Did Redistricting Board Intentionally Target Tea Party Members?

At the Sunday Redistricting Board meeting, I met a woman who had an email that had been sent out to, I think, Republican legislators from Randy Ruedrich with a:

• list of sitting Senators
• what percent of their district remained the same
• if they had to run in 2014

The woman was angry.  The Board had gerrymandered, she told me,  so that two Republican senators and two Republican representatives had to run against each other.  And a third Anchorage area Republican Senator only had 50% of her old districts while a bunch of Anchorage Democrats had 100% of their old districts.  And that Senator had to run again in 2014 and only for a two year term.

I pointed out that the Board was made up of four Republicans and one Democrat.  That didn't seem to matter - she said something about them not being real Republicans.  I also mentioned that since there are a lot more Republicans in the legislature than Democrats, so if every thing was done without bias, Republicans would be more likely to be affected than Democrats.  She seemed to have her mind made up and nothing I said made a dent. 

Rep. Tammie Wilson

Sen Fred Dyson Introducing Joe Miller 2012

But as we look at the Republicans who got pinched in these things - Tammie Wilson in Fairbanks (paired with Doug Isaacson) and Fred Dyson in Eagle River (paired with Anna Fairclough) - we see that both Wilson and Dyson supported Tea Party favorite Joe Miller in 2010. 

Cathy Giessel, the Anchorage Republican Senator who lost half her constituents and who, thus,  has to run again in 2014  and for only a two year seat is also of that far, far right Republican persuasion.  Is this all a coincidence?  The Republican Party has had a big internal fight between Tea Party activists and the traditional power brokers of the Party.  Randy Ruedrich, until recently the Chair of the Republican Party, has feuded with the Tea Party Republicans.  He was also very involved in creating the AFFER map and actually made a comment from the audience when the Board was discussing truncation and determining how to figure out the two year and four year seats.  Although audience members are not allowed to speak, they let him, took a recess, and came back with the solution he had suggested from the audience: to renumber some of the districts.  

But, in fairness, both Isaacson and Wilson are listed as from North Pole and one of the principles in redistricting is to leave political subdivisions intact.  So perhaps it was the previous redistricting that allowed two different North Pole districts that was the problem.  Also, though not as critical, pairing the two Eagle River house seats into one Senate seat makes a lot of sense.  Finally, Giessel's old Senate district included the northern Kenai House district and this time they tried to keep Kenai more intact.  But those issues didn't prevent the Board from breaking Matsu twice, even though Calista offered a map that would have kept Matsu whole.  And I'm sure if they had wanted to, they could have kept these incumbents in different districts.

Anyway, below is an adaptation of the chart from the email.  I added the letters of the current (2012 election) and new (2014 election) Senate seats and I added the last column, because the email didn't say how long the terms would be for people not running in 2014. 

Republican or D (current - new District)	Kept of 2012 District	Status	Next Term
Kelly  (B-A)	97.6%	running 4 yr seat
Coghill (A-B)	77.0%	not running	2 years
Bishop (C-C)	46.8%	running 4 yr seat
Huggins (E-D)	96.9%	not running	2 years
Dunleavy (D-E)	52.0%	running 4 yr seat
Open (M-F)	49.3%	running 2 yr seat
Fairclough (M-G), Dyson (F-F)	50.1%	running 4 yr seat
D-Wielechowski (G-H)	100%	not running	2 years
D-Gardner (H-I)	100%	running 4 yr seat
D-Ellis (I-J)	100%	not running	2 years
D-French (J-K)	100%	running 4 yr seat
McGuire (K-L)	100%	not running	4 years
Meyer (L-M)	100%	running 4 yr seat
Giessel (N-N)	50.1%	running 2 yr seat
Micciche (N-O)	50.3%	running 4 yr seat
Stevens (R-P)	51.3%	running 2 yr seat
D - Egan (P-Q)	92.7%	running 4 yr seat
Stedman (Q-R)	90.7%	not running
D - Hoffman (S-S)	54.3%	running 4 yr seat
D - Olsen (T-T)	80.3%	running 2 yr seat

Some background for people who haven't been keeping track of these things:

Senators have four year terms.  The terms are staggered so that ten senators run in one election and ten in the next.  That way there are always at least ten Senators who aren't brand new.

