On Jan. 9, the day before last Tuesday’s assembly meeting, Haines Borough Planning Commissioner Don Turner Jr. submitted the following letter, in writing, to the Haines Borough. I’m printing the letter here exactly as Turner wrote it.
(“Miss Huling” refers to assembly member Tyler Huling and “LCC” to Lynn Canal Conservation, apparently.)
“Manager, Mayor, Assembly Members:
I have tried to reach out to miss Huling many times in the last week and half. Her 766 number does not work. I found her cell number and left message to contact me about the planning commission. I have got no response.
Miss Huling is a new comer to Haines. She does not understand planning it appears she is against development. That will bring full time work to Haines.
She wants to elect people for the planning commission so they can have LCC take it over like they did the Alaska fish and Game advisory committee. So they can stop industry.
The planning commission is supposed to plan for the long term future as well as the short term.
The manager and staff worked on the helicopter for 2 months the asked to approve. There was no real reason not to approve it. The property is in the general use zone and it is commercial property. You cannot allow 30 plus people to stop development when there is a probably 500 plus in that zone. That they made no comment. So I have to assume they are not against it.
Chilkat Indian Village is not part of the borough. They do not pay property taxes or abide by our codes. So they have no say in how we run our borough.
Please Support the Planning Commission
Don Turner Jr.”
Turner’s letter, included in the meeting packet for the Jan. 10 assembly meeting, was raised for discussion and placed on the meeting agenda by assembly member Debra Schnabel. Toward the end of the meeting, Schnabel addressed it, first by reading the letter, verbatim, into the record of the meeting.
Then this discussion followed:
SCHNABEL:
“The attitude of this letter is completely hostile and assumptive and so unwilling to consider that there’s another way of looking at economic development, of how the community gets along, of how we deal with our Native community. I’m sorry. We all know Mr. Turner has no respect…
Interruption by assembly member GABE THOMAS:
“Point of order. It’s not right to be defaming a citizen on the assembly level.”
SCHNABEL:
“What do you mean?”
THOMAS:
“You’re attacking someone personally.”
SCHNABEL:
“I move Mr. Turner be removed from the planning commission.”
Assembly member TYLER HULING:
“Second.”
Mayor/meeting chair DOUG OLERUD:
“I have a motion from Ms. Schnabel, seconded by Ms. Huling… Ms. Fullerton, is that allowed?”
Borough clerk ALEKKA FULLERTON:
“I don’t think they have the power. It’s reserved for the mayor.”
SCHNABEL removes motion.
SCHNABEL:
“I move that we ask the mayor to consider censuring or removing Mr. Turner from the planning commission.”
HULING:
“Can I weigh in here? I didn’t know this was going to happen or how this unfolded. Can I do that?”
MAYOR OLERUD:
“We have a motion on the floor. Do we have a second?”
HULING:
“Second.”
MAYOR OLERUD:
“We have a motion on the floor from Ms. Schnabel, seconded by Ms. Huling. (To Schnabel): Since you made the motion, you get to speak to it first.”
SCHNABEL:
“I think a planning commissioner has to appreciate that especially when there’s a conditional use permit in effect, that it’s a very complicated procedure that requires a lot of sensitivity to the community. Mr. Turner – in his letter and – I’m sorry Gabe if you don’t see this the way I do – is making assumptions about Ms. Huling and her ability to serve this community correctly. I’m making the same assumptions about Mr. Turner, but I think that’s evidentiary.”
Mayor OLERUD:
(To Huling): “Ms. Huling, because this concerns you…”
HULING:
“Thank you. I’d love to de-escalate this situation to the best of my ability. I didn’t know we would be having this conversation. Debra and I did not discuss this. I don’t particularly wish to remove Mr. Turner from the planning commission. That’s not my intent tonight, not so much because I’m for or against his presence there, just because I don’t really want to lash out in that way. That feels a bit odd for me at this moment. So I’m not going to participate in trying to remove Mr. Turner from the planning commission. But I would love to just… First of all, I was on vacation. It was the first time I’ve left Alaska in seven years and I was on the East Coast, so I didn’t call you back, Don. I love you guys, sorry but… to sort of respond in this way does seem very exemplary of what I speaking to at the GAS committee last night, in the way that there’s a tendency in this body and in these spaces to often gaslight a very significant portion of the community by sort of pretending they don’t exist or that somehow my opinion is not like, valid or welcome, in this space. It’s an old, like, good-old-boy politic, gatekeeping-of-power thing…I see you and respect you and I would ask the same of you. And can we just leave it like that? Thank you. (To Schnabel): In terms of what you want to do I really appreciate you speaking to it because I didn’t have the courage to do that myself but I do not intend… I do intend to spend some time and effort to think of ways to make the planning commission feel representative of the community and, sort of like, really pay respect to the importance of the plans we made. But there’s nothing more political than the way we use land and envision our community. It’s an important thing so I’ll really be thinking about that.”
Later in the meeting, Turner apologized to Huling and Mayor Olerud said he would “have a conversation” with Turner.
Let’s get some things straight here.
