Not a single legislator voted against the bill to reconfigure the public advisory board for the Alaska Marine Highway System, taking away from governors the power to appoint half the members.
The Senate president and House speaker would each appoint two of the nine board members, with the governor naming the other five to the panel that would advise the Department of Transportation on operations and long-term planning for the ferry system.
The final decision on the change in state law rests with the governor, who will have until next month to sign or veto the measure. Final legislative passage came May 19 in the Senate, on the last day of the regular legislative session.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office in the past has questioned the constitutionality of legislators appointing members to an executive branch board. Dunleavy earlier in the session offered his own proposal to change the 18-year-old
law that established the advisory board, retaining for governors the exclusive authority to appoint and remove members.
Dunleavy in his first year in office imposed deep budget cuts on the ferry system, reducing service and leaving some coastal communities without any ferry stops for several months that winter.
The system has always operated with state funding to cover what isn’t paid with passenger and vehicle fare revenues, though the state subsidy as a percentage of the total budget had been increasing.
If signed into law by Dunleavy, the new Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board — renamed from an advisory board, but still only with advisory authority — would develop short-term and long-term plans for the ferry system and present them to the Department of Transportation for consideration.
The short-term plan would include budget recommendations; the long-term plan would include a vessel maintenance and replacement plan.
Most of the new board’s members would be required to have experience in marine operations, financial management , marketing or other work relevant to managing a ferry system.
In addition to cuts in state funding, the ferry system has been hit by declining ridership and revenues, even before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down a lot of travel plans last year.
“Restoring reliable and consistent ferry service has been my top priority since I was sent to Juneau, and my seventh year here has proven to be the lucky charm,” House Speaker Louise Stutes, who sponsored the bill, said in a prepared statement.
“The marine highway touches virtually every aspect of life in my district,” Ketchikan Rep. Dan Ortiz said in the same statement released by the House majority caucus. “Having long-time marine highway expertise helps guide decision-making for the ferries and can only benefit the system and the many Alaskans who rely on it.”
A series of choices by prior governors for the design of new ferries eventually led to costly decisions to sell the system’s two unused fast ferries earlier this year to a Spanish tour operator for less than 8 cents on the dollar. The ships, less than 20 years old, cost the state about $68 million to build, and earned about $5 million at sale.
Two other ferries, the Tazlina and Hubbard, built just a few years ago to the state’s specifications at a combined cost of about $120 million, each required expensive modifications to install side-loading doors so that the ships could call at smaller ports.
“They will have great influence, if this is done right,” Kodiak Sen. Gary Stevens, speaking of the new advisory board, told the Anchorage Daily News last week. “It may not be the entire answer, but it takes us forward.”
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