Ugly Anchorage or a City To Match Our Mountains? The Decision is NOW

OK, I admit, we're not likely to have a city to match our mountains. (Though there are places in the world where the city scape is spectacularly beautiful and in harmony with their environments.) 


Tonight the Anchorage Assembly 'starts' public hearings on changes to Title 21 - the Municipal Code that governs design criteria for developing Anchorage into the future.  I say 'starts' because this has been going on over ten years and was all set to be adopted when Sullivan became mayor and hijacked the process.  (Yes, I'm moving out of my normal even handed perspective into a more editorial one.  Sometimes there aren't two sides.  Sometimes one side is right and the other is not.  While I don't think this is a case of right and wrong, it is a case of much righter and much wronger.)

I see several interest groups here:

1.  Planners - those who recognize that every large successful business makes plans about what they are going to do in the future so that they can stay competitive.  These folks believe that governments, involving and representing the vast majority of citizens, should come up with plans for simple things that make, in this case, our city safer, easier to walk and bike in (this includes kids, the poor, the elderly), and just a lot nicer to look at.

Anchorage has gone through a very comprehensive process over a ten year period to come up with such a plan.

2.  The Builders - those who make their living in various areas of construction - from architects to pavers.  While this group is relatively small in percentage of the Anchorage population, they have, individually, a much bigger interest in this and have wielded a lot of political power to stop the community process from being implemented and with the help of Mayor Sullivan made radical changes to the plan so that they can continue to build with as little oversight by the City planning department.  They can continue to build with just their immediate costs in mind and with little interest to the impacts their buildings have on the availability of decent, durable housing, and the visual impact of their buildings of the neighbors.  Some of these people already do forward thinking projects, but most don't and don't want anyone to restrict them in any way.

3.  The average citizen who doesn't think much about long term impacts, doesn't think she has any power to make a difference, is terribly busy anyway, and/or doesn't even know what Title 21 is.

4.  The "in their own world' delusional types.  These are folks for whom out-of-context facts and half-truths are ammunition to support their own dysfunctional fancies.  In this case they are remnants of the Anchorage Tea Party movement who have declared Anchorage's Title 21 to be a conspiracy to take over the world by the same people who are pushing the UN's Agenda 21.   Glenn Beck is one of those pushing this bogey-man to get these folks to continue to vote against their own self interests.  Sorry, I know it's more subtle than this, but not a lot. Really, there were lots of these people at the Planning and Zoning meetings on Title 21.  Lots. 

While other parts of the US not only recognize same-sex marriage, our friends at the Anchorage Baptist Temple have managed to keep the words gay and lesbian out of our anti-discrimination law.

And we're just as far behind the rest of the US in planning and zoning standards that help prevent the worst of developer practices.  Good developers support planning because then they can do well designed projects that make sense for their immediate client in the short term, and also for their client and the rest of Anchorage in the long term.  Without the guidelines, they get undercut by unscrupulous builders and get forced into shortcuts that ultimately hurt their clients and the rest of us.

The builders argue there is a shortage of land in Anchorage to develop so they shouldn't be restricted.  I'd argue the shortage means that what is left is at a premium and the price of the land will mean their clients can afford to do things that have long term value for their clients and the rest of us.

Is the Title 21 that came out of the community planning process perfect?  Certainly not.  If you want perfection, try soap bubbles.  But it's a lot more reflective of what the greater public that particiapted in its creation wanted, than the developer mangled rewrite that Dan Coffey got two lucrative contracts from Mayor Sullivan to do.  Even Sullivan didn't take all off Coffey's recommendations. 


Here's some background from those who have worked for years to improve the design quality of Anchorage including tips for what you can do: 

Tuesday, January 15, Loussac Library Assembly Chambers, 7pm.

[My sense is that this won't be finished tonight.  But you should be at the Assembly Chambers to let the Assembly members know how the public feels. And to get riled up by the nonsense some people are spewing.  And to fill my space since I'm out of town. In the previous meetings the Tea Party folks were there in number and volume opposed to any government planning because this was all an Agenda 21 conspiracy.  If you absolutely can't go, watch online.  But one of the best ways to influence the Assembly is to be there in person for your interests.  Bring the kids so they can learn how democracy works.  Let them see what happens if their voice is or isn't represented.]

You don't have to understand the newest code.  The Assembly certainly doesn't.  They only received copies of it last weekend, and it's over 700 pages long. 

Just come and talk about what you're an expert on:  Why you choose to live here, and what problems you've lived with that you want fixed before another ten years go by.  

Folks who scorn improving the city's quality of life will be there talking about their property rights and fighting sidewalks and landscaping because it's 'too expensive.'  Your voice is very much needed.

Tell the Assembly you want them to approve the 'Provisionally Adopted Title 21' that went through 8 YEARS of public review and compromises.

Anchorage Citizens Coalition will prepare technical comments after we've gone through the newest Title 21 with the help of our great volunteers.  If you can help on any particular issue, please contact us.

We have two kinds of threats from the Assembly:  

1.  The Assembly hasn't yet learned that if we want small, walkable neighborhood shopping districts they need to help by concentrating commercial/retail development, not scattering it all over town into industrial and residential districts.  We need 'Mixed Use District Zones,' that will produce compact shopping areas next to neighborhoods, and other strategies that they threw out last year.

2.  The Tea Party, the Building Owners and Managers Assoc. and the new Planning & Zoning Commission didn't get all they wanted from the Assembly's Title 21 Committee, and we can expect them to come back for more on issues such as 

• allowing taller commercial buildings inside neighborhoods (B1A and B2B zones,) 
• squeezing homes onto lots that are currently considered 'too small,'
• reducing the open space children need for outdoor play,
• dumpster screening,
• sunlight into neighborhoods, and more. 

Here's what we expect to be at stake as the Assembly votes on Title 21:

• sidewalks on both sides of the street and to connect schools, parks and neighborhoods (keep pedestrian standards.)
• keeping tall buildings from shadowing our yards and south facing windows, (keep midtown and other B-3 business zoning, business height transition standards for neighborhoods)  (Note: no standards have yet been developed that protect homes from shadowing other homes.)
• incentives to build small, active, walkable neighborhood shopping districts out on the main streets, (bring back mixed use zoning districts, do not scatter mixed uses into industrial and residential zones.)
• keeping ticky tacky cookie cutter houses out of our neighborhoods, and making sure new homes have more landscaping and less asphalt. (Strengthen standards for single family and multifamily design, landscaping, garage front domination.)
• protecting our wildlife corridors and fish habitats (Restore 50 foot stream setbacks, limits on fences & buildings next to streams.)
• making sure children have decent, attractive play space near their homes.  (Maintain 'useable' open space standards.)
• making sure it's safer to walk in midtown as it continues to grow.  (Restore height restrictions in midtown that allow for increased height only after building adds landscaping, sunlight protection, public space, plazas, etc.)

