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Palin
names three more to cabinet
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - Governor Sarah Palin named three
more members to her administration today (Thursday).
For commissioner of Labor, Palin tapped Clark ``Click''
Bishop, currently the administrator for the Alaska
Operating Engineers -- Employers Training Trust.
Palin selected Tara Jollie, a lead administrator for
Workforce Development programs for ten years, to be the
deputy labor commissioner.
And she selected
Annette Kreitzer (CRYT-zer), who was chief of staff for
former Lieutenant Governor Loren Leman, to be
commissioner of Administration.
Kreitzer also worked as
acting chief of staff for current Lieutenant Governor
Sean Parnell.
Palin's final appointments, for commissioner and deputy
commissioner of Transportation, are expected soon.
Stevens
fined $5,000, half of recommended sum
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - State Senate President Ben
Stevens must pay a five-thousand dollar fine after the
Alaska Public Offices Commission ruled today he failed
to disclose information about his consulting work.
The fine is slightly less than half of what the A-P-O-C
staff had recommended.
The five-person board unanimously reduced it because the
commissioners believed certain criteria were unclear.
Separately, Stevens must also pay 630 dollars for
failing to disclose more than 70-thousand dollars in
deferred compensation for board of director service with
Semco Energy.
The fines stem from A-P-O-C's investigation into
complaints made by the Republican Moderate Party's Ray
Metcalfe, who is a long-time Stevens' adversary and
former Republican legislator.
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Stevens did not appear at the hearing but provided a
statement to the commission.
Stevens' term with the Senate runs out next week. His
office was among several searched by federal
investigators late last year.
Gas pipeline groups
sign cooperation deal
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - Two natural gas pipeline entities
say they will work cooperatively to develop Alaska
natural gas.
Officials with Alaska Gasline Port Authority and the
Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority, or ANGDA (ANG-dah)
announced a memorandum of understanding today
(Thursday).
The port authority, created by voters in 19-99, is
pushing to develop a natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe
Bay to Valdez and associated liquid natural gas
facilities.
The voter-approved ANGDA was authorized by the
Legislature to ensure the distribution of natural gas
and propane within the state.
ANGDA director Harold Heinze says the formal agreement
allows two entities that share common interests to share
confidential information.
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Governor Palin says she's glad to see interested parties
cooperating on the project.
Palin says she will consider all proposals for getting
the North Slope's gas reserves to market.
She is expected to introduce legislation at the
beginning of the session that will guide the process of
developing a gas line deal with oil and gas producers.
New high school spurs process to come up with secondary education plan
With the advent of a new high school in the Valley, a process dubbed "Next Generation Juneau: Our Kids, Our Community", is underway.
Its aim is to come up with a secondary education plan for Juneau in time for the opening of Thunder Mountain High School in August of 2008.
Toward that end, a series of community based meetings are planned for the week of January 22nd.
Superintendent Peggy Cowan was among the guests on Capital Chat this (Thursday) morning.
She said going to high school will change in Juneau with the opening of the new school. She said this is a great opportunity for the community to plan and consider what it wants in a secondary education plan.
Thunder Mountain will be the community's third high school in addition to Juneau Douglas and the Yaakoosge Daakahidi alternative high school.
The first of 14 planned public forums is set for Monday, January 22 at the Filipino Hall downtown from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
There's another the next evening from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Mendenhall Library.
And on Thursday, January 25, a public forum is planned at the ANB Hall on Willoughby Avenue downtown from 5 to 7 p.m.
Linda Fiorella is an educational consultant with the firm of Colorado Critical Friends Group, retained by the school district to oversee the process.
She said they'll take all the public input, their knowledge of best practices and try to make some matches. She says they'll recommend about three programs that would provide possible fits.
Following that work, three more public forms will be held in March.
An advisory committee comprised of educators, students and community members started meeting last month. Its recommendation is due to the Juneau School Board in May.
Haley Nelson, a freshman, is one of the students on the committee.
Nelson says she's talking to a lot of other students and is working to integrate their ideas and opinions into the process.
Juneau
woman pleads guilty to homicide in traffic death
JUNEAU,
Alaska (AP) - A 20-year-old Juneau woman has pleaded
guilty to a charge of criminally negligent homicide in
the traffic death of a University of Alaska Southeast
student.