If a new Senate district is changed so that a substantial number of people are new, the seat is truncated.  Truncation means that instead of serving out their full term (if it would not be up at the next election), their term is cut to two years and they must run in the next election.  The reasoning here is that a substantial number of people will now be represented by someone they didn't have an opportunity to vote for (or against.)

So, how many is substantial?  Last year's discussion of truncation said that any district that had more than a 10% change would be considered substantially changed.  Last year there was only one district that was less then 10% - Juneau - and the next was 65%.  This year they decided that the cut off would be 70%, which allowed Sen. John Coghill (75% change) not to have to run for reelection in 2014.  (Generally, people set standards before they know who will meet them and who won't so they aren't biased by knowing how the standards will affect real people.)  In any case, Coghill was also a Joe Miller supporter, so that would suggest that they weren't necessarily after Tea Party folks.

The gerrymandering charges this year were from Democrats.  But might it be possible the Tea Party is going to challenge the redistricting plan?  Can you charge gerrymandering when it's Republicans out to get Republicans?  (I'm not saying that happened here, just a hypothetical.)  Maybe this isn't over yet. 

". . . are there not hangmen enough?"

I'm reading the second Hilary Mantel novel on Thomas Cromwell, Bring Up The Bodies.  Like the first one, Wolf Hall, it has won the Man Booker Prize. The prose sings, quietly.  Reading the sentences is pure pleasure.  So spare, just the essentials, as she paints the world of commoner Thomas Cromwell, the most powerful man in King Henry VIII's England.  The man of many languages and skills who makes things happen.

I've wanted to share something, but much of the book is the slow building up of background and foreground, that short excerpts don't make much sense out of the context of the whole book.

But I found this passage of Cromwell's failed attempt to get Parliament to pass laws that would hire the unemployed to build infrastructure for England,  It's a good example of Mantel's prose and it's also fitting for our present political and economic challenges.

In March, Parliament knocks back his new poor law.  It was too much for the Commons to digest, that rich men might have some duty to the poor;  that if you get fat, as gentlemen of England do, on the wool trade, you have some responsibility to the men turned off the land, the labourers without labour, the sowers without a field.  England needs roads, forts, harbours, bridges.  Men need work.  It's a shame to see them begging their bread, when honest labour could keep the realm secure.  Can we not put them together, the hands and the task?

But Parliament cannot seee how it is the state's job to create work.  Are not these matters in god's hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order?  To everything there is a season:  a time to starve and a time to thieve.  If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it;  for God knows his trade.  It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy.  And if Secretary Cromwell argues that famine provokes criminality;  well, are there not hangmen enough?

Not everyone in our book group is enamored by this book.  For some it's slow.

What happens in this book would never show up on television news.  There's not a lot of action.  But there's lots of texture.  The real power is the slow putting into place all the pieces.  It's the bureaucratic minutia It's the tedious behind the scenes machinations that makes things happen.  This book focuses not so much on the visible, but rather reveals what's normally invisible.  And she writes so damn beautifully.
 

Soft Foods, Sex In A Canoe, Translation, Hate Speech, and Fighting Over Words - "New" Books At The UAA Library

I'm back in LA to check up on my mom - a night flight that leaves me a little sleepy.  But my mom sounds like my mom again which is much better than the way I left her last week.  Before I left Anchorage late last night, I took some books back to the UAA library and checked out the new book section.

I'm not recommending any of these because I haven't read them, but the point is to remind folks that there's lots of interesting stuff out there.  People with a regular Municipal library card can check books out at UAA.  (Or even from your local library.)  This is just a small sampling of what's there.  I also noticed, doing this post, that what's new to the University of Alaska Anchorage's Consortium Library, isn't necessarily a new book.  One was published in 2007.

Also, as you look at these, think about guidelines you'd offer publishers about book covers. 