Besides going to the meeting you can:

Call your Assembly representative.  http://www.muni.org/Departments/Assembly/Pages/MemberProfiles.aspx

Work with your Community Council to adopt a resolution promoting the Provisionally Adopted Title 21 and supporting Anchorage 2020.  http://www.communitycouncils.org/  Other councils' resolutions are available for your review by contacting AnchorageCitizensCoalition@gmail.com

More info is at accalaska.org and at the Facebook site Free Title 21

The muni has posted all relevant Title 21 documents at: http://www.muni.org/Departments/OCPD/Planning/Projects/t21/Pages/Title21Rewrite.aspx

Redistricting Board Petition to SC - Part 2: I Can't Figure Out A Sexy Title For This

[I admit this is a pretty wonky subject and post.  But I believe that with a little help, this stuff is understandable.  Since I attended and blogged most of the Redistricting Board meetings in Anchorage, I have some understanding of the process and familiarity with the people involved and the events that happened.  This is the third post on the Board's petition.  I'm trying to put this into digestible helpings.  I'm hoping, after going over the petition, I can speculate on what might happen and what it means.  So far redistricting has changed the districts enough to knock out the Senate bi-partisan coalition and shift the power toward the Republicans who want to give the oil companies a giant tax break.  So this stuff isn't minor.]

The first post is an overview of key terms and events to get people up to speed.

The second post looked at the first part of the Alaska Redistricting Board's petition to the Alaska Supreme Court to reconsider their decision requiring the Board to redraw the districts for the 2014 election.  I focused on the first part of Part A - allegations by the Board that the Court misconstrued the number of house districts that were the same in their Hickel template.  When I looked carefully, it seemed to me that the Court had it right and that the Board's allegations got confused over the the Hickel plan and the Hickel  template.

In this post I'll look at the other allegations that the Court erred in their decision:

"Second, the Court also misconstrues the material fact that the configuration of the House districts used in the Hickel template somehow limited the configuration of the Board's final Hickel plan. . ."

"Third, the Court also misconstrues the material fact that by first drawing districts that complied with the federal Voting Rights Act ("VRA") in its original Proclamation Plan, the countours of the entire map were affected. . . "

"The Court also overlooked a material question in this case by declining to decide whether the Board's Hickel plan complies with the Alaska Constitution. . ."

Actually, all three of these seem to be variations of a single theme:  How does the order of creating the districts affect the final outcome?  The overview post mentioned above goes into the Hickel process and what all that means, but I think it makes sense to get into it again here.

The Hickel Process

In a 1992 Supreme Court decision - Hickel v. Southeast Conference* - the Supreme Court wrote:  

Article VI, cl. 2 of the United States Constitution provides that “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme law of the land....” This mandates that provisions of state law, including state constitutional law, are void if they conflict with federal law. To the extent that the requirements of article VI, section 6 of the Alaska Constitution are inconsistent with the Voting Rights Act, those requirements must give way. However, to the extent that those requirements are not inconsistent, they must be given effect. The Voting Rights Act need not be elevated in stature so that the requirements of the Alaska Constitution are unnecessarily compromised.

I understand that to mean:  Federal law takes precedence over state law.  Thus, if the requirements of the Alaska Constitution conflict with the requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act, the VRA wins.  BUT, the VRA isn't so important that the Alaska Constitution is unnecessarily compromised.

So they told the people redistricting then, the steps to follow:

The Board must first design a reapportionment plan based on the requirements of the Alaska Constitution. That plan then must be tested against the Voting Rights Act. A reapportionment plan may minimize article VI, section 6 requirements when minimization is the only means available to satisfy Voting Rights Act requirements. (emphasis added)

So, first the Board must make a map that meets the Alaska Constitutional Requirements, then, they can make adjustments to that map, if necessary, to meet the VRA requirements.  But the deviations from the Alaska Constitution must be as minimal as possible.


This is the essence of the Hickel process.  The Board has to meet both the requirements of the Alaska Constitution AND the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA.)  See the overview post for more information on this.

[Update: Hickel was not on the Board's radar when the went into this process, though two Board members are mentioned as participants in the case.]  The Board decided to create the Native districts first and then, they figured, the other districts - many in more densely populated areas - would be easier.  This seemed logical to them because they needed approval of their plan from the federal Department of Justice before any plan could be implemented.

But if there are any districts that do not meet the Alaska Constitutional requirements, they have to deviate from the Constitution the least amount of necessary to meet the VRA.  The Hickel process - requiring the Board to do the districts strictly based on the Alaska Constitution first, then made deviations, if necessary, to meet the VRA - as I understand it, is the only way the Supreme Court believes it can determine if the deviations are minimal.  They would do this by looking at the Constitutional map and then compare it to the map created from it to meet the VRA.  This ability to compare the two maps is how they can determine whether a particular deviation was necessary.

Question 1:  Is it possible to to meet both the Constitutional and VRA requirements?  

Theoretically, yes. [And the Board says they've done it.]   I imagine the Board hiring some computer game wizards and letting them loose to play with the computer until they come up with such districts.  The Board members certainly were not the computer wizard type.  Perhaps member Peggyann McConnochie came closest to that.  The staff were younger and more comfortable on the computers, but they weren't total computer savants and they had a lot of different other tasks to do.

Alaska's huge empty spaces and scattered population make redistricting difficult.  Plus the Native districts are in low density regions.  There are more than enough Alaska Natives in Anchorage to make up a Native district, but they are too interspersed among the non-Native population, or so the conventional wisdom tells us, to create an urban Native district.

The Alaska Constitution's requirement for compactness is also tricky in the largely unpopulated areas of the state.  We've had a regular district that is bigger than most states - a district with most of its population off the road system.  It's very hard for a legislator to physically meet with the constituents.  By comparison, you could walk across some Anchorage districts easily in a day.

Another problem is the criterion of 'socio-economically integrated.'  By definition, they said, any Anchorage district meets that criterion, even though it could have very high and very low income populations and people whose native languages are very diverse.  The current plan includes a district with Fairbanks suburbs - on the road system, close to the second largest city in the state - and tiny Native villages along the Bering Sea far off the road system, some without running water or sewage systems. 