Stephanie Smathers was a passenger in a
van involved in a collision that killed 25-year-old Jody
Watson in August 2005.
Smathers was allegedly
involved in a physical fight with the driver, David
Alex, when he lost control of the vehicle and slammed
into Watson's car.
Smathers originally faced a
charge of manslaughter, a felony with a maximum sentence
of eight years for a first offense.
She pleaded
guilty yesterday (Wednesday) to criminally negligent
homicide as a part of a plea agreement.
Her
attorney Tom Nave says Smathers faces a maximum of no
more than three years because the state acknowledged the
existence of a mitigating factor.
Sentencing has
been set for March 27th.
Alex is scheduled for a
February trial on a manslaughter charge.
(Juneau Empire)
Weather prevents
Trooper search for missing pilot
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Adverse weather conditions today (Thursday) are preventing Alaska State Troopers from continuing the search for a missing pilot in Cook Inlet.
A troopers spokesman says the search may resume
Friday if conditions permit.
The Coast Guard
suspended its search Wednesday for the missing pilot, pilot 52-year-old Randy Crawford, a retired trooper colonel.
Crawford on Tuesday morning was piloting a single-engine Cessna 207 on a flight from Kenai to Kokhanok for Air Supply Alaska.
He sent a distress call reporting that he had engine problems and that he was going down into Cook Inlet.
The plane was found three hours later and hoisted from the water by a Good Samaritan vessel, the 188-foot Seabulk Nevada, but Crawford was not on board.
Crawford was a trooper from August 19-76 to December 2002. He worked in Soldotna, Holy Cross, Fairbanks, Kotzebue, Palmer and Anchorage.
Juneau spelling champ is Harborview fourth grader
A fourth grade Harborview Elementary School student will represent Juneau at the state spelling bee in Anchorage next month.
Ten year old Brayden Wrightson won last night's spelling bee.
He got it done by correctly spelling colossal and crocuses. That happened in the 17th round.
The winner of the state spelling bee advances to regional competition and a chance to go to Washington, D. C. for the national spelling bee.
When asked about his hopes, Brayden said, "Hopefully I get words that I know, either that I get words I don't know and I get them right."
Brayden is the son of Angie and Dave Wrightson. His father is a Juneau Police
officer. His mother works for a dentist and he says he
wants to be a dentist when he grows up.
Fairbanks will be site of PFD announcement
The date and location has been set for the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation's annual dinner when the amount of this year dividend will be announced.
It will be in Fairbanks
on September 24th, according to Karen Lechner who is the Dividend Information Manager for the Permanent Fund Dividend Division in the Department of Revenue.
The application period for the 2007 Dividend opened on New Year's Day and, Lechner says, on-line filings are definitely ahead of last year. She says more people are applying on-line and more are using an electronic signature.
As of late Wednesday afternoon, over 161,000 applications have been filed on-line.
The 100,000 mark was reached last Friday afternoon.
71 percent have been electronically signed
Alaskans filing on-line during January will receive their dividends first. The early bird direct deposit is scheduled October 3rd. The second direct deposit is scheduled for October 17th.
That will be for those who signed up and qualified for direct deposit and applied by the March 31st deadline.
Mailed dividends will start going out November 13th.
Chances are that this year's dividend will be higher than last year's amount of $1,106.96.
The dividend is based on a five year average of the fund's earnings.
2002, which had low earnings of $257 Million, drops out of the average.
Permanent Fund Dividend applications can be filed on-line at
www.pfd.state.ak.us
Bears
men lose to Notre Dame academy
The Crimson Bears men are in Anchorage for the Alaska
Airlines Classic Tournament.
The Bears lost to the tough Notre Dame academy from
Middleton Virginia this afternoon [Thursday] by a score
of 66 to 58.
Crimson Bears play again at 4-45 this afternoon. The
game will be broadcast on KINY.
Aquatic center on PRAC agenda
The Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee takes up recommendations for additional recreation facilities and the renaming policy at its meeting tonight. [Thursday]
CBJ Parks and Recreation Director
Marc Matsil says, last year, CBJ received about 500,000 visits to it's recreational facilities.