 I lumped these first three together because they all are connected to words (or speech).  The first, Roger Shuy's Fighting Over Words:  Language and Civil Law Cases.  A Times Higher Education 2008 review says, in part:

Fighting over Words is a short book, packed with corporate cases. These range from contract disputes and deceptive trade practices, through product liability, copyright infringement, discrimination, trademarks and fraud. The legal categories group together complex lived experiences in which language became a crux of dispute: whether, as an insurer maintained, an airline pilot's final words before a fatal crash showed evidence of having been overcome by toxic gas in the cockpit; whether, in a housing case, people's ability to recognise ethnic accents on the telephone offered a means of racial discrimination; whether warning statements provided with a potentially dangerous product were comprehensible and sufficiently prominent; whether a company's public pronouncements showed a tendency towards age discrimination in employment; whether a contractor misrepresented its cost calculations in bidding for a government military aviation contract. It is impossible to read through such actions without constant toing and froing between the case in hand and general issues in corporate and governmental communication that make such cases topical.

Clearly related to the recent post I had on the Asiana crash in San Francisco. 


 Words, Images, and Performances in Translation, edited by Rita Wilso and Brigit Maher, is summarized by the publisher, Bloomsbury:

This volume presents fresh approaches to the role that translation – in its many forms – plays in enabling and mediating global cultural exchange. As modes of communication and textual production continue to evolve, the field of translation studies has an increasingly important role in exploring the ways in which words, images and performances are translated and reinterpreted in new socio-cultural contexts. The book includes an innovative mix of literary, cultural and intersemiotic perspectives and represents a wide range of languages and cultures. The contributions are all linked by a shared focus on the place of translation in the contemporary world, and the ways in which translation, and the discipline of translation studies, can shed light on questions of inter- and hypertextuality, multimodality and globalization in contemporary cultural production.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart - something I dealt with first hand doing research in China with my Hong Kong students able to tell me later what really was said when the official translator strayed.  Actually, my students disagreed with each other, highlighting that the miscommunication is already in the original language and only compounded by going to another language.


The last of the first three, Jeremy Waldron's The Harm In Hate Speech appears to be a response to those who reject hate speech laws as contrary to the First Amendment.  You can read more about the book at Harvard University Press and get links to podcasts of the author.  There are also links to responses to his book. 


There was a bunch of Alaska related books.  Below are just a few.

Leff Continuity turns out to have been published in 2007 and the back said it was about a woman's adventure with her husband to Alaska followed fairly closely by her husband's death and her life in Alaska since.

The bluish volume is one of several theses by APU students.  This one is by Leeann B. Tyree and is titled Teaching Literacy - today and tomorrow, Literacy Vocabulary Development for Students and Teacher Practices - Grades 4-12 in Rural Alaska.

Cracking the Code is a small handbook by Cindy Roberts that is an attempt to give people an overview of the gas pipeline proposal(s?). 

There were two cookbooks on soft foods:  The Dysphagia Cookbook and Soft Foods for Easier Eating. 

I have to believe there's a reason why there are two books on this topic. 



This next one  On Extinction:  How We Became Estranged From Nature.  by Melanie Challenger looked interesting, The Guardian only gave it a so-so review::

Challenger's privilege is great, her courage exemplary, and no one could doubt her passion. This book is an urgent attempt to understand how we got into this mess, and how we might go forward, knowing that we are capable of causing, and of feeling, great loss. Assiduous editing might have helped, because while Challenger has a good eye and a nice turn of phrase, there is a piling up of references that seems born more of anxiety than erudition.

 Here are a couple about Soviet literature and theater.

Here's a short excerpt from an interview with TV on Strike author, a Variety deputy editor, at the Syracuse University Press:

“The book looks at the upheaval in the television business during the past decade through the prism of the 100-day strike by the Writers Guild of America in late 2007-early 2008. The strike was a fight about many of the issues that are roiling Hollywood – digital distribution, changing viewer behavior, competition from lower-cost entertainment alternatives and shrinking margins in traditional profit centers. I realized about a month after the strike ended that the story of the conflict, and the colorful characters who drove it, provided the perfect framework to examine what would otherwise be an unwieldy subject, namely the transformation of the television business.”