I suspect that by the 2020 census there should be computer programs that can generate 100 maps that humans can then scan and evaluate on the more subjective factors.

Question 2:  Does completing the Native districts first limit how well the other districts will meet the Alaska Constitutional requirements?

Riley, who brought suit against the Board, argued that by doing the Native districts first "the Board painted itself into a corner."  The original districts limit the options for the other districts, allowing the Board to say things like, "We have no choice but to . . ."

The Board argues that

 "[w]hile the configuration of these [four VRA] districts may have some ripple effect on the bordering districts, they did not impact the contours of every district in the State.  For example, the configuration of the House districts in Anchorage, Kenai, and Mat-Su Borough were not in any manner influenced by VRA considerations.

Except that they also said earlier in the petition:

The Board's Hickel template, which was nothing more than a beginning point for its Hickel Plan, used only twenty-two (22) unchallenged, constitutional House districts from the original Proclamation Plan:  Anchorage HD 12-27, Southeast HD 31-36, and HD 40.  A side-by-side comparison of the Hickel template and the Hickel plan clearly shows the district configurations are vastly different."

 In this paragraph they are trying to show that there were lots of changes from the original Proclamation Plan to the Amended Proclamation Plan.  But it seems to contradict this other claim of the VRA districts do not impact the others.  Maybe I'm wrong, but as I read this, it implies that at least 18 districts were impacted by trying to get the VRA districts right.

Let me explain my logic.  They started with the Hickel template that had 36 districts from the original Proclamation Plan.  The four they had to work on were all Alaska Native districts (HD 36, 37, 38, and 39.)  To make them work they decided to borrow population from Fairbanks districts.  This then had a ripple effect which included getting into Matsu districts and Kenai districts.  In the quote above, they don't mention Kenai and Matsu as unchanged.  That seems to contradict the quote before it which says ". . .Kenai, and Mat-Su Borough were not in any manner influenced by VRA considerations."  The way I see it, the ripples from getting districts 36, 37, 38, and 39 to work affected Matsu and Kenai districts. Though I acknowledge my own head is getting foggy at this point.

An additional issue is that they used the VRA districts 37 and 38 to justify making changes in Fairbanks that then paired two Democratic Senators (but left an adjacent open district without an incumbent in it that could have left the two Dems in separate districts) and other tricks that made incumbent Democrats more vulnerable.


I'm convinced that the Fairbanks districts were tinkered with to make it easier to elect Republicans.  The city of Fairbanks was split up - one of the subjects of the original court challenge - and there were little attempted and realized protrusions sticking into other districts that enabled a particular politician here to run in a neighboring district, or to exclude a politician from his traditional district.  Here's a post from the original court hearing before the Superior Court discussing political gerrymandering to give a sense of why I believe this.  I also watched how the original Fairbanks districts were brought to the Board and approved.

I'd note that the dissenting opinion on the Court pointed out that the 'blank spaces' on the template made up half the geography of the state and were bigger than Texas so they had lots of room to play with.  


Question 3:  Does it make sense to draw the maps to meet the Alaska Constitution without thinking about VRA?

I've pondered this question throughout the process.  I understand the Court's logic that they need a good constitutional map so they can tell if, really, only the least amount of variance from the Constitutional requirements were made to meet the VRA requirements, or if the VRA was used as an excuse to gerrymander the districts.

But I think this is where the painting metaphor fits in.  It appears (I can't prove this) that doing the districts without keeping the VRA in mind could lead you to painting yourself in a corner.  You could do the whole state with beautifully constitutional districts (compactness will always be a problem for a couple of districts though) but then getting from there to VRA approval may cause even greater variance from the Constitution than if you had kept the VRA in mind all along.  Why?  Because the constitutional districts you come up with, if you ignore VRA totally, may be so at variance with the VRA that to change them to meet VRA would cause serious boundary moving.  All this, of course, assumes the Board members have no political motivation at all. 

It is a variation of the chicken and the egg dilemma.  Board member Brodie was at odds with the rest of the Board from the beginning.  He felt that the focus on the Native districts first - really just eight or nine districts out of forty - meant the board was spending, in his words, 90% of our time on 10% of the population.  That would mean at the end, they would have relatively little time to work out all the other districts where most of the population lived. And that's what happened.

Fairbanks and Anchorage maps were brought in by members and played with in a day each - at least so fast that it was hard to know what the districts looked like and the practical implications before they voted to approve them.  Was that intentional?  My guess for Fairbanks is definitely yes.  And I'm sure they wanted to minimize the public's opportunities to see and comment on how they played with boundaries like adding a mostly white and Republican Eagle River House district to the Senate district of the only African-American in the legislature. 



Back To The Board's Assertions:

So, what does this discussion mean in terms of the Board's assertions in their Petition?

"Second, the Court also misconstrues the material fact that the configuration of the House districts used in the Hickel template somehow limited the configuration of the Board's final Hickel plan. . ."

The way I see it, once you draw one or two or eight districts and lock them in, you limit the options for all the other districts.  The Board's claim that this isn't the case doesn't ring true to me. Especially when the Native districts are so large geographically.

"Third, the Court also misconstrues the material fact that by first drawing districts that complied with the federal Voting Rights Act ("VRA") in its original Proclamation Plan, the contours of the entire map were affected. . . "

This seems to me a rewording of the previous contention.  Yes, again, once you draw one district, that limits your options for the next ones.  Not all districts will be directly affected - like those in the middle of a high density area like Anchorage.

The Board itself said, clumsily, that while the original Hickel template had most of the districts intact from the previous plan, the final plan had only 22 districts that hadn't changed.  (Here they were trying to show that the districts weren't the same as in the original plan the court threw out.)  As I read it, I thought that's the point the Court is making.  The contours of each district have to impact the contours of the adjacent districts, and then that ripples out to the ones they touch.  And since the Native districts tend to be the largest districts, they will touch the most adjacent districts.   And I didn't see any evidence in the petition to counter this. 

"The Court also overlooked a material question in this case by declining to decide whether the Board's Hickel plan complies with the Alaska Constitution. . ."

I haven't address this point yet.  Here the Board makes an interesting point.  They argue that the Supreme Court should simply judge the outcome and not how the Board got there.  If all the districts were found to be constitutional, then, they argue, it shouldn't matter because there is no deviance to minimize.  This is a strong point.  It's one the Court's dissenters agreed with:

"If the Hickel plan complied with the requirements of the Alaska Constitution, the Board did what we asked it to do. Today’s opinion declines to answer whether the Board’s Hickel plan meets Alaska constitutional
criteria.

