To understand Alaska politics, it helps to know the politics of capital projects.
Big projects – the Susitna Dam, the Juneau Road, Ketchikan’s “Bridge to Nowhere” – consume more than their share of government business in this state.
That’s also true on our local level. Consider the numbers of meetings spent talking about boat harbor expansion, rebuilding the firehall, and the fate of the Lutak Dock. It seems logical that during the past 30 years as federal and state funding for local infrastructure dried up, our assembly would spend proportionately more time discussing ways of maintaining what we have instead of expanding our town’s obligations.
Just the opposite is true. In the early 2000s, the borough agreed to take ownership of the boat harbor from the State of Alaska, an obligation that has brought exorbitant costs. About 10 years later, the borough similarly agreed to take responsibility for the $11 million bridge at Porcupine Crossing. In a display of sheer arrogance and puffery, the assembly in 2018 took control of a $500,000 bridge at Excursion Inlet, formerly owned and maintained by the U.S. Forest Service.
Mind you, this bridge wasn’t for borough resident access at that remote community. It connects a corporate cannery complex to its water supply.
As if to prove that a turd wrapped in bright foil is still a gift, assembly members traveled to Excursion Inlet to dedicate their new bridge, all the while sticking local taxpayers for years of upkeep costs more justly borne either by the cannery owners or by the federal government.
Why isn’t there an outcry by conservative folks in Haines as its government adopts these expensive, long-term obligations? After all, these folks are always claiming to support “small government.”
The reason is that many “conservative” folks are on the receiving end of those bills for government infrastructure. They own dirt-moving and construction businesses that will profit handsomely when aging bridges need new abutments or asphalt is needed at the harbor.
I went door-to-door in Juneau in 2018 while running for the Alaska Legislature. The Juneau Road had been a hot issue in the press at the time, and the Independent candidate for the seat that I sought, Chris Dimond, was a big supporter. (No Republicans ran for the seat; Dimond served as a proxy for the GOP in the heavily Democratic district.)
Interestingly, as I spoke to folks about their concerns, very few folks mentioned the Juneau Road. Those who did were either laborers or people with connections to the construction industry.* That’s the real constituency for the Juneau Road – the people who will make a lot of money building it – and it’s the reason the issue won’t go away.
There’s money in big projects and the construction folks – from contractors to labor unions – don’t really mind the pricetag, because that money will be going into their pockets. And they don’t care too much about the cost of upkeep either, because they may or may not be around in 10 or 20 years when those bills come due. But you will be.
Don’t be fooled. Giant, unnecessary projects are the biggest welfare program in Alaska.
The future of the Lutak Dock was settled three years ago when our freight company, Alaska Marine Lines, agreed to build its own dock in exchange for a long-term lease of borough property on the north end of the existing, decaying facility. Skagway’s AML dock operates under a similar arrangement. For the assembly, that should have ended discussion of the Lutak Dock.
A borough-hired engineering firm in 2017 found that Lutak Dock was too small to serve as an ore-shipment facility and that rebuilding the original dock would cost between $10 million and $60 million, depending on the extent of reconstruction. R&M Consultants also said the old dock could just collapse into Chilkoot Inlet without cost to the municipality.
The federal government built the Lutak Dock in the early 1950s (to construct the U.S. Army tank farm there). Glad to escape the cost of maintaining the dock into old age, the feds gave it to the City of Haines in 1977.
So if the Lutak Dock is not needed, why are Haines Borough Assembly members still talking about it? It’s because members are talking to people who want jobs rebuilding it. And those people are seeing your tax dollars in their pockets.
(*Dimond, who lost in the general election to Democrat Sara Hannan, raised $81,000 for his campaign, with strong support coming from construction unions. Hannan, with support from public-sector unions, raised $64,000.)