose the data and when did it know of the loss?
• When and how did the state learn about the lost data?
• What are the details of this settlement?  Will the settlement document be made public?

A not-so-subtle point in all this is the difference between 'agreed to' and 'are required by law to'.   One paints the company as volunteering to do all these things out of the goodness of their corporate hearts (since corporations are constitutionally people, I guess they have hearts too right?).  The other shows the company doing what they are required by law (and... no more?  no less?)  


According to Dermot Cole's Fairbanks NewsMiner piece, the most complete media coverage I can find on the breach,

" In early December, PricewaterhouseCoopers discovered that the information was missing."

I looked up AS 45.48 and searched for the word 'immediately.'  It only showed up once:

Sec. 45.48.070. Treatment of certain breaches.

(a) If a breach of the security of the information system containing personal information on a state resident that is maintained by an information recipient occurs, the information recipient is not required to comply with AS 45.48.010 - 45.48.030. However, immediately after the information recipient discovers the breach, the information recipient shall notify the information distributor who owns the personal information or who licensed the use of the personal information to the information recipient about the breach and cooperate with the information distributor as necessary to allow the information distributor to comply with (b) of this section. In this subsection, "cooperate" means sharing with the information distributor information relevant to the breach, except for confidential business information or trade secrets. (emphasis added)

This has too much jargon for me to jump to any conclusions on a Sunday afternoon when I can't get an attorney to help me interpret this.  But assuming that PricewaterhouseCoopers is indeed an 'information recipient,' I would be concerned about their interpretation of 'immediately' given they are reported to have discovered the breach in 'early December' 2009 and notified the State of Alaska in late January 2010.

Were they spending all that time trying to decide how much they wanted to cooperate?

Another wrinkle in all this is the fact that PricewaterhouseCoopers had the data because they were analyzing it as part of the state’s lawsuit against Mercer. From the  New York Times:

The lawsuit says that Mercer’s mistakes hindered the ability of Alaska’s retirement system to meet its obligations to former public employees. . .

That Mercer erred in its calculations is bad enough — getting such details right, after all, is what the firm advertises as its stock in trade.

But an even bigger grenade dropped earlier this year when the Alaska board, citing depositions of Mercer employees, contended that company executives had known about the actuaries’ errors and covered them up.

If Alaska prevails in court, it could entitle the retirement system to punitive as well as treble damages.

Mercer, with 4,000 employees in 150 offices around the world, concedes that the Alaska case is a threat. In its usual corporate filings, a brief discussion of the case heads a list of risks facing Marsh. It also notes that it has “limited” insurance to cover the costs of an adverse outcome.

 Given that the PricewaterhouseCoopers is working with the State in the lawsuit, perhaps the State worded the document because

• they have developed a close relationship with their consultants and felt that PW was well intentioned and/or 
• they want to make sure that they continue to be a good partner as the case progresses through the court system.

Of course, because I can only come up, quickly, with two logical options doesn't mean there aren't others.  I haven’t spoken to the anyone from the state so this is all simply speculation. 


*  There are a couple more (rural) Democrats who have joined the Republican majority, presumably because they feel they can secure more resources for their constituents that way.

**Teachers Retirement System and Personnel Retirement System

Juneau Symphony Performs Co-Sponsored Clarinet Concerto

I’m in no way a music critic.  I know if I liked it or didn’t and can only tell you why in the most general way.  So I’m just reporting that we went to hear the Juneau Symphony.  For the record, one of the tickets we had was a freebie given to a legislator who gave it to me.  I’m not making an editorial comment here.  I did use the ticket so I obviously don’t think it’s unethical, though I do wonder what the cumulative impact is.  Still pondering this.  But as a new comer here, I’m reporting things I think are interesting.   My wife, who’s been taking the bus to get places outside the downtown area, thinks the Juneau transit should give free bus passes to legislators so they can see a different side of Juneau and talk to people they don’t usually talk to.  We paid the full $22 for the second ticket. 


The concert was in Juneau Douglas High School’s auditorium. It was a busy night at the high school, with two basketball games and then the homecoming dance. The Symphony cut the intermission short in hopes of getting the concert done before the music of the dance seeped into the concert hall.  And, for the record, we didn’t hear any dance music until the last notes of Dvorák were over. 

What made the concert particularly interesting was the Alaska premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s Clarinet Concerto with guest clarinet soloist Jon  Manasse, who spoke about the piece with conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett before the performance.  There’s a snippet of the conversation on the video.




The program note on the Clarinet Concerto, written by the composer says:

The Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, Op.110  was written for clarinetist Jon Manasse, and commissioned by a consortium of orchestras, and organizations composed of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Bozeman, Juneau, Las Cruces, North State (CA), and Roanoke symphony orchestras, Erie and Evansville philharmonic orchestras, The Chappaqua Orchestra, Hanson Institute for American Music at the Eastman School of Music, Buffet Crampon USA, Vandoren Paris, River Concert SEries at ST. Mary’s College of Maryland & The Chesapeake Orchestra and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The model of a number of small groups and communities grouping together to do something that none of them could do alone is one that probably could well be used for a lot of other projects. 

It was a good evening, I enjoyed the music, and there were parts of the new piece that particularly appealed.  I had a sense of water in many spots and I liked the way the orchestra and the soloist were so closely connected.  But a friend with us talked about how beautifully the piccolo dueted with the clarinet and how good the first french horn was, but that was way beyond my abilities to discern the subtleties.   (The symphony picture was while they were tuning up.)