I agree that this is a question that remains to be resolved." (p. 30 bottom)

I would note that there are several districts that clearly do not meet the Constitution's compactness requirement - Districts 36, 37, 38, and 39 - but given their low population density, one could argue compactness would be a problem without the VRA.  But certainly the VRA exacerbates the problem because the districts need to wander around the state, avoiding white pockets, to get enough Native population to qualify them as effective Native districts.

There are also questions of socio-cultural integration.  But neither of these criteria  - compactness and socio-economic integration - can be objectively measured. We might know if they are drastically violated, but it's hard to know when a district crosses over the line from being ok to not ok. 

Conclusion

I think the Board wins some and loses some here.  It's not clear cut.  They just need to get one more member of the Court majority to join the two dissenters to get a majority that thinks they don't need to redraft the whole plan again.



In the next post, I'll look at their claim in Part B that the Court overstepped their authority to tell the Board how to do their job.

Also to be considered in the next post (or another one) are the practical implications of this decision and whether the Court should be considering them when making their decision. 


*Linking the Supreme Court decisions is tricky.  Links to the most current decisions posted on the Court's website work until they get posted at the Pacific Reporter.  So the links have a limited life span. They are also available at the Alaska Case Law Service, but I haven't figured out how to link directly to a case. Those links don't work.  Instead you have to put in the right search terms.[See comments for more on this.]

Malaria - Clever Animation Video Particularly For Tomás

My friend Tomás is a Spanish artist who does great work in various media including cartoons and video.  I think he'll really like this video. 

But so should the rest of you.  This is very clever and original.  I'm not even sure how to describe it. 



Thanks to Five Feet Long and Luminous where I ran across it.

Fact Checking The Alaska Redistricting Board's Petition to the Alaska Supreme Court

The Alaska Redistricting Board has petitioned the Alaska Supreme Court to reconsider its decision requiring the Board to start all over again, this time using the Hickel process, to complete a new set of Alaska House and Senate districts for the 2014 election. 


In this post, I'm going to review the argument made in this petition regarding whether the Board followed the Hickel process.

This is all pretty wonky stuff, but I'm trying to make it accessible to the average person.  I have another post - Alaska Redistricting Board 2010-2013: Overview - which attempts to explain, for those who haven't kept up with the details of the redistricting process, some of the key terms and events one should know to understand this petition.   It should be particularly helpful in understanding the background of "the Hickel process."

The Board's petition is in three parts:

• INTRODUCTION
• ARGUMENTS
• A.The Court Overlooked and/or Misconstrued Material Facts and Questions in this Case
• B. The Court Violates the Separation of Powers Doctrine By Dictating the Redistricting Process Vested in the Board By the Alaska Constitution
• CONCLUSION

I'm going to focus, in this post, on the Introduction and Part A of the Arguments. (In the end, I decided to only look at the first part of A.)


INTRODUCTION (of the petition)

In the intro, the Board's petition says, 

"Specifically, the Board petitions this Court to reconsider the portion of its decision  that the Board failed to follow the Hickel process in the adoption of its Hickel Plan."

"The Board seeks rehearing because this court, in finding the Board failed to follow the Hickel process and in failing to answer whether the Board's Hickel plan meets the Alaska Constitutional criteria

• misconceived material fact
• overlooked a material question in the case, and
• misapplied a directly controlling principle.

"For these reasons set forth below, the Board respectfully requests the Court reconsider . . ." 

 
Disclaimer:   I'm not an attorney.  But I attended and blogged most of the Board's Anchorage meetings and I can, at least, apply logic and I can compare the facts as presented in the petition and what I saw at the Board meetings.

I'd note here, that first the Board's attorney, Michael White, tells the Court they are wrong - you misconceived, you overlooked, and you misapplied, he tells them.  There's no sugar coating here.  No, "we contend" or "it would appear that."   He says: You flat out screwed up.

This tends to make the next line sound hollow: "The Board respectfully requests . . ."  Respectfully?  Really?

This is either a bold or reckless approach.  Or both.  After all, none of these things are completely clear cut and the Court's decision becomes the legal reality.  But I think the Court is pretty seasoned in separating out the tone from the law in these documents, but the tone can't help but register somewhere in the justices' subconscious at the very least.


ARGUMENT - Part A

So, let's go to the argument, part A, to see what material facts and questions the Board thinks the Court overlooked or misconstrued.

"First, contrary to the Court's opinion, the Board did not start with, nor did it adopt a Hickel  plan that left thirty-six (36) House districts unchanged.  The Board's Hickel template, which was nothing more than a beginning point for its Hickel Plan, used only twenty-two (22) unchallenged, constitutional House districts from the original Proclamation Plan:  Anchorage HD 12-27, Southeast HD 31-36, and HD 40.  A side-by-side comparison of the Hickel template and the Hickel plan clearly shows the district configurations are vastly different."

OK, so what did the Supreme Court actually say:

. . . what the Board actually did upon remand was to create a Hickel template that maintained the boundaries of unchallenged districts from the original Proclamation Plan, resulting in 36 unchanged house districts. The Board asserts that these districts “were drawn with only the Alaska Constitution in mind” and thus they complied with the Hickel process.21

[For those whose heads are spinning already, you can go back to my overview post to get a better understanding of the Hickel process, Hickel template, and Hickel plan.] 

Watch carefully.  We have a Hickel template and a Hickel plan.  And if you don't look carefully, they might get switched on you.

A reminder here, there are 40 House districts. 

One more time.

The Board petition says the Court claimed said there were 36 unchanged districts in the plan.

The Court actually said there were 36 unchanged districts in the template.

"Hickel" map template

I went back to my March 26, 2012 post where they unveiled the Hickel template.  I wrote then:

"They started with a template that kept the parts of the state from their submitted plan that met the constitutional requirements (Southeast, Anchorage, Matsu, Kenai, and North Slope) intact. 

They left blank the interior and Fairbanks districts and Western Alaska and Aleutians.  (see map)"

There were four districts in the original Proclamation Plan (that the Board originally proclaimed as the new set of districts) that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.  That day it wasn't totally clear to me which districts they left blank.  The Supreme Court dissent (Matthew and Fabe) identifies the four as Districts 36, 37, 38, and 39 which went from the western Fairbanks suburbs west to the coast and looped around Fairbanks to the east, similar to the old district 6.  This map - the Hickel template - is consistent with that.  As I recall, they then decided to fix the unconstitutional issues with Districts 1 and 2 in the Amended Proclamation Plan. 

