Rural Alaska

Unalaska city officials' Scandinavia trip raises issues

A trip to Europe by three local leaders is producing aftershocks along the Aleutian Chain, from Unalaska to Adak.

Since one of the three didn't submit his travel report on time, the Unalaska city council may change policy to ban future travel if politicians fail to give the city clerk a written report within 15 days for posting on the city's website.

The issue arose at last week's city council meeting. City councilor Dennis Robinson hadn't turned in his report from the trip to Finland and Norway in June, nor two from two previous trips, to Seattle in February, and Juneau in March.

Robinson apologized, and said it wouldn't happen again. "My bad," he said.

The Finland Policy Tour was organized by the Institute of the North, by invitation only, to select invitees, and those in Unalaska and Adak who were left out weren't happy. In Unalaska, Robinson managed to go, despite invitations initially limited to Mayor Shirley Marquardt and city manager Chris Hladick. The trio's travels cost Unalaskans about $25,000.

"Adak was not invited to the conference," said city manager Layton Lockett. "We did not receive any such invitation." He said he probably could have found money for at least one person's Nordic travels.

Adak and Unalaska officials said they see the need to deploy their lobbyists wherever conferences are convened.

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The two cities worry about losing out on economic opportunities stemming from growing interest in the Arctic, especially both communities' exclusion from the study on funding new ports by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Adak was "very disappointed," by the Corps action, said Lockett, calling it "extremely shortsighted."

Whether the Aleutians are truly Arctic is debatable, according to the Corps report, since the islands clearly qualify by federal bureaucratic definition, while skeptics point to the year-round open water in warmer regions.

Unalaska and Adak officials cite the potential offshore development of oil in the Arctic Ocean, and the likelihood of more vessel traffic transiting the Aleutians as the melting polar ice cap provides more opportunities for commercial shipping benefiting ports along the chain.

After Robinson protested the city council's exclusion from the European trip, the mayor obtained an additional invitation by contacting the executive director of the Institute of the North, Nils Andreassen in Anchorage. The nonprofit organization is substantially funded by organizing conferences, Andreassen told the Dutch Harbor Fisherman.

Marquardt said she raised the trip report issue, as the travel policy states that "the mayor will be responsible for managing council member travel to ensure guidelines and procedures are being followed and that travel remains within budget."

Said Robinson, "If I travel, I will be on top of it from here on out." And later in the meeting, Robinson announced a change in his travel plans, calling for a replacement to take his place on the six-person delegation on the upcoming annual city lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., including the mayor, councilors Zoya Johnson and Enlow, the city manager, and assistant city manager Patrick Jordan.

Robinson is running for re-election to a three-year term, opposed by Yudelka Leclere, who attended the meeting.

Council member Tom Enlow said he accepted Robinson's mea culpa.

But Enlow said language needs to added to the "prohibited travel" portion of the travel policy, banning city trips by council members who are delinquent in submitting travel reports, to "hold their feet to the fire."

And there was discussion on perhaps defining the literary quality of the trip reports, with Marquardt complaining that Robinson complied with the policy simply by submitting copies of the meeting agendas. "These are scanned agendas," the mayor said.

Robinson disagreed. He said he accounted for his time by providing a detailed list of the meetings he attended, and noted the travel policy does not require anybody to actually to show up at out-of-town meetings.

While his commentary was less extensive than the mayor's, Robinson wrote, "We can learn a lot from the Scandinavian countries on education, resource development, energy efficiency and building a strong society." And in his report on the Seattle trip, he wrote, " I continue to be surprised on how our port is ignored even by people who have visited here."

Unlike Johnson, his critic on the issue, Robinson provided only a brief narrative about the Juneau lobbying trip and seafood reception, beyond reporting the schedule of visits with various legislators and listing the city's funding priorities. He wrote that the city wants $67 million in state funding for road, harbor, and powerhouse projects, including $24 million for Captains Bay Road improvements and $28 million for the Unalaska Marine Center.

Johnson, running unopposed for re-election, praised the city's popular lobbying technique in Juneau, involving free food donated by Bering Sea seafood processing companies.

"As always, the Unalaska seafood reception was one of the social events' highlights for those working on the hill, their families, and many former Unalaskans who have moved to Juneau, and our way to showcase Unalaska through the delicious example of our major revenue source," Johnson wrote. Johnson also reported on lunch in the Senate finance committee chambers, saying the city manager explained local port services, and a constituent dinner with legislators and the Alaska Marine Exchange, which monitors vessel traffic.

In addition to airfare, the city pays for hotels, usually at the same location as the conferences (typically in Anchorage) where shopping and dining opportunities far exceed those found in small and isolated rural Alaska communities. The hotels include upscale establishments such as the Hotel Captain Cook for the Southwest Alaska Municipal Conference, and the Anchorage Westward Hilton for North Pacific Fishery Management Council meetings, and the Anchorage Sheraton Hotel for the board of fisheries.

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Council member Roger Rowland said that council travel is the thing he hears the most about from the public, "more than any other issue." The people are intensely interested in knowing how their money is being spent and what was achieved by their elected officials' business travel, he said.

"It's very important that the public get to see those trip reports" viewable on the city's website, Rowland said.

Marquardt said the travel policy hasn't been revised since 2007.

In 2007, the list of prohibited travel was expanded to ban more than three council members from traveling together. That was in response to the city's 2005 trip to Iceland to look at geothermal energy, attended by five councilors and the mayor and manager and the city's energy consultants. More than three members together anywhere gives the council a quorum, the ability to make decisions.

This story originally appeared in The Bristol Bay Times/Dutch Harbor Fisherman and has been republished here with permission.

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