Alaska Olympians Kikkan Randall and Holly Brooks might be among the best ambassadors the 49th state has on the national and international stages these days, but in the eyes of the Alaska Department of Revenue they are neither Alaskans nor Olympians.
How's that, you ask?
When it comes to handing out Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend checks -- every Alaskan's annual return on the state's vast oil wealth -- the Revenue Department gets very, very picky about who qualifies. With very few exceptions, a calendar year must be spent on Alaska soil in order to initially qualify for the check, which is disbursed every fall to every man, woman and child. Any Alaskan who spends significant time outside of the state best supply a good reason, or else sacrifice qualifying for the PFD check.
Olympians like cross-country skiers Randall and Brooks, who promote the state globally, are supposed to get a break in this regard. The Alaska Legislature in 2006 specifically exempted them from the basic requirement that Alaskans must spend most of the year in Alaska in order to collect the handout that's ranged from a low of $331.25 in 1984 to as much as $2,069 in 2008, a banner year, when then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin tacked an additional $1,200 "resource rebate" onto the bounty to offset climbing energy prices.
But the Department of Revenue has it own take on what the Legislature did, and according to the view of Revenue, Olympians only exist when there are Olympic Games, which come along once every four years.
"It may be that the Legislature was not fully informed regarding the issue and that a more deliberative process would have yielded different legislation,'' emailed Lacy Wilcox, a special assistant to Commissioner of Revenue Bryan Butcher. "But the law is what it is, not what it might have been. It is clear, in light of the legislative history, that the Legislature did not intend United States national team members to be included within the scope of (the exemption)."
Wilcox blames then-Reps. Lesil McGuire, R-Anchorage, and Eric Croft, D-Anchorage, for all this. McGuire, now an Anchorage senator, and Croft think Wilcox, whose MySpace avatar appears to be Spacy Lacy, and the Revenue Department are just plain acting spacey.
McGuire and Croft served in the state House when the PFD rules were amended in 2006 to provide an allowable absence from the state for Olympians, Peace Corps volunteers and others.
This is how Wilcox describes what happened:
The Alaska Senate in 2005 wrote legislation -- Senate Bill 104 -- to deal with "fraud in the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend program and made no mention of allowable absences. Allowable absences were the subject of a different bill ending in the same legislature, House Bill 127.
House Bill 127, as introduced, added allowable absences for service in the Peace Corps and in the diplomatic corps. When House Bill 127 reached the House floor on April 1, 2005, several additional allowable absences were proposed by amendment. Rep. Croft offered an amendment to add an allowable absence for "Olympians and national-team athletes." Rep. McGuire, the sponsor of House Bill 127, objected, and offered an amendment to Rep. Croft's proposed amendment that would delete "national-team athletes" from his proposed amendment.
Rep. McGuire's change was adopted without any objection, and Rep. Croft's proposed amendment, now restricted to Olympians, was then adopted, by a vote of 28-5.
Everyone appears to agree on that history. It's the legal interpretation of that amendment that's in dispute. The law makes no mention of when an Olympian reverts to plain-old "national team athlete." Wilcox insists the "legislative intent" of the Olympic exemption, however, is crystal clear.
"This legislative history clearly and unequivocally establishes that AS 43.23.008(a)(15) was not intended to include members of United States national teams," she wrote. "It may be that an allowable absence for Olympic team members is of little or no practical value to Alaskans whose membership on an Olympic team is but a small portion of the time they spend out of the state training and competing as members of the United States national team during the years prior to the selection of the Olympic team," but so what?
The two legislators most intimately involved in the exemption see the intent clearly, too, only in polar opposite. Olympians in training for the next Olympics remain Olympians. They don't lose their Olympian status. McGuire said the legislation being used to punish Olympians was intended to benefit them. Croft believes Revenue is interpreting the exemption way too narrowly. Now a practicing attorney in Anchorage, Croft said he'd be happy to take Randall's case pro bono if she wants to sue the state to get a PFD. That is unlikely. Neither Randall, who grew up in Anchorage and has gone on to become the most decorated American Nordic skier in history, nor Brooks, who came here to coach skiers at Alaska Pacific University and blossomed into one of those only-in-Alaska success stories, have made a fuss about their status, though friends and relatives admit they feel slighted.
Class acts with skis firmly on Alaska soil
Randall and Brooks are sponsored skiers, but nobody gets rich competing for the U.S. in the Nordic sports. Retired, world-class, cross-country skier Nina Kemppel from Anchorage, a member of the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame who spent more than a decade traveling the world to compete, said the annual Permanent Fund Dividend would "would go a long way for an Olympic athlete."