NOTE:  The old maps - the Hickel template and Hickel plans drawn from it are no longer on the Redistricting Board website list of maps, the map above is a photo I took of one posted on the wall, so it's hard to tell the details. (I did find the maps in with the transcripts for March 26, 2012.  They are here. The Template is the little map on top with the big blank space in the middle.  As I recall, a fourth one was added later.)

I then checked the Board transcripts from March 26.  Starting on page 41, the Board's Executive Director Taylor Bickford explains how they came up with the Hickel template.  He tells us that the Chair John Torgenson told them how to do it.

And so the guidance he gave us was to basically incorporate any aspects of the current plan where no Voting Rights Act justifications existed; in other words, parts of the plan that were really drawn under a Hickel process to begin with, parts of the plan that were drawn with only the Alaska Constitution in mind and not the Voting Rights Act.

And so obviously, the Anchorage District, for example, those were drawn originally to state constitutional standards, had nothing to do with the Voting Rights Act. The Mat-Su, the Kenai Peninsula, and the Kodiak District and Southeast.

He explains why each of these were done without considering the Voting Rights Act and then goes on.

So this was the starting point. So I started by importing the Southeast districts. I then imported the Kodiak districts, the Kenai Peninsula districts, the Anchorage districts, the Mat-Su districts, the Highway District and then the North Slope. (p. 42)

Then attorney White asks the critical question:

MR. WHITE: How many districts then need to be drawn?· How many districts exist in the template right now, just total number?
MR. BICKFORD:· The total number of districts would be 36. (pp.43-44)

It's clear from this exchange that the template had 36 districts filled in and the rest was blank.  Since there are 40 districts, there were four districts left blank.

It seems to me that the Supreme Court had their numbers right.

And if we look at the Board's wording again it's not altogether clear.  First it says:

"nor did it [the Board] adopt a Hickel  plan that left thirty-six (36) House districts unchanged."

 No, but it did adopt a template that left 36 districts unchanged.  And the Court said template, not plan, when it said 36 districts.   Then Board's petition says:

  "The Board's Hickel template, which was nothing more than a beginning point for its Hickel Plan, used only twenty-two (22) unchallenged, constitutional House districts from the original Proclamation Plan:  Anchorage HD 12-27, Southeast HD 31-36, and HD 40."

This is where commas make a big difference.  Grammatically, this says their Hickel template used only twenty-two (22) unchallenged House districts from the original Proclamation Plan.  I think he meant the Hickel Plan. We know the template had 36 districts left from the Proclamation Plan.

Let's look at the districts he lists:

• Anchorage 16 districts
• Southeast     6 districts (except that Southeast only has three [five-ish] districts now)
• HD 40         1 district 

Actually, this adds up to 23, not 22 districts.   In any case, there is no way that he is talking about the template, because, as the transcripts show, it began with 36 unchanged districts.  He has to mean the plan, not the template.  And, yes, as they started working out those four districts in the blank space, they needed to borrow population from the Fairbanks area to get districts big enough to meet the one person one vote requirement.  And then there was a ripple effect that caused them to make minor changes in the Matsu and in the Kenai districts. 


There are three more allegations that the Court erred in Part A of the petition.

"Second, the Court also misconstrues the material fact that the configuration of the House districts used in the Hickel template somehow limited the configuration of the Board's final Hickel plan. . ."

"Third, the Court also misconstrues the material fact that by first drawing districts that complied with the federal Voting Rights Act ("VRA") in its original Proclamation Plan, the countours of the entire map were affected. . . "

"The Court also overlooked a material question in this case by declining to decide whether the Board's Hickel plan complies with the Alaska Constitution. . ."

I think there's more than enough already in this post for people to attempt to digest, so I'll leave these three allegations for the next post.  I will say that at first blush, these all seem to be hinged on the same issue - to what extent does setting up the first districts affect what happens to the rest of the districts?

Phillip King Natural Harpist

I ran into Phillip King and his harp at the Virginia Park Farmers' Market in Santa Monica today.   He's playing tomorrow (Sunday January 13, 2013) at Core Church (Washington and Overland) 8:30am, 10:30am, and 12:30pm services.  So I'm getting this up quickly.

This is not your every day harp music.  The International Harp Museum site says:

"The harp is one of the oldest musical instruments in the world. The earliest harps were developed from the hunting bow. The wall paintings of ancient Egyptian tombs dating from as early as 3000 B.C. show an instrument that closely resembles the hunter's bow, without the pillar that we find in modern harps.
The angled harp came to Egypt from Asia in about 1500 B.C. It was built from a hollow sound-box joined to a straight string-arm at an angle. The strings, possibly made of hair or plant fibre, were attached to the sound-box at one end and tied to the string-arm at the other. The strings were tuned by rotating the knots that held them.

 Celtic harp

During the Middle Ages the pillar was added to support the tension of extra strings. Stiffer string materials like copper and brass were used and these changes enabled the instrument to produce greater volume and a longer-sustaining tone. Paintings of these harps appear in many early manuscripts and their shapes hardly differ from those of the Celtic harps that are still played today."

Phillip said his harp is a Celtic harp.  You can hear him playing on this video I took.








He's got a CD too which you can get at his website universalharp.com.

Year Zero - Zombie Invasion

Watching Year Zero at Out North AIFF 2011

I'm not into zombies.  I understand that they are metaphorical in the best zombie stories.  But they generally are not my thing.  So I was surprised by how an animated zombie film at the 2011 Anchorage International Film Festival captured me.

I got to chat with the film maker, Richard Cunningham, who taught himself video making by asking google all his questions and, as he said, learning from 15 year olds who had made Youtube videos answering all questions.

I think what caught my fancy was Richard's unique visuals and music and story.  He spent over a year essentially locked up in his New York City apartment making this.  I suspect that experience helped him write the story and to use his own imagination rather than copying what others have already done.  

So I'm pleased the whole film is now available on line.  Enjoy.



Looking at the link to the Cunningham video, I see it also includes Travis Betz whose vampire musical won the best feature that year. I liked that too. Maybe I've been infected.

Alaska Redistricting 2010 - 2013 Overview

I’ve been going over the Redistricting Board’s petition (see the petition in full below) and sorting out what Michael White, the Board’s attorney, is saying.