That includes nearly 102,000 visits to the Augustus Brown swimming pool; 52,000 to the Treadwell Ice Arena and more than 161,000 to city and borough sports fields.
At the
committee's October meeting, user groups were invited for their input.
The Glacier Swim Club stated that for the first time since 1973 the club had to turn away youth because the pool had reached maximum capacity.
At tonight's meeting the committee will engage in a discussion regarding the need for a new aquatic center at Dimond Park.
The agenda also includes brainstorming about the recreational needs of senior citizens.
The committee is scheduled to meet with the Commission on Aging on February 8th.
The committee will also take up the renaming policy tonight.
That was spurred by the proposal to name the football field at Adair-Kennedy Park after the late Crimson Bears football coach Reilly Richey.
Matsil says the committee received an overwhelming amount of requests by the public, through letter writing and public forums though the Assembly, that basically indicated that it would be denigrating the name of the park.
He says there was agreement by all the parties involved that the city would not rename, or add, or confuse the issue.
Richey's wife, Kathi
Yanamura, had asked that the request be withdrawn.
She says Richey wouldn't have wanted the naming of the football field to create any controversy.
The park was named after Juneau Police Officers Richard Adair and Jimmy Kennedy who were killed in the line of duty in 1979.
We're told what was formally named after them in the
1980's was the baseball field that was newly
constructed. Over the years, the entire area
become known as Adair-Kennedy Park.
Matsil says their last draft states that the name of a deceased person would not be considered until 36 months following the death of that person.
Renaming a memorial park would also be prohibited,
according to the latest language.
He say the committee will try to finalize a version at it's meeting tonight.
The Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee meets at 6-30 tonight in the Assembly chambers.
Bethel
police investigate another homicide
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Police in Bethel say they're
investigating the city's third homicide in five weeks.
Police say a severely beaten female was found on the
living room floor of a Bethel home early yesterday
(Wednesday) morning.
They have not determined her identity but they have made
an arrest.
Twenty-year-old Aaron Gregory Thomas is charged with
first-degree murder.
Police say the woman suffered visible blunt-force
trauma.
And they say alcohol is a factor in the incident.
The death follows the death December 5th of 40-year-old
Agnes Evan.
She was found dead in brush and police say blunt-force
trauma to her abdomen caused her death.
Forty-one-year-old cab driver Ju Young Joung was shot to
death December 10th as his cab idled outside a video
store.
(Anchorage Daily News)
McGrath woman dies on snowmobile
MCGRATH, Alaska (AP) - Alaska State Troopers say a
38-year-old McGrath woman died today when she smashed
her snowmobile into a pickup truck.
Troopers say Valkyrie Magnuson was driving the machine
at a high rate of speed and struck a pickup truck
operated by 57-year-old Nick Snow.
Magnuson was on her way to work at McGrath High School.
She was not wearing a helmet.
She was pronounced dead of her injuries about a half
hour later at the McGrath clinic.
Snow was not injured.
McGrath is 221 miles northwest of Anchorage. The
community of about 350 people is adjacent to the
Kuskokwim River directly south of its confluence with
the Takotna River.
Anderson's trial rescheduled
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A federal judge has reset the trial date of indicted state legislator Tom Anderson, who is charged with bribery, money laundering and extortion charges.
U-S District Judge John Sedwick set the new date to April 9th to give time to Anderson's attorney to prepare for trial.
Defense attorney Paul Stockler says he reviewing 20 discs containing many hours of audio and video involving Anderson.
Stockler wanted the trial rescheduled to a later date in April because of a state court case set for trial at the start of that month.
But Sedwick said he wasn't available then.
The judge says if there is a conflict as Anderson's new trial date approaches, the defense can ask to further delay the trial.
(Anchorage Daily News)
Murkowski: Iraq troop increase should be 'carefully examined'
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - One member of Alaska's congressional delegation says President Bush's proposal to increase U-S troops in Iraq by 21-thousand-500 soldiers should be carefully examined.
U-S Senator Lisa Murkowski gave her comments after Bush's address to the nation last night (Wednesday).
She says any increase to troop level must contain a clearly defined mission to create a stable environment where Iraqis can govern and defend themselves -- an environment, she says, in which -- quote -- ``we can safely bring home our men and women honorably serving there.