Kemppel is among the PFD refugees, stripped of her Alaskan oil wealth during years in the past when training and competing meant long stretches Outside. She has now retired from skiing and is working in Anchorage. She admits she finds it odd that the Department of Revenue would deny PFDs to the likes of Randall and Brooks "when there are so few Olympians."
The webpage for the United State Olympic Committee at the moment list three in winter sports: Randall, Brooks and snowboarder Callan Chythlook-Sifsof of Girdwood, Alaska. Her PFD status is unknown. Wilcox said privacy laws prevent the state from talking about individual cases, but she can talk about how the program works.
Alaska Dispatch was not able to immediately ascertain Chythlook-Sifsof's PFD status. Brooks has qualified in the past but is unlikely to qualify this year due to competition and training. Randall has been cast out of the PFD pool for a while. No athlete, aside perhaps from Libby Riddles, Iditarod's first female champion, has earned the recognition and acclaim for the nation's coldest, darkest state that Randall's success has attracted.
She has been lighting up the World Cub Nordic scene this year. Earlier this month she clinched the cross-country World Cup sprint title, besting Norwegian world champion Marit Bjoergen. Both Randall and Brooks -- who is married to an Anchorage fireman and owns a home in Anchorage on which she pays taxes -- are tireless promoters of Alaska.
Some have suggested that the state of Alaska should be sponsoring Randall and Brooks, given the light they and the rest of the APU Nordic Ski Center team shine upon the state. Instead, state bureaucrats withhold part of their Alaskan identity and heritage.
"The allowable absence only pertains to training and/or competing in or for actual Olympic events," Wilcox said. "Adding World Cup events to the list of allowable absences would take place at the legislative level."
She refused to answer the question as to how one trains for the Olympics without competing in World Cup events. Most world-class athletes use those competitions to prepare for the Olympics. Kemppel said it might be possible to make the Olympics without this sort of training, but it would be rare.
Croft said he was baffled at how Revenue Department officials had concluded that a statute granting Olympic athletes waiver from PFD requirements in practice disqualified them altogether. Wilcox conceded that the Revenue Department's present handling of the Olympic statute "is of little or no practical value to Alaskans" in terms of recouping lost Permanent Fund disbursements.
Third-generation Alaskan with Olympic ambition unqualified for annual check
Why, Croft wondered, would the Legislature bother to provide a phony benefit for Olympians? The whole issue only came to light this year because of an angry mother. Cynthia Pickering Christianson, was outraged when her son Kieffer, a 20-year-old, up-and-coming U.S. Alpine skier, was denied a PFD because he'd spent too much time out of the state training and competing in an effort to qualify for the 2014 Winter Games. Kieffer is a third-generation Alaskan. His family helped build Alaska. "Kieffer's grandfather was a homesteader in the 1940s in Alaska," Cynthia noted.
"Kieffer was born here and has been an Alaska resident since his birth. My husband's side of the family has lived here ever since the 1940s (and) still own the island the granddad homesteaded."
Cynthia Christianson, like Croft and McGuire, contends Revenue is interpreting state statute not as the Legislature intended, but in the narrowest possible way.
Wilcox, for her part, contends no interpretation is involved.
"Again, this particular statute does not allow us 'wide latitude' for interpretation," she said. "In fact legislative history shows that this particular statute was clarified on the record as far as the authority of the Commissioner of Revenue is concerned. Whether an allowable absence under AS 43.23.008(a)(15) includes members of a national team prior to selection of the Olympic team is a question of statutory construction. Generally, a statute is constructed in accordance with the plain meaning. In this case, the plain meaning of the phrase "member of the U.S.O.T." does not include a member of a United States national team. Legislative history tells us that the legislature meant what it said."
Cynthia Christianson contends Revenue has a problem with both history and reading comprehension.
The "Department of Revenue has adopted the most conservative and crabbed interpretation possible of the law they have to interpret," she said. "They interpret the applicable statute to give these U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team athletes 'excusable absences' only once every for years, for those days after they've been picked to be on the team."
The rule, as interpreted by Revenue, means few Olympic athletes are going to qualify. Whether that will change in the future is uncertain.
Wilcox would not confirm or deny whether the Department of Revenue had ever sought clarification from the Legislature on the Olympic PFD statute, or whether the department would do so in the future. She said she only wanted to stress that "that the Department of Revenue is bound by statute and regulation to enforce the law as it is written."
As if the words were crystal.
Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com