During breaks, I’ve been trying to explain it to my wife.  That’s the real test of whether I’m making sense to a normal person who hasn’t kept track of this.  Ultimately, it seems that before jumping into the petition, I need to put up this overview of what's happened so far.  Particularly look at the discussion of the Hickel Process because that is a big part of the back-and-forth between the Court and the Board.

[NOTE OF CAUTION:  Most of this happened a while ago and while I have gone back to old posts to check my memory on some things, there may be some minor errors of fact, but I do think the basic narrative should get people ready to tackle the discussions to come on the Board's petition.  Also, the full petition is at the end of the post.]


WHAT WAS THE BOARD'S TASK?

1.  Divide the state into 40 House districts with each as close as possible to 17,755 people, based on the 2010 Census data.  As soon as the Census data was released in March 2011, they began drawing.


WHAT RULES DID THEY HAVE TO FOLLOW TO DO THIS?

1.  The US Constitution requires one person, one vote.  Thus as mentioned above, each district had to have as close as possible 17, 755 people (the 2010 Census population for Alaska divided by forty districts).  The deviation between the biggest and smallest district could not be over ten percent.  (That means any range from -2% to +8% or -5% to +5%, etc. between the smallest and largest districts.)  Generally though, the expectation is that the deviations should be smaller than 10%, particularly in the cities where it should be no more than 2% or so, because it’s easier to do this where the population density is greater. 

2.  The Federal Voting Rights Act was passed to insure that minority populations are not redistricted in a way that suppresses their representation.  While it was passed with the South in mind, it also applies to Alaska Natives.  Alaska is one of about 16 states which, because of past discriminatory redistricting, are required to get approval of their redistricting plans from the Department of Justice to be sure that minority voting power is not diminished by redistricting.  Thus, the Board was required maintain the same number of districts in which Alaska Natives had the voting clout to elect the candidate of their choice.  How you measure this is complicated and the labels and standards of the 2000 Census morphed somewhat during the process in 2011.  But essentially, the Board was required to maintain the same number of “Native” districts or demonstrate that because of population changes this was not possible. 

3.  The Alaska Constitution requires that each House district be

• compact
• contiguous, and
• socio-economically integrated
• no political gerrymandering

Senate districts are made up of two House districts and need to be contiguous. 

4.  Precedence -  If the Board is unable to meet all three sets of requirements in their final plan, the  US Constitution trumps everything else.  Then comes the federal Voting Rights Act.  Last comes the state’s Constitutional requirements.   So, if worst comes to worst, they might have to violate, to some degree, the Constitutional requirements to meet the other ones. 

There are a few more factors, but these are the ones necessary to understand what is happening in Court right now.


WHAT DID THE BOARD DO? 

The Board reviewed these requirements.  They decided that since they had to get clearance from the Department of Justice (DoJ) before they could finalize their Plan, they decided to focus on getting the Native Districts set first and then to work the rest of the districts around those districts. 

That’s what they did.  There were some problems with contiguity (they separated the Aleutians into two different districts) and compactness (as in the existing districts one huge district, bigger than most US states was spread across the state, and socio-economic integration (a suburb of Fairbanks was paired with off-road Native coastal villages).  There were charges of political gerrymandering in Fairbanks and Anchorage.  When they finished getting all the districts in place they announced their completed Proclamation Plan. 


BOARD ADOPTS PROCLAMATION PLAN.  LAWSUITS FOLLOW.

All during the process there were a number of other groups watching over the process.  Democrats, Republicans, various towns and cities, Native organizations were checking to see how their interests were being affected.  And they were all making their own plans in attempts to show that the various criteria could all be met without violating the state constitution. 

Soon after the Plan was adopted by the Board, there were several law suits filed against the case.  These narrowed down to one from the Fairbanks suburbs of Ester and Goldstream and from the City of Petersburg, which later dropped out, but kept its eye on things.


WHAT DID THE COURT SAY?

The Hickel Process

The Court said a number of things, but of most importance to us now, is that they brought out the Hickel process from a 1994 challenge to a previous redistricting plan.
Then, the Court ruled that the Board needed to first create a plan that divided the state into 40 districts that complied with the state Constitution.  Then, and only then, could the  Board take into consideration the Voting Rights Act.  The current Court’s justification requiring the Board to follow the Hickel process now was:

1. Unless the board creates a map that meets the consitutional requirements first, the Supreme Court, reviewing a plan that deviates from the costitution to meet the Voting Rights Act, won’t be able to see if the deviations were the least possible deviations.
2. The Hickel process makes it harder to hide gerrymandering. 

Problematic Districts

The Court also four districts as unconstitutional - the split Aleutians and two Fairbanks districts.

The Court sent the plan back to the Board and told the Board to redo the plan using the Hickel process.  That is, first create a plan that meets the state constitution.  Then, if necessary, make the least possible deviations from that plan to meet Voting Rights Act requirements.


BOARD REDRAWS THE MAPS - THE HICKEL TEMPLATE HICKEL PLANS

For the Board, the application of the Hickel process seemed to have come out of the blue.  The attorney had gone into great detail at the start about what they were required to do, but never mentioned this section from a 1992 Supreme Court Decision.  I would note that two 2010 Redistricting Board members - Peggyann McConnochie and Marie Greene -  are listed as respondents in that case, Hickel v. Southeast Conference.  

Time was getting tight.  It was the end of March and candidates, who had to file for the August primary by June, needed to know what districts they were in.  The Board had to come up with a new plan, get it cleared by the Department of Justice and then approved by the Alaska Supreme Court. 

Hickel Template from March 26, 2012 Post

The Hickel Template 
The Board decided:
a.  since only a few districts had been identified by the Supreme Court as not being Constitutionally valid
b. they would leave the rest as they were and change the ones that were challenged.

They then came up with what they called the Hickel Template.  It had most of the districts from the rejected plan and then a blank space for the ones that had been challenged.  Most of the state - the North Slope district 40, Anchorage, Southeast, Kenai, and Matsu - were left intact.  The blank space included the Fairbanks area and radiated east and west and north mostly. 

One of the issues was where to get population to make some of the Native districts big enough.  They decided that since Fairbanks had excess population, that would be the best place, which is what they did in the original plan.  So to prove that this made the most sense, they came up with four plans working from the Hickel Template. Each plan tried to get the excess population from a different population center.

•  Fairbanks
•  Kenai
• Anchorage
• Matsu

If I recall correctly, the Anchorage one had part of Anchorage and Bethel in the same House district.