She says Congress also must make certain that all military personnel have the resources and equipment necessary to fully support the mission.
Murkowski intends to review the president's proposal.
Stevens: Iraq troop increase should 'help restore security'
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - U-S Senator Ted Stevens says President Bush's proposal to increase U-S forces in Iraq should help restore security of U-S troops.
The Alaska Republican says -- QUOTE -- ``There are no easy solutions in Iraq, but the President made it clear that we must make fundamental shifts in our strategy.''
Stevens says the proposal to increase U-S troops in Iraq by 21-thousand-500 soldiers should help keep troops safe.
He says it is essential that the U-S does the utmost to ensure that the Iraqis succeed.
Measure would convey land to Coffman Cove
Legislation to convey 12 acres of surplus Forecast Service land to the Prince of Wales Island community of Coffman Cove has been introduced by Alaska's U. S. Senators.
The parcel is near the new Inter-Island Terminal.
Senators Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski says city hopes to use the land to spur economic development.
Similar legislation passed the Senate last year, but died in the House.
Coffman Cove is a community of about 200 residents.
Alaska stargazers get excited about new comet
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Amateur astronomers across Alaska are getting excited about a comet discovered just last year.
Experts say Comet McNaught is the brightest comet in 30 years.
Amateur astronomer Martin Gutoski says the comet was kind of a sleeper. He says there was not much talk about it, until it brightened when it got closer to the sun.
Gutoski says he got a good look at it on Tuesday at a lookout five miles north of Fairbanks.
He says the comet was visible with the naked eye, and filled his field of view when he looked at it through binoculars.
The comet should be visible both in the morning and evenings through Friday. After that, it likely will get lost in the sun's glare as it travels around the sun.
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More information can be had on the Web at
www.spaceweather.com
More Alaskans working more than one job
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - New numbers from the U-S Bureau of Labor Statistics show that one of every eleven Alaska workers held more than one job in 2005.
That's nine-point-two percent of the working population, an increase from seven-point-seven percent in 2004.
The federal bureau says that's the largest increase among the states.
About half of the states showed increases and the other half showed decreases in the number of workers with two or more jobs.
Alaska had the fourth-highest rate among states, behind the two Dakotas and Wyoming.
The national average was five-point-three percent.
(Anchorage Daily News)
Pioneer pilot Ruth Jefford dies at 92
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Ruth Jefford -- a pioneer pilot and founding member of the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra -- has died at 92.
Jefford died Tuesday at her Wasilla home.
She was Alaska's first female commercial air taxi pilot, flying planes in the state for 60 years.
She also was a noted violinist and served as the concertmaster of the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra for almost 30 years.
A service for Jefford is scheduled for 12-30 p-m January 20th at First Presbyterian Church of Wasilla.
(Anchorage Daily News)
Idita-Rider musher auction closes Jan. 19
WASILLA, Alaska (AP) - Your chance to ride in the Iditarod is quickly coming to an end.
The
Idita-Rider Musher Auction closes January 19th.
Fans across the world have been bidding online for the past 75 days for the chance to ride in the sled of an Iditarod musher during the first eleven miles. That comes during the ceremonial start of the race in Anchorage on March Third.
There are presently 96 teams entered in the 2007 field. There are active bids on 91 of those sled. Winning bids have already been secured on the other five sleds with 75-hundred dollar ``Buy Now'' bids.
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On the Net:
http://www.iditarodauction.com/
Waldenbooks to close three Alaska stores
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Three Waldenbooks stores in Alaska are closing this month.
It's part of the parent company's plan to shed its money-losing mall-based outlets and focus on its profitable Borders superstores.
Stores closing January 26th are in Anchorage's Northway and 5th Avenue malls and the Bentley Mall in Fairbanks.
Ann Binkley is a spokeswoman for Borders Group Incorporated in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
She says the company has no plans to close its other two Alaska Waldenbooks stores.
Those stores are in the Plaza mall in Ketchikan and the Cottonwood Creek Mall in Wasilla.
The Wasilla mall's new owner is expected to redevelop the place, however, leaving the status of its current tenants unclear.
(Anchorage Daily News)
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