Did you forget to think about guidelines for good book covers?

It seems to me that there are two critical goals:

• making the title and the author's name easy to read 
• Some short description (or visual hint) about the topic 

The title of this last book,  The Great White North, meets those criteria.  I was totally misled by the title, but the subtitle pulled me back to what the author intended.    From a review at Alternatives Journal:

". . . Repeating an old saw, Margaret Wente previously wrote that what makes someone Canadian is having sex in a canoe. Maybe new immigrants should be taught to canoe, Wente said, so they could be more patriotic.

The editors of this book took her to task in their introduction. They wrote that this perception, “Canada = Canoeing,” was just one of the ways a European colonial mentality permeates both our sense of nation and nature. Wente lashed back in the pages of the broadsheet. I hope environmentalists will listen better than she did. .  .

Two early chapters contrast the way “nature” was moralized around ethnicity. City planners in Toronto at the turn of the 20th century advocated the creation of parks to “civilize” and Canadianize new immigrants. Nature was “good.”

The next chapter, an analysis of the rhetoric around Toronto’s SARS outbreak in 2005, demonstrates nature as “bad” or a threat. Media reports highlighted the virus’ origin in Asia, and as fear rose, nature – via SARS – became equated with the immigrants being a threat. Life-saving nurses were reframed as immigrant or ethnic nurses putting “us” at risk by possibly passing on the pathogen. "

 Just that little bit from the review is making me think about the divide between urban and rural Alaska, between Native and non-Native Alaska, and the role of immigration - which still means to most non-Native Alaskans, non-white immigrants and not non-Native immigrants. 

And stepping back a bit, for a more apt comparison to the book, how does  the Canadian mythology of the Great White North compare to the Lower 48 myths about Alaska? 

Alaska Supreme Court Denies Redistricting Board's Appeal

Here's what's posted on the Alaska Redistricting Board's website today:

IT IS ORDERED:  The Petition for Review is DENIED.

But what was in the petition?  The Redistricting Board staff member I called to find out said, no, those other documents aren't being posted now. (They were last year.)  One of the Board members, when I complained that they'd taken these sorts of documents down, told me that people should know how to get them themselves.  So I called the Alaska Supreme Court and was told, no, they don't post the petitions online, but I can come down to the Supreme Court office in downtown Anchorage and ask to see them.  The Board staff person said she'd try to get the other documents that explain what this order means up tomorrow.

So I went back to the video I posted this morning of the Board's attorney, Michael White, talking about how much time people will have to file objections.  Here's what he told me in that video tape:

"The original process is the Board proclaims and then sits back and waits 30 days to file.  The trial court filed an order recently that seemed to imply that we were back using the same process.  And our interpretation of the constitution is that’s wrong.  We’re not saying people can’t challenge this map.  We’re not saying that new people can’t come in and say we don’t like this one.  We’re saying, no, you don’t wait 30 days to see if there are challenges, you resubmit it and see if the court says file your objections in ten days, 15 days, whatever.  The Court still could give them 30 days I suppose. But given the time line he told the Board to operate under, maybe he gets 30 days maybe he doesn’t.  But that issue is still before our Supreme Court now.  We asked for their guidance before the 20th."

So, I'm guessing that the Board's assertion that they should submit the Plan to the court now and let the judge give people a time frame to object was denied.  Instead, I'm guessing the Board is to wait 30 days and then submit the Plan. 

Meanwhile, I was also told that the Board has a meeting scheduled Thursday, but the only thing on the agenda is Executive Session.  So I expect they'll be talking about what this ruling means and what their options are.  I know they can go into Executive Session to talk about litigation (discussion of their legal adversaries and their own legal strategy), but simply talking about the meaning of a ruling is something they've done publicly before and I would think is inappropriate for Executive Session.  But legal stuff is always subject to interpretation I guess.


They proclaimed the new plan on Sunday, July 14, so thirty days we be Tuesday, August 13. If my guesses here are correct, then people have until that day to file challenges. 

Will there be any challenges?  