They quickly rejected as not meeting Constitutional requirements all but the Fairbanks plan.  They also rejected plans submitted by some of the outside groups that had been watching the process. 

[As I sat there at those meetings it really seemed to me that the Board never really accepted the Hickel process as a legitimate standard for them to meet, but that they had to go through the process. A video of attorney White after one of the meetings seems to capture that.   It felt staged.  “OK, for the record,  why we are rejecting this plan?” 
Then someone would list the Constitutional problems with the plan for the record.

In a March 26 post I wrote:

Board Chair Torgerson at one point actually said: 

"Just asking the same question ten times to get it on the record."

They seemed to reject out of hand any slight deviation with the non-favored plans, but they accepted without flinching equal or greater deviations on their own favored plan.]

COURT ADOPTS AMENDED PLAN AS INTERIM PLAN

They then sent their revised plan to the Supreme Court for approval.  They also sent off an expedited request to the Department of Justice which approved the plan.  The Court accepted the Amended Proclamation Plan as an interim plan because it was most likely to be approved by the DoJ and the elections were coming soon.  But said the Board would have to use the Hickel process to come up with a final plan.

This Amended Proclamation Plan was the basis for the districts in the 2012 election.


BOARD PETITIONS TO USE AMENDED PLAN AS FINAL, COURT SAYS NO

Sometime later the Board petitioned the Court to use the Amended Proclamation Plan as the Final Plan. 

In late December 2012 the Court rejected the Amended Proclamation Plan on the grounds that the Board did not go through the Hickel Process and ordered the Board to start over for the 2014 election.  There were two dissenters.

The Board has just (January 7, 2013)  petitioned the Court to reconsider that decision.  


COMING SOON TO A BLOG NEAR YOU

I will write about the Board’s petition in the next few days.  This post is intended to give readers enough background to understand the discussion of the petition.


THE COMPLETE BOARD PETITION

 

2013-1-7 ARB Petition for Rehearing by Steve

"When I was 16, I took a hundred foot free-fall off a cliff"

We met Doug LaMarche on the Venice Boardwalk where he was painting his old paint brushes.  It was like a bouquet (you can see another one in the video) with his own concoction of old paint that was thick and waxy looking.

I liked the concept, but these weren't pieces I'd want in my house and so I asked questions about what he thinks makes art 'good' or not.  Soon I asked if I video what he was saying.

He's thought about these issues a lot.  Art is about self-expression.  It's about healing.  And as I looked around, it was clear that the paintbrushes were not, perhaps, the true indication of his art.

This one shows the artist - I didn't write what he said, but something like - doing battle with traditional art standards as he attacks Gainsborough's Blue Boy which was the most expensive painting ever sold, when Californian railroad magnate Henry Edwards Huntington purchased it in 1922. Or so says Wikipedia.   An interesting tidbit I found there related to the great American artist Robert Rauschenberg:

Born on Oct. 22, 1925 in Port Arthur, a small refinery town in Texas near the Louisiana border, Milton Ernest Rauschenberg lived an American dream.  His parents were poor fundamentalists who didn’t dance, drink, or play cards. At the University of Texas in Austin, the teenager was studying pharmacology when World War II began.  Drafted during spring 1944, he ended up, as a pacifist, working in the Navy Hospital Corps in San Diego.
           
On a visit to the Huntington Art Gallery, outside Los Angeles, Rauschenberg found a new direction, and American art history gained one of its most indomitable practitioners. Here the young neuropsychiatric technician saw his first oil paintings. One of them, Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, was familiar. Back home, it had been reproduced on a calendar. Painting pictures, he realized, was something a person could do.

Doug seemed to have a dim view of marriage too.  There were two pieces that questioned the institution.

I think this one was called reflections on weddings or marriage.  

 He pointed out these were all recycled materials.




The next one represents the important role of alcohol to marriage - it either destroys a marriage or keeps it together.













So, at some point I asked if I could turn on the video camera which led to this video below.  There's a lot of truth in what he says.






One thing I didn't do consciously was to film this so it's not obvious he's in a wheel chair.  Maybe it was subconsciously done, because I think it's important to take people as people and not jump to conclusions based on the category we pushed them into.  And I didn't even think about asking how he ended up in a wheel chair.  But another blogger did and it does add to our understanding of Doug's words and to their power.  And the power of art.


Robert Zuckerman writes on a blog post he did on Doug:

"What Happened to you?" I ask.

"When I was 16, I took a hundred foot free-fall off a cliff.  I couldn't do or face anything for seventeen years, then I discovered art.  Now I do and teach Art as Healing."

So, it's might seem sort of hypocritical to use the title I used for this post.  But I suspect a few more people will look at this title than would look at something like, "Art and Healing."  Those are the kinds of conflicting tensions a blogger deals with.  Having titles that are relevant to the post but not so boring as to drive away readers.  

Santa Monica - The Whole City - Is A Free Wifi Zone

We went to Wise and Healthy Aging, a Santa Monica non-profit that acts as a reference for older folks who want to stay in their own homes as independently as possible.  We wanted to see all the options available to my mom.  There are lots of options and we're still going through all the materials to see if we can make things work for her.

But afterward I asked if they had wi-fi - so we could see if there was a movie nearby we wanted to see - and she said, "Yes.  All of Santa Monica is free municipal wi-fi zone." 

I'd heard about that idea, but I've never experienced it before.  Anyone with a lap top or an i-pod touch or similar device that can connect to the internet with wifi is connected, without having to have a smart phone. 

As we walked over to the Santa Monica Promenade - 3rd Avenue is blocked off from cars for four or five blocks -  we passed this bike center which was part of a large parking garage.  They don't just have a few bike racks, they have a whole space for bikes.

The LA Times had a piece not too long ago about all that Santa Monica is doing to encourage people to get out of their cars and onto their bikes.  Given so much flat land and good weather, Santa Monica is a perfect place to bike.




We stopped in the REI and found these electric bikes.  (Is this the first step from car to bike?  Or is this to entice people with bikes to start moving toward a motor?)

The batteries are on the bike racks over the rear tires.  I'd like to think these are just batteries on the bikes that get charged by your biking and you can use for small appliances like your computer at home.  But I think that's probably just wishful thinking.

That morning I'd seen this guy who was using his bike as many Asians have in the past.  I remember people carrying everything - even beds - on their bikes in China.  

This is Venice, not as upscale as Santa Monica.  When I asked if I could take a picture he dug into the 'trunk' and got out his pet pigeon to be in the picture.  It's sitting on the red object.

