Anchorage Daily News

News for Thursday, Aug. 2

Alaska’s three members of Congress – Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young – are still drawing a jumbo share of media attention as a tumultuous week nears an end. All have faced trouble in recent days, the most recent jolt being federal authorities’ raid on Stevens’ Girdwood home on Monday. Here’s some of what’s in the news today and what’s developing:

▪ Young – who gained nationwide media attention last week for threatening to bite, like a mink, New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett for threatening education money for Alaska – has apologized, according to a story in The Hill. “Young listed traumatic events within his state, his hospitalization last week and the hospitalization of his wife as reasons that caused him to act inappropriately on the House floor,” the story says.

▪ Citing Senate records and financial disclosure forms, a story in Roll Call today says Stevens used a Senate employee as his personal bookkeeper but does not appear to have paid her for those services out of his own funds, even as the aide collected more than a quarter-million dollars in federal pay. An Associated Press story at adn.com previously reported that the employee, Barbara Flanders, was subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury about Stevens’ dealings with Bill Allen.

▪ A Stevens colleague, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, told The Crypt, a Capitol Hill blog, that the FBI was “a bit Gestapo-like” in how it handled the search of Stevens’ home. “When the FBI was offered a key and invited into the home, they chose publicize it to make sure the media was there first, and they broke in. That is gamesmanship. That makes senators very, very angry when they attempt to cooperate when for reason they are caught in these webs and yet they are denied that for the sake of the judiciary’s publicity. That is wrong,” Craig is quoted as saying.

▪ A Fairbanks Daily News-Miner editorial today says, “It’s disturbing to see some people clamor for Sen. Stevens’ head when it’s not even clear yet that he is the target of the federal government’s probe.” The editorial concludes: “We’ll all learn the details of this federal inquiry soon enough. Until we do, however, calls for the senator to step aside from committee positions are premature.”

▪ The FBI investigation into corruption touching Alaska lawmakers could go on for years, a KTUU story says. The story suggests the state’s “political culture” could come out the other end with a new look.

▪ Murkowski has posted a brief statement on her Web site that says, in part, “With the current investigation underway, it is not appropriate to jump to conclusions until the process is complete. Senator Stevens has the right to have the facts established in this matter.”

▪ Trevor McCabe, a former Stevens aide who has become part of the current investigation involving the senator (see ADN story here), filed papers in 2004 to create a restaurant company called Uncle Ted’s Alaska LLC but then backed out of the plan last year, a story today at TPMmuckraker.com says. McCabe gave no indication in his paperwork as to the reason for changing his mind.

▪ A story at bloomberg.com looks at the notion that the federal investigation of  Stevens not only threatens the career of the longest-serving Republican in Senate history, it also puts at risk the billions of dollars that the senator has steered to Alaska.

▪ The New York Times and others are reporting that attention on the Stevens situation is complicating a possible vote today on legislation overhauling lobbying and ethics standards. Senate Republicans had been resisting the Democrats’ bill but some are less certain in their position in light of the raid on Stevens’ home.

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Are PFD days numbered? A Peninsula Clarion piece looks at the prospects that the annual cash payout to Alaskans could go away, always an explosive subject. The author reasons thus: As the fund keeps growing  – it recently topped $40 billion – pressure will increase at the state level to spend some of it; and if federal appropriations tumble along with the fortunes of the state’s congressional delegation, that too could increase the pressure to spend from the fund.

The story goes on: “Sen. Majority Leader Gary Stevens (no relation to Ted Stevens) said in Homer last week that he did not see any move to spend the fund over the next year or two, but further out, sentiments could change. ‘We've just celebrated it reaching $40 billion. In a few more years, it will hit $50 billion,’ Stevens noted. ‘In another 10 years or so, it could reach $100 billion.’”

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The long reach of an earthquake. A story that appeared in The Chronicle Journal of Thunder Bay, Ontario, and other publications says that researchers have found the shaking of a major Alaska earthquake in 2002 triggered tremors to roll under the landscape of Vancouver Island and rippled for thousands of kilometers through seismic zones across the United States. The researchers found the effects of the quake sloshed lakes from Seattle to Louisiana, muddied wells as far east as Pennsylvania and triggered small earthquakes in seismic zones across the western United States.

Researchers on the project say their findings could help advance toward predicting earthquakes. “So it’s giving us a more complete picture of the faults, and with a more complete picture, we hope to predict earthquakes,” said seismologist John Vidale.

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Joyriding crewman. A Kodiak Daily Mirror story reports on the DUI arrest of a man with a record already of at least five drunken driving offenses. This time, though, he was taken into custody after he drove aground a 20-ton, 83-foot tender vessel just outside of St. Herman Harbor.

He was charged with violating probation, felony driving under the influence and refusing to provide a breath sample to troopers.

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A new school, at long last. Coffman Cove, a small Southeast Alaska community on Prince of Wales Island, is in line to get a new school, after waiting for 18 years, an APRN story reports. The project won legislative funding this year to replace the aging educational facility currently in use and where walls have holes and floors sag, according to the story.

The community has a population of about 150, more in the summer, and the school will cost about $7 million. “Some in Coffman Cove hope the school will be one of the community’s anchors,” the story reports.

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The Ketchikan Daily News reports this act of generosity:

“The Hovik family donated its Kohler and Chase upright piano to The Salvation Army Thrift Store Tuesday after bringing it across Tongass Narrows aboard Pat Jirschele's small landing craft.” The story includes a detailed description of the heroic grunt work – including rolling, skidding and heaving the piano past obstacles – needed to get the thing to its destination.