Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Meeting season nears amid COVID-19 complications

October 30, 2020 — Many Alaska fishermen are likely to be involved in regulatory meetings next spring instead of being out on the water. And Alaska legislators will be distracted by hearings for hundreds of unconfirmed appointments as they tackle contentious budgets and other pressing issues.

New dates have been set for state Board of Fisheries meetings that were bumped from later this year due to COVID-19 concerns. During the same time, along with four unconfirmed seats on the fish board, the Alaska legislature also will be tasked with considering nominees for 137 state boards and commissions named by Gov. Mike Dunleavy during the 2020 session. State lawmakers were unable to do the usual in-depth vetting of appointees when the virus forced them to adjourn early.

The upcoming round of board meetings focuses on management of subsistence, commercial, sport and personal use fisheries at Prince William Sound, Southeast and Yakutat, as well as statewide shellfish issues and hatcheries.

The meeting dates of March 4, 2021, for the hatchery committee and March 5-10 for shellfish issues remain the same as originally scheduled. The Prince William Sound meetings, set to be held in Cordova, are now set to occur from March 30-April 5; for Southeast and Yakutat, the dates are April 17-29 with the meetings scheduled to be in Ketchikan.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Alaska ports hope to keep fish tax: ‘We can’t get answers’ says Stutes

July 11, 2019 — One fisheries item that appears to have escaped Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto pen so far is his desire to divert local fish taxes from coastal communities into state coffers.

Dunleavy’s initial budget in February aimed to repeal the sharing of fisheries business and landing taxes that towns and boroughs split 50/50 with the state. Instead, all of the tax revenues would go to the state’s general fund – a loss of $28 million in FY 2020 to fishing communities.

“There is a recognition that these are viewed as shared resources, and they should be shared by Alaskans,” press secretary Matt Shuckerow said at the time. “So that’s kind of what this proposal does. It takes shared resources and shares them with all Alaskans, not just some select communities.”

The tax split remains in place, and the dollars are still destined for fishing towns, said Rep. Louise Stutes (R-Kodiak), who also represents Cordova, Yakutat and several smaller towns.

“It’s general fund revenue and that has been appropriated to the appropriate communities,” Stutes said in a phone interview. “What we can tell right now is it slipped by unscathed because it appears he did not veto that revenue to the communities that generate the dollars. So, it looks like we’re good to go there.”

What’s not so good is the nearly $1 million cut to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s commercial fisheries budget.

Read the full story at National Fisherman