Before we got to the movie, we passed the Apple store.  It used to be on the other side of the street.  Now it looks like an airplane hanger with dozens and dozens of small tables with iPads and iPad minis. 

I standing across the pedestrian only street so I could get the whole thing in the picture.  I like the idea of the street being car free, but on the downside, it's nothing more than an outdoor shopping mall.  Big name stores you could now find in any city around the world. 

We saw Zero Dark Thirty.  As a movie, it worked for me.  I know there's some controversy over the idea that it promotes the idea that torture gets people talking.  I know movies like this one can have a big impact on how people understand current events.  But I doubt this movie will change people's minds either way on this topic.  Even if one bought the premise that torture worked, it was clear that it is also inhumane.  It shows how it damages not only the person tortured but the person doing the torture.   I thought it was just a good movie. 

Old Harbor Native Corporation's Chief Executive Officer is Carl Marrs

I imagine that most people, when they heard there was a Native village called Old Harbor with a couple hundred people close to where the Kulluk grounded, didn't think much about it. Some sleepy little village where people fish. Not too sophisticated. A place Shell could easily take advantage of. Their website description begins with this paragraph:

Welcome To Old Harbor Old Harbor is an Alutiiq village on Kodiak Island, Alaska approximately 40 air miles from the City of Kodiak on the southeast side of the Island. Old Harbor is one of the Island’s six Alutiiq villages and is primarily inhabited by an Alutiiq population. Old Harbor residents enjoy sharing Kodiak Island's beautiful lands with visitors and their hospitality is legendary. Visitors find residents to be warm, generous, and sincere. Today, the community of Old Harbor has a modern airstrip, a harbor for its fishing fleet and the modern amenities of water, sewer, electricity, internet and satellite services.

But if you poke around on that website you get to their company page which begins:

"Old Harbor Native Corporation (OHNC) is one of 252 Native village corporations established by Congress in 1971 under the terms of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). ANCSA, which was a purposeful alternative to the Lower 48 reservation system, was the first settlement of its kind between Native Americans and the federal government.  Alaska Natives were provided a corporate structure for holding land and capital, with the freedom to control their own economic and social future.
OHNC was incorporated in 1973 and originally enrolled 329 shareholders under the Act.  Today, there are approximately 335 shareholders residing primarily in Anchorage, Kodiak and Old Harbor, but some as far away as Iceland and Switzerland.
The Corporation’s Board of Directors is tasked with the dual responsibility to grow and manage the assets of the Corporation for the benefit of the shareholders, and preserve and protect the culture and traditions of the community.  A challenging task, indeed."

The Board/Staff page leads you to a link to Chief Executive Officer Carl Marrs:

Cal Marrs with fellow UA Regent Mary Hughes in Juneau

"Carl H. Marrs

Mr. Marrs joined Old Harbor Native Corporation as Chief Executive Officer August 2010.  Carl has been working with Old Harbor Native Corporation since 2005 as an advocate in Juneau and Washington DC on various projects.

Carl was born and raised in Seldovia, Alaska and is an Alutiiq from the South Central Region of Alaska.  He grew up as a commercial fisherman and attended school in Kodiak. He later spent two years in the Marine Corps before returning to commercial fishing. Carl had an extensive career at Cook Inlet Region Inc. (CIRI) working in various capacities from 1973 thru 2004.  In December 2004, Marrs stepped down as the company's president and CEO. He left behind an organization that in his tenure provided record dividend payouts to shareholders, and fulfilled its commitment to enhancing the social welfare of its people.  In addition, he previously worked successfully as owner and operator of Marrs & Company from 2005 thru 2010 which was an investment and consulting company.
Marrs was awarded an honorary degree of Public Service from Alaska Pacific University.  He volunteers his time to a number of community organizations, including Alaska Pacific University, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Boys and Girls Club. Marrs has also served on the boards of the Fiscal Policy Council of Alaska, the Alaska Railroad Corporation, Board of Directors for Key Bank of Alaska, President of the Association of ANCSA CEO’s, Board of Director of the Alaska State Council of Commerce as well as worked with the United Way of Anchorage, Alaska SeaLife Center and the Alaska Oil & Gas Association.  Marrs currently serves as a member on the Board of Regents for the University of Alaska and the Koahinic Broadcasting Corporation," 

Carl Marrs is a powerful figure in Alaskan political and business circles.  He rose through his Native Corporation ranks and has worked closely with all the most influential people in Alaska.

A 2003 Cook Inlet Region Inc. (CIRI) newsletter celebrating Marrs' 30 years service said,

Carl has a reputation as being tough, fair and direct. He has worked hard to earn this reputation, and he is recognized for his negotiating stands and his deal-making skills. A number of our business partners have said they would work with Carl again in a heartbeat because they appreciate his forthright attitude.

A major success for CIRI came from investment benefits Native Corporations  gained thanks to legislation supported by Marrs' friend Ted Stevens.

CIRI's president and chief executive Carl Marrs, who engineered an extraordinarily successful investment in wireless telecommunications, stands to reap $3.8 million, based on Friday's stock prices. Vice presidents Barbara Donatelli, Mark Kroloff, Kirk McGee and Craig Floerchinger will collect $3.3 million each.

The board of directors of the Anchorage-based Native corporation voted 14-1 in favor of the compensation plan at a November meeting, according to Marrs. The board met again Dec. 15 and approved a $314 million cash payout to shareholders based on CIRI's windfall investment in VoiceStream Wireless Corp. and its bullish growth as a company over the past decade. Most of CIRI's 7,000 shareholders received $50,000 checks last week.  (from the Peninsula Clarion)

But not everyone agreed with his approach.  The Peninsula Clarion wrote:

[Former CIRI Chief Exec] Huhndorf ran a highly public campaign in which he openly accused CIRI chief executive Carl Marrs of recklessness and lack of vision. Huhndorf promised to shine a spotlight on what he considers the Anchorage-based company's shaky financial outlook and extravagant spending by management.

The Alaska Supreme Court in a decision which found John Ellsworth guilty of fraud and wilful misconduct costing CIRI millions of dollars, wrote:

Evidence was introduced at trial to show that Carl Marrs was responsible for supervising Ellsworth's management of AIC, but the superior court determined, “Marrs never actively supervised or scrutinized ․ Ellsworth, but rather allowed him carte blanche to manage AIC.”

In any case, Carl Marrs is a man to be reckoned with and if the Kulluk is in Old Harbor territory, it's probably safe to assume that the Old Harbor Native Corporation's interests are being well looked after.