Anchorage Daily News

Click to enlarge

Inside Suite 604. See item below. (Photo by Bob Kaufman)

Story tools

Comment on this story

E-mail a friend

Print

Digg this

Seed Newsvine

Send link via AIM

Font size : A | A | A

News for Monday, Oct. 8

Bear hunting story stirs complaint to cops. Alaska State Troopers have received a complaint against a Channel 2 News crew and those who were with them during the filming of a controversial bear hunt in Katmai National Park and Preserve, according to a KTUU story. The complaint claims the crew interfered with the hunt, the story says.

The hunt has stirred bitter opposition from critics who argue bears in the region are habituated to humans and killing them is unsporting. Defenders of the hunt say it is legal and the bear population is sufficient to support it.

Troopers have not decided whether to pursue the complaint, according to the KTUU story.

An ADN story on the hunt itself is here. The story notes that a complaint had been made to the troopers, but a trooper spokeswoman said the hunt was successful and there was nothing to pursue. It’s unclear whether the complaint that Channel 2 is reporting is a separate one.

ADN has also put  video of the hunt online. KTUU video is likewise available. And YouTube has it as well.

***

“Now this is women’s work.” Gov. Sarah Palin can add a Newsweek story to her growing list of glowing media reviews. In this week’s edition, the magazine includes the Republican governor in a roundup of female governors who, the story says, “are making their mark with a pragmatic, postpartisan approach to solving state problems.”

The story briefly skims over some of the actions Palin has taken in her early days in office and concludes she “is challenging the dominant, sometimes corrupting, role of oil companies in the state’s political culture.”

The story quotes Senate Minority Leader Beth Kerttula pointing out one advantage over other lawmakers she’s long waited for: “I finally get to go to the restroom and talk business with the governor. … The guys have been doing this for centuries.”

***

Inside Suite 604. On his “weblog of life on our Last Frontier,” Bob Kaufman has published a series of photos from inside the famed Suite 604 in the Baranof Hotel in Juneau. The photos improve mightily on the grainy images of conversations in the room that have come out of the political corruption cases involving Veco. Corp. and  Alaska lawmakers.

Kaufman writes that he was staying in Room 607 recently and managed to get into 604 with a cameraphone. He says he studied angles and furniture but was nevertheless unable to determine where federal authorities may have hidden their camera that yielded the corruption videos. “It renewed my respect for our federal law enforcement agencies that they could descend upon a hotel room in Juneau, Alaska, pull off a sting of this magnitude, and disappear without leaving a trace of how they did it.”

***

Critics hammer "crab ratz" program. A Kodiak Daily Mirror story says that “no one seems happy” with the 2-year-old crab rationalization program that allocates Bering Sea Aleutian Island crab resources among harvesters, processors and coastal communities.

The lengthy story details a number of specific problems the critics are bringing up as well as the quarrels of the interest groups involved in the issue. “Whether fishermen benefited from the program doesn’t seem to factor in the nearly unanimous opinion that privatizing what was once a public-use resource is wrong,” the story says.

***

“The ever-shrinking inner circle.” Alaskan Abroad, R.A. Dillon’s blog, has an item noting that with the departure from the Palin administration of new mom and governor spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton, two of three of her closest advisers have left in the governor’s brief tenure. John Bitney has also left, and of the trio that leaves only Mike Tibbles.

The item says Palin’s new press person is Beth Leschper, who moved to Alaska in 2005 and “has a bit of catch-up to do on Alaska issues.”

***

Ferry workers nix contract. Members of a union representing Alaska ferry workers have rejected a tentative one-year contract with a 3 percent pay hike, an Associated Press story reports.

Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific members voted 95 to 86 in favor of the contract, “but union rules require a majority in each of the union's departments to approve the contract as well. Pursers and steward units rejected the contract, while deck and engine departments voted in favor,” the story says.

Negotiations are due to resume next month.

***

“Get it straight, Anchorage.” A brief but vigorous opinion piece in the Alaska Star details the irritation of author Til Wallace with those at a recent meeting who seemed to lose the notion of a separate “Chugiak” when talking of “Anchorage” and “Eagle River.”

The resident of Chugiak since 1955 writes: “What raises my hackles is that the bureaucrats from City Hall don't understand the distinction. They'd just as soon have us known as Anchorage ever since they conquered us in 1975 and put us all into the municipality. Chugiak has a proud heritage. It deserves to be remembered. Too many of the old-timers who made it great are vanishing from the scene. Their efforts should live on, along with the name of the community they created.”

***

“Mistakes in Alaska can kill.” Writing at fwdailynews.com, a psychotherapist who survived a near-deadly experience with a swift, cold Alaska river on the Alaska Peninsula says he found out some things about how he would cope with his own death. “I thought I had it figured out,” Don Mulligan, who is also an outdoors writer, writes in the brutally personal column. “I was wrong.”

Mulligan had shot a moose on the other side of a river and ended up in the water trying to cross. “In my heart, however, I knew I couldn’t make it. It was at this point that I briefly accepted death. I’ve heard and read that most people think of their loved ones when they believe it’s the end. I did not. At first, I was mad and in disbelief that this was happening to me. Then, as I prepared to leap from the pontoon, I was mostly just sad,” he writes.

***

State stops hospital work. A Homer News story says that the state has stopped work on South Peninsula Hospital to gain more time for review of the facility’s application for a certificate of need. The action delays from Oct. 17 until Dec. 12 the bid opening for the hospital’s second phase of expansion, according to the story.

The hospital obtained a certificate for expansion in 1998, according to the story, but that one expired in 2003 and an application for a new one was received by the state July 5.

***

 Wanted: State workers. A Juneau Empire story says the state is struggling to find ways to recruit and retain workers and to do it without spending a lot of money. The governor has created the Executive Branch Working Group to look for ways and is expected to come up with a report at the beginning of November.

More than a quarter of the state’s executive branch employees will be eligible to retire in five years. One-third of the professional staff will also be eligible, according to the story.

***

Dinosaur secrets in Alaska. Researchers have long been recovering dinosaur bones from a site on the Colville River, but new tactics should help them get better specimens, according to an APRN story. The new tactics involve tunneling into the river bank.

A 30-foot-deep tunnel dug this spring offers a unique work space, according to University of Alaska Museum of the North paleontologist Kevin May. The bones acquired from the tunnel are in much better condition than those gotten in the past from the river bank, according to the story. “We can find very small skeletal elements in very good shape,” May said.

***

Then there’s this letter to the editor … In the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner from a woman in Fairbanks complaining about a neighbor, whom she describes as a 45-year-old man, speeding past her property.

“On Sept. 24, he killed my 5-month-old puppy on our property. …Why do people have to be so uncaring and disrespectful of others and their property? Do they not realize to some of us a dog is not just a dog or a pet is not just a pet, it is a family member, a companion and best friend?”