When I interviewed Democratic Party Chair Mike Wenstrup Sunday, he said there were problems but they'd have to wait until they read the Board's findings.

A woman at the Board meeting Sunday showed me a list of Senators and pointed out that the Democrats in Anchorage had pretty much their same seats*, but some of the Republicans had had their seats split and suggested there was gerrymandering.  Particularly she complained about Cathy Geissel's district changing so much.  I pointed out that the Board had four Republicans and one Democrat and she said that they weren't really Republicans.  So, perhaps there could be a challenge from, say,  the Tea Party Republicans.

And Sealaska seems to have some concerns as mentioned in this Juneau Empire article:

“This very much impacts our Southeast communities,” said Jaeleen Araujo, vice president and general counsel for Sealaska. “There is no cultural and socio-economic similarities between our rural and urban areas in Southeast.”
Two Tlingit lawmakers representing Southeast communities lost their seats in 2012 after proposed district map was allowed to be used for the election. Representative Bill Thomas lost to 23-year-old Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins of Sitka by 32 votes. In the same election, redistricting pitted incumbent Senators Albert Kookesh and Bert Stedman against each other. Kookesh lost that race after redistricting separated him from most of the smaller communities he’d previously represented. .  .  .

"This whole process has been very disheartening,” Araujo said. “We believe very strongly that the viewpoints in our rural and urban communities are very different.”
Araujo said that Sealaska is still examining the new redistricting plans and maps.
“We’ll do what we can in the next couple of weeks to see if there are any legal arguments to pursue,” Araujo said. “If there are, we will definitely follow up on them.”

I'm not sure why every time someone talks about Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins they have to mention his age.  Is there some mystic connection between the 23 years and the 32 votes?  I would imagine that mentioning he's a Yale graduate is more significant than his age. In 2010, Peggy Wilson and other SE politicians put forth a Constitutional Amendment to expand the legislature so that rural Alaska (including SE) wouldn't have to lose legislators after redistricting.  But Alaska voters turned it down.

In any case, Haines, Bill Thomas' home town, is no longer in the same district with Kreiss-Tomkins.  Instead, the Board cited people  from Haines who testified at the public hearings in Juneau a couple of weeks ago, who said they should be in the downtown Juneau district and that's where the Board put them.  Downtown Juneau is probably the most Democratic district in the state, so that would make it even harder for Republican Bill Thomas. 


*I know this is confusing if you haven't been immersed in it.  When they paired the house districts to make Senate seats, in some cases, the districts were pretty much intact.  In other case they got paired very differently and as much as half the district had new constituents. 

Redistricting Board's Attorney and State Democratic Chair Talk About What's Next with Alaska Redistricting

Here are two more videos I got after the Alaska Redistricting Board approved its new plan.


Michael White, the attorney for the Alaska Redistricting Board, thinks the plan is solid, but doesn't rule out court challenges.  He explains his take on the still outstanding question about who can challenge and when. 






Outside the meeting I met, for the first time, State Democratic Party Chair, Mike Wenstrup, who talks about the next steps - will there be a legal challenge to the plan?

Begich and Ruedrich Talk About Redistricting

Sunday, the Alaska Redistricting Board met to approve its Proclamation Plan and Report.  If the plan is not challenged in court, this may have been the last Board meeting until the new Board is convened for the 2020 redistricting.

After the Board meeting I had a chance to video Tom Begich, who worked as a consultant to Calista Corporation on redistricting and helped them devise the plans they submitted to the Board, and Randy Ruedrich.  Randy was the Chair of the Alaska Republican Party for years and worked with AFFER (Alaskans For Fair and Equitable Redistricting) to develop the plans they submitted to the Board.

Both the Calista and AFFER plans in the end, looked a lot alike - with Fairbanks being the major difference.  Also Calista's plan kept Matsu borough intact while the AFFER plan broke the borough once.  The Board's final plan broke Matsu borough twice.

I asked Tom if this was the end.  Basically, I was asking if it was likely that anyone would be challenging the plan in court or whether the issues that were raised are now settled.