Turner’s letter is the kind of ad hominem personal attack on Huling’s character – including ascribing motives – that never would be allowed during public comment during an assembly meeting. A person making such a statement would be gaveled down in mid-sentence.
And there might be some forgiveness of Turner if his comments were uttered in the heat of an argument or in a private conversation or picked up by a live microphone the way that environmentalist Eric Holle’s private remark about wanting “to kill Liz Cornejo” were overheard on Zoom last spring.
But neither of those caveats apply. Turner obviously thought about these words, wrote them down on paper, and submitted them to the borough for the permanent record.
For a member of one of only two borough boards empowered to make decisions – the planning commission and library board – to attach disparaging motives to an assembly member, in writing, goes beyond what is usually tolerated by our government.
Let’s pretend that I were a member of the borough’s other empowered board – the library board – and I sent a letter to the borough disparaging the character and motives of Don Turner Jr. in the imagined scenario that Turner served as an assembly member.
“Mr. Turner is a good-old-boy in Haines. He does not understand libraries and it appears he is against learning… He wants to elect people to the library board so they can have the Haines Miner’s Association take it over, like they did the Ports and Harbors committee. So they can stop students from learning.”
Had I written such a thing and submitted it as a public document, how long would it take Mayor Doug Olerud to remove me from the Library Board or how long would it take the assembly to have me censured?
As an assembly member, I was censured by my fellow assembly members for releasing accounts of police harassment.
(Those accounts belonged to me. I investigated them as a reporter and they contained the names of individuals who had given them to me freely. At no time did I ascribe motive to any police officers, nor did I disparage officers. I simply provided those accounts to the media after I felt certain that the Haines Borough would take no meaningful action regarding them.)
There’s a double-standard in this borough for public behavior. Government representatives who are liberal or progressive are expected to behave like choir boys, speak gently, politely, and respectfully.
Few, if any, rules apply to people of a conservative bent.
Assigning motives or casting aspersions on another person’s intent is something politicians are taught not to do. We can rarely, if ever, know why a person in the political arena says or does something. We only know what they do, or what they say and political discussion is thus limited to debate of statements and acts.
Turner’s character assassination attempt on Huling wasn’t new for him. When Heather Lende, Judy Erekson and I ran for the borough assembly in 2016, Turner placed an advertisement in the newspaper saying, “These candidates represent their own personal interests which include shutting down the Chilkat Valley in every meaningful way.”
Turner then advised residents to vote unless they wanted “liberal Mud Bay types running our government.”
Now, imagine a progressive making a comparable statement about Turner’s politics in a CVN advertisement. “Don Turner represents his own personal interests which include raping and ruining the Chilkat Valley in every meaningful way.”
It wouldn’t happen because liberals and progressives, on the whole, tend to adhere to a certain level of civility in their public actions and statements.
Turner’s bloated claims and suppositions might be forgivable on a certain level if they were an isolated incident, but they’re part of a historic pattern in our town, the deliberate use of fear, intimidation and aggression by conservatives to bully the political opposition.
And it isn’t limited to the assembly chambers.
In 1988, a mob of disgruntled mill hands marched in front of the school with signs telling elementary school teacher Richard Buck to leave town because Buck had complained about the mill smoking up Lutak Inlet where he lived. (Buck’s complaint was legitimate. Until it was forced by the State of Alaska to scrub up its emissions, the mill continually violated state air pollution laws.)
In 2009, a “Tea Party” rally at the Port Chilkoot Dock attracted a family whose young child carried a sign with a noose on it, inscribed, “We need more rope.”
When Turner’s clan ginned up a recall election against liberals Heather Lende, Tresham Gregg and I in 2017, it was the third assembly recall against liberals here in 24 years. There have been no attempts at recall against conservative members in recent history, if ever.
Hilariously transparent, a recall election against two other liberal-leaning assembly members in 2011 was premised on a vote taken by four members of the assembly, including two conservative members, who were inexplicably not subject to the recall vote.
Neither election resulted in anyone losing their seat.
A recall election against four liberal members of the assembly in 1993 did succeed in taking seats from three of them, but on appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court, the election was found to be groundless.
But the damage was done. The court case could not turn back the clock and re-seat the three members. With liberals stained or cowed by the recall, conservatives re-gained a majority on the assembly.
The recalls – and the lower-level but chronic bullying employed by people like Turner – have helped make our town dysfunctional by scaring off from public service accomplished, thoughtful, successful residents who might otherwise seek office.
In that regard, they have been successful.
I know. I’ve spoken to people who are smart, capable and articulate and I’ve tried recruiting them to run for assembly. It’s not that they need more convincing. They wouldn’t touch an assembly seat with a 20-foot pole.
That’s the real meaning of the Turner letter and its real effect. It’s another nail in our coffin, part of the continual poisoning of our town’s body politic. In terms of getting much done, of genuinely moving this community forward in a way that benefits everyone, we hardly stand a chance.
We have little potential for a healthy community or a functional government because we’re already half-dead from this kind of poison and there’s no antidote in sight.