Juneau Douglas City Musuem

 I stopped in the City Museum last week and wanted to share a little peek. 

The museum is between the Capitol (the big brick building on the right) and the State Office Building (where I took the picture from.)  It's that yellowish building. 



The current exhibit had the kind of work I tend to like, though I got the sense that the volunteer who showed me around was less enthusiastic.  Bright colors, whimsical messing around with reality.  Challenging how people think about things.  By local artist Dan DeRoux.  

  

 

The upcoming exhibit is called 12X12 and anyone can enter.  But whatever you do has to be the dimensions of 12 inches X 12 inches.  You can even add a third dimension, but it has to be 12 inches too.


And as this was being explained, local artist Dianne Anderson (I think that's right, but I may have gotten it wrong) was registering - entry fee is $12.12 - and dropping off her entry. 


There was also this big picture by the door and Dianne explained to me it had been in the Holy Trinity Church, which burned down in 2006 and has been rebuilt and is ready for opening soon.  This picture (and a couple of others) had been sent Outside for cleaning and so were saved from the fire.  They are resting in the museum until the church opens.  I'd like to tell you that I did the reflection for effect - except the effect is terrible.  But you can get a sense of the picture.  There was no place I could stand without getting lots of reflection.  And my powershot doesn't have a polarizing  filter. 

 

We met a friend at the museum today and then went to lunch.  But while we were there I saw this picture of Joseph Juneau, Juneau's namesake.  So I thought it worthy of posting.  The Joseph Juneau link is to findgrave.com, and it says he's in the Evergreen Cemetery here, so you can expect to see a picture of his grave if I find it.  

There's also historic stuff in the museum and a giant topographical model of the Juneau area created in 1967.  Expect more some other time. 

Reps. Tuck and Gara Talk Strategy

There was a surprise birthday party for one of Rep. Chris Tuck's (D-Anchorage) staffers late Friday afternoon.  That's her leaning out of the doorway on the left.   Speaking of staffers, there is one known for his bow-tie wearing and practical jokes.  When I poked my head into my old office to say hi, he was blacking out a small piece of scotch tape.  I had no idea what he was up to, but later I saw Ted on the floor under the desk checking the connections on his computer.  Turns out PJ (Practical Joker) had put the tape over the sensor on Ted's mouse so it wasn't working.  I mention this just to let you know that while the staff do work hard, they also can be silly.  But I won't talk about these practical jokes any more because I don't want to encourage him in any way.  Some people get their kicks by making others' lives more difficult.  We need more people who get their kicks by making other people's lives easier.

Anyway, while people were eating birthday cake, I took the opportunity to introduce myself to Rep. Tuck and explain my new role.  I've been doing that a lot in the last couple of days - talking to folks I first met as Rep. G's staffer and letting them know that my new  role is as a blogger.

 Rep. Tuck had seen me introduced, but we'd never actually talked.  He invited me into his office and were talking about my blog and about his projects when Rep. Les Gara (D - Anchorage) walked in to talk to Rep. Tuck.  I got up to leave, but Rep. Gara said I could stay.  So I did. And took pictures. 

When they were done I said, "OK, I'm still working out my role here, what can I blog and what not?" 

So, I can tell you that they talked about the budget, they talked about primary education,  about UAA, local Anchorage projects, and Vocational Technical education among other things.

In my short career as a staffer I worked for a Democrat and the House Democrats pretty much know who I am.  I did get to meet some of the Republicans in their offices when Rep. G took me with him to talk about legislation that was coming before the State Affairs Committee.  I don't intend this to be a Democrats only blog.  I'm expecting to show you Republicans as well.


 Speaking of Democrats,

The Alaska Democratic Party Executive and Central Committee meet in Juneau January 29th and 30th. A reception will be held at 5 p.m. Friday, January 29th at the Baranof Hotel, Gastineau Suite.

I did stop by at the reception where I got this picture of two people who grew up in Juneau - Katie Hurley, (who has done many things including being a State Legislator and Chair of the Alaska Commission on the Status of Women and "was the secretary to territorial Gov. Ernest Gruening and chief clerk to the Alaska Constitutional Convention") and Dennis Harris, who's a local writer, musician, activist, and walking encyclopedia of all things Juneau.

Eurydice at Perseverance Theater

This dark stage served as the underground in Perseverance Theater's production of Eurydice Wednesday night.  J and I had planned to go Friday last week until we found out it was in Douglas, 3.5 miles away according to Google Maps. And then I found out all legislators and staff had been invited to a special showing Wednesday. (I was transitioning from staff to blogger that evening.)  And we were able to get a ride over there.  


We'd heard great things about Preservation Theater and ultimately those expectations were fulfilled.  But I have to say the story itself was more like the story in an opera - an excuse for the music and the visual spectacle on stage. 


I like what most consider bizarre electronic music in which the pauses can be as important as the sounds.  The instruments in this play leaned heavily Asian.  The three stones - a sort of zombie-clown costumed chorus - undulated across the stage individually and then collapsed into an intertwined lump as the scene progressed.  They were wonderful.

Two of the stones are on the left of the picture and the third is on the right. 


I was completely absorbed when the father created a room in the underground by wrapping white string around the black frame in the pictures.  It went on for a long time and had a lyrical beauty.  

If a strong narrative is your thing, then you might react like one of the people near me who said, "There were two tragedies tonight, one on the stage and the other was that I had to be there."  But I walked out exhilarated  by the beauty of the visuals and the audios.