I asked Randy what he thought about the plan.  Then I asked him about an email he's sent out to Republicans listing all the new Senate districts and how they affected incumbents and the complaints I heard before the meeting from one Republican who felt that Republicans had been treated badly by the Board.




I don't know if I'm reading things into this, but it seems that seeing Randy talk gives a very different meaning than if you just read what he said.

I have two more videos from after Sunday's meeting to post - the Board's attorney Michael White and State Democratic Chair Mike Wentrup. 

Wet Little Magpie and Noisy Parent

We have a magpie nest in the back yard again this year.  Last time  - years ago - we were restricted by the protective parents to a small part of our yard.

Yesterday morning one of the chick was taking advantage of the sprinkler.

Then we went off to the Redistricting Board meeting and the Sunday market.

When we got home, several hours later, it was still sitting in the spray.

And Mama (or Poppa?) showed up and let me know I needed to keep my distance, as she told her baby he'd had enough water and to get back up to the nest.

[No one corrected my original spelling of magpie (magpy) but I finally caught it.  By the way, these are photos with the new camera.  These are the kinds of shots where it makes a bit difference.]

Photos From Last Redistricting Board Meeting

I posted my rough notes of the meeting just after it ended at 1:30pm.  Here are some photos.  And video sometime tomorrow.  Oh, there's no guarantee this is the last meeting.  If they are challenged in court there could be more meetings. 

This picture was taken after the meeting was over.  I'm sorry about the shut eyes I got in some of these. 

Board members (l-r) McConnochie, Holm, Torgerson, Green, Brodie after meeting

Here's the Board at the beginning of the 30 minute meeting.  In addition to the Board members (in the previous picture) there's Michael White and the stenographer (who's name I didn't get).

This is some of the audience - a couple more were behind me and a few others came after the picture.

Randy Ruedrich (left) was the head of the Republican Party and was at many of the Board meetings.  He also was the spokesperson for AFFER (Alaskans For Fair and Equitable Redistricting).  Tom Begich (middle) a Democratic political consultant and strategist, was a consultant for Calista.  Marcia Davis is Calista's attorney for redistricting.

In the end, the Calista map and the AFFER map were mostly the same.  Calista's Fairbanks was different and their Matsu didn't split the Borough.  AFFER's map splits the Kenai Borough twice.  The Board went with splitting Matsu twice and made their own Fairbanks map.

Above is the signed Proclamation Plan.  Chair Torgerson said that there was a typo in the signature page - a 'e' was left out of someone's name - so this wasn't ready immediately.  He didn't say, "And we'll add "adopted by unanimous vote" while we're add it.  I suspect they knew in advance.  In fact, when they get to the votes, I know I just have to type 5-0 because that's all they ever do.  But it would seem to me pretty obvious that even if they don't have more than two Board members meeting outside the public meetings, they have found a way to poll the members off the record on various things.  So they could type up "adopted by unanimous consent' before hand.

Here's a link to the Board's findings.

And another link to the Board's website page that has most of the documents for the new plan.

I've got some post-meeting videos that I'll try get later.

The Last Redistricting Board Meeting? Everyone hopes so.

Here are my rough notes of the meeting which ended at 1:30.  I'll add some pictures later.  Essentially, they approved the Plan and Findings and Maps, which should go up on the website any time now.


1:00pm Moved to approve agenda - approved.
GIS expert report - Eric? 

Eric:  Oerll very clean, I made three changes that involved population moved from one district.  Nine people total for the plan
1.  Two people from D1 to 2 to clean up Speese/Richardson Highway
2.  ??3 from ??
3.  5 From district 6 to 9 along AK Highway.  Johnson River had been the boundary, but took a jag off river that no longer exists.

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  I move we adopt the technical changes reported by Eric.

Vote:  5-0 yes

Torg:  Item 6, adop[tion fo Metes and  Bounds.  Eric, that's in your proclamation plan.  How'd you work your magic on that one.
Eric:  I went along the boundaries of each district.  All clockwise.  Started at easily identified point - like intersection.  Very few changes to be made, some water boundaries, if river zigzagged.  Just plugge away at it for about 3 days.   Questions?

Torgerson:  I wouldn't know how to even form a question look at these.  Like district 9.
Eric:  They warned us about using temporary things like precincts and to use permanent boundaries.

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  move to adopt
Vote:  5-0 yes

Torgerson:  Item 7 not sure there is a legal report.  Iknow you have the proclamation.

White:  You have the proclamation plan on redistricting.  The Proclamation that you will all sign soon.  The written findings, on the map, from a legal standpoint, findings explain the difficult decisions we had.  Excess population of Fairbanks and ????, and low rural population.  I'm convinced all the districts meet all the fed and state constitutional principles.  I can answer any questions. 


Audience member:  Take questions from the audience?  No.

White:  Those Senate seats do not stand for election until 2014, and the others are up for election in 2014.  In 2016 we will be back to the required rotation of ten and ten senate seats up for election.

Torgerson:  When we adopt the findings, does that include the truncation and senate pairings?

White:  yes

McConnochie:  I move we adopt the findings and terms and truncation and senate terms.

Discussion?  ---

Vote:  5-0

1:13:  The Board has adopted the findings and now we move to adopting the Proclamation itself.  I'd note there is a spelling error which is being corrected now.  An e will be added to the name.

McConnochie:  I move we adopt the proclamation plan.

Torgerson:  Discussion?

Vote:  5-0

Torgerson:  That brings us to Board member comments.

Brodie:  I'd like to thank all the people who came and testified this second time around, it helped us make our decisions.  It wasn't an easy job in the beginning and still wasn't easy to balance all the criteria.  Some requests contradicted others.  Thank all the Board members for taking off from the families and jobs.  Frustrating at times, but I certainly got an education.

Holm:  I'm not running for anything, so not sure if I should thank anyone.  An unusual process.  Pleasantly surprised to meet each and every one of you.  How hard it is to balance the constitution of Alaska and all the indiidual needs.  As a former legislator I find it ?? to accommodate everyone.  I'm not an Alaska Native but a Native Alaskan.  Mr. Chairman I enjoyed working with you.  You're a little hard to get along with at times, but it's been fun watching you do this.

Green:  In memory of Ron Miller who set the tone for us.  How proud I was to have known him.  Eric and Taylor stepping up.  We couldn't have done it without him.  I learned a lot from the process.  I hope one day when the next go around, that all the parties came come together.  Not so much the parties we represent but the entire state of Alaska.  Exciting when we had calls ... and two different groups coming together for the benefit of the entire state of alaska.  Such a wonderful feeling.  I really express my appreciation.  We haven't satisfied the entire state, but we did the best we could, given the 2010 population.  It will be more of a challenge in 2020.  Thank you Mr. Chair for your leadership and Bob, PeggyAnn, and Mike. . .

PeggyAnn McConnochie:  Thank you ????.  No one will know how hard we worked on this.  And I thank our staff, from Mary to Eric to Taylor and Ron Miller.  We had an incredible Board.  Obstacles in our way.  We were able to do it because two different groups came together and made it work.  When you are balancing concerns on every side, we came down on the side of Alaska.

Torgerson:  When are we filing this report.
White:  Tuesday afternoon or sometime Wednesday.

Torgerson:  I, like the rest of the Board, want to thank all the Board members, and our staff, we put real pressure on Mary, and coming in on Sundays and 4th of July weekend.  And Marie is absolutely right, without Eric we wouldn't have gotten far on this.  And Marcia Davis, Tom Begich, and Randy Ruedrich for coming together and agreeing to the boundaries of 36 districts.  Only time you'll hear those two names mentioned in the same sentence.  The only part they didnt agree on was Fairbanks, and board went their own way on that one.

Some delay waiting on the Supreme Court.  Without that decision, one way or the other would have complicated things.  Hope this makes it through the scrutiny of the courts.  I want to see you all and Mr. White again, but never in this building.

White:  Extraordinarily proud to work with this group.  I've seen how hard you worked.  I know there are people in the press who have had said things about this board.  I disagree with the negative things.  I hope I served you well as the counsel.  I not only have made colleagues here, but also friends and you can call on me any time.  I think future boards will have an easier time because of the struggles you have gone through.  And I know the Board will make recommendations for the future boards.

Torgerson:  We didn't have instructions from the previous board.  MIA.  Some ideas may take legislation, like a planning team prior to the board, some rfps,  We do have the cleaning corrected spelling.  I don't see a need to stay on the record to sign that.  So Eric, you still there. You want to say anything.

Eric:  Webposting, I assume once you have signed everything, I can post all this?

Torgerson:  We'll do this in ten or 15 minutes and I'll call you with the goahead.  I supposed you can go ahead and send them to the webmaster.  The only thing he won't have is the signed proclamation.  And the Board signed findings.

STands adjourned.  1:30pm

Overstocked.com Charges More For Alaska Shipping Because of Customs

I know, everyone has stories about people being told that Alaska is a foreign country so they charge more or won't ship something at all.  This is not new.  But this is 2013 and it's ridiculous.

The off-brand battery that I bought for my handset for my landline phone at Frigid North a while back was not charging well anymore, even though the original Panasonic battery in the other phone was still reasonably better.  Phone conversations suddenly ended because the battery would go out.

I finally decided to check on line and immediately found the original Panasonic battery at Overstocked.com.  It was less than $5.  When I put it in my cart,  a popup window said I could also buy two more batteries for under $8.  The other battery is starting to lose juice fast too, so I said ok.   I looked up the shipping options and saw that Alaska and Hawaii would be charged more.

But when it showed me the bill it was three batteries for about $12, plus $2.95 shipping. That sounded fine.  The off brand battery I'd bought at Frigid North had cost about $18.  So I clicked to go to the checkout.  I gave them the pay info and then clicked purchase.

That's when I got a receipt that showed the shipping was $9.80 almost three times what I'd agreed to.  But I was checked out already.

So I did a chat online with someone.  I explained I understood that Alaska and Hawaii sometimes had higher shipping charges, but he should get the IT folks to show that before we've paid, not after.  He sounded like he might or might not pass the word on.

A couple days later I got an email saying it had been shipped - USPS first class.  I know that the post office is pretty equitable about the cost of postage.  I got the online USPS calculator and put in their zipcode in City of Commerce and my zipcode in Anchorage.  I didn't know how much it would be, but I guessed 6 ounces.  $2.53.  [When they finally came it turned out to be 4 ounces which the calculator says should be $2.24.]

Then I repeated this and put in a Seattle zipcode instead Anchorage.  $2.53.

So, as I suspected, there was no difference and they were charging me three times as much because someone believed it cost more to ship to Alaska.

This time I called and talked to a very nice woman who listened.  At first she was programmed to say, but you're in Alaska, but I got through that.  She understood what I was saying and put me on hold.  When she came back she said, it's because it has to go through customs.

Wait.  Alaska is a state in the United States.  You don't need a passport to come here and you don't go through customs.  Customs?  That's ridiculous.  It's not true.

She put me on hold while she went back to talk to someone else.

Now she said it was more because it was shipped in two different shipments.  We have lots of different warehouses. Why, I asked, would they do that?  It was three identical batteries.  They all should come from the same place.  It would have been cheaper for me to buy four batteries (ordering the two/fer price) than three batteries because the battery is much less than the shipping.  I also mentioned my issue about not being told the correct shipping price until after I bought the product.

She got it down, wrote it up and said she'd get it to the people who could help.

A couple of days later, I got a customer satisfaction survey online from Overstocked.  I decided to leave it in my email until I got the batteries.

Then a day or two later, the batteries arrived.  All three in one package.

Next I found the email with the link to the survey and explained it all once more.  That the price was the same to Seattle as to Anchorage, so we shouldn't be charged more, that there was only one package so I shouldn't have been told there were two, etc.

The survey was clearly sent because I'd used their customer service and I'm guessing they'll be able to track the two people who helped me and give them feedback - I said they were fine, they didn't have the power to fix things.

But how long will Alaskans continue be treated like another country?