Federal Overreach Summit – Meeting Transcription Page 1
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Federal Overreach Summit – Meeting Transcription Page 1 – August 12 & 13, 2013 Citizens’ Advisory Commission on Federal Areas FEDERAL OVERREACH SUMMIT August 12 & 13, 2013 in Anchorage, Alaska Note: This is a verbatim transcription prepared from archived video of the Summit and was approved as written at the October 3, 4 & 5, 2013 meeting of the Commission in Anchorage. Tuesday, August 13, 2013 (Day 2) begins on page. 89 Monday, August 12, 2013 8 a.m. Welcome and Introductions Representative Keller - Welcome to the CACFA, the Federal Overreach Summit. There’s a lot of things you could be doing today. You picked one I think that is just incredibly significant to who we are as Alaskans and it should have a long-lasting value. What the basic idea is, we're here to document the problem, to look at federal overreach, but more importantly to document the concerns of the Governor, the Lt. Governor, the Congressional Delegation, and then different people in different agencies and individuals. I'm not going to go through the whole list, but people that actually have hands-on and are dealing with Federal Overreach. And we're also here to document solutions. And tomorrow afternoon we're going to have a roundtable of all the presenters and those presenters have been asked to make proposals to help us get a comprehensive list of the things that we can do. When I say document, what CACFA is doing, is we're taking this information - this is what we normally do. We deal with federal impact and federal management and we have initiated something called Stand with Alaska. Go online, check it out, and you'll see that what we're going to do is take this information from this Summit and put it there and add to it so that we have a clearing house kind of digital bucket to put these things in. My name is Wes Keller. I'm a Representative from the Mat-Su Valley. I represent the constituents along the Susitna River Drainage. I'm really passionate on this issue. I'm chair of CACFA and I'm also part of the House Majority. And I just want to point out that the House Majority, the Alaska House Majority; we hired a facilitator, a professional facilitator who sat down with us to identify issues that are a common concern to us. Right at the top, or right near the top, among the top, was federal overreach, that's where the concern was, right up there with budget review concerns, oil tax review, affordable energy, sustainable health care systems, sustainable education system; right up there was federal overreach and for good reason. I mean obvious reasons. I mean, they're inseparable. So as a public servant I'm required to raise my right hand and swear to support and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and the State of Alaska. That makes me have a vested interest in what those two constitutions have established and what they're doing, but I'm not alone in that. Everybody here, we're part of a dual sovereignty, you're sovereigns in two different constitutions, and if those two begin to overlap and to fight each other, we have problems. We're on a really tight schedule today and tomorrow. We want to get as much as we can on the record. So I'm not even going to try to go around the room and honor those that probably should be honored in this long, it seems like eternal battle, or interaction anyway with the federal Federal Overreach Summit – Meeting Transcription Page 2 – August 12 & 13, 2013 government. But what I am going to do is I want to acknowledge the Commissioners of CACFA that have all been here. I'm going to read their names alphabetically, and if you would stand up, because I want a round of applause for them. Commissioner Rod Arno, would you stand? Thanks for the applause, but in light of the time, September 30, 2013 let's hold it until the, stay standing, Rod. I wasn't clear, stand back up, because I'm going to give you the names. Wait until they're done and then we'll give one round of applause. Senator Coghill, Commissioner Mark Fish, Commissioner, well, myself, Representative Keller, Commissioner Teresa Hanson, and Commissioner Charlie Lean, Commissioner Kathleen Liska, Commissioner Mike Meekin, Commissioner Warren Olson, Commissioner Ron Somerville, Commissioner Susan Smith, Commissioner Frank Woods, and then staff, staff and our director. Stan Leaphart, would you stand up, our Director of CACFA, and Karrie Improte, she's probably, there she is, okay. I was going to say, she's probably out there working, because believe me she's got hours in this. Rynnieva Moss, the Senator Coghill staff who worked hard on this, and Ernest Prax, my staff. Now if you would, give them all a hand. I assure you they're committed. They hear concerns all the time and we're always looking in CACFA for solutions, so that's why we initially the intent was a subcommittee that put together this Summit, and nobody wanted off, everybody wanted in on it, so the whole commission has been working on this and we appreciate it. The agenda before you, again, is a tight one. We intend to stick with it. With a little bit of luck I'm going to be able to hand it to the MC, Senator Coghill, here not too far in deficit for a hard start, so I'm hurrying right through it. But I'm just asking again on the presenters to pay attention to the moderator, John, and be concise. And two reasons for being concise; I guess the main one is we want this information in a format that we can use and document to identify where we're at, our history, where Alaskans come from, how we got here, where we're standing legally, and whether or not and how there's a problem, we want to get that documented. So be concise, please, and you're going to have to do that in limited time. We want to document in short as many grievances as possible in the first couple of days here so that they're on the record and they're on the record clearly. And we also have asked again, we want to document possible solutions. So we just ask for your cooperation on that and help keep us on schedule. Just one quick statement; we're nearly 200, anyway, right around 200 registered online to be here today. I would assume there would be a lot of people coming in. This is not a format designed to let everybody have input. What we have done in CACFA, because we listen to the concern, we've invited those that we know will document where we're at and do so accurately and whatever. So what we've done is we have a little green card out there, you'll see it when you come in, and that will be for questions and we'll address some of those in the roundtable tomorrow afternoon, but this is ongoing. This is what CACFA does. We listen to concerns of citizens, so the October meeting we've got a three-day session planned and part of that will be to listen and to interact as we always do with the federal agencies and the people that are maybe responding to the things that get said here today, and also to hear more from people that don't get a chance to speak today. That's what we do in CACFA and we invite you to continue. It's my pleasure at this time to introduce Senator John Coghill, already is, but he's a CACFA Commissioner. He's a very good Senator, in my opinion. He's a friend and a mentor and he's volunteered to be MC of this. And that's important, the MC job, but I would ask you, he's the agenda enforcer, so when he stands up, you'd better pay attention. And I really appreciate the fact that he has volunteered to do this. Thank you, John. And I also should add, Federal Overreach Summit – Meeting Transcription Page 3 – August 12 & 13, 2013 probably, if some things go really wrong, we'll blame John. Senator John Coghill - Thank you. In a few minutes we're going to have the Governor come on. Hang on a second. I will have the agenda items, so from 8:15 to 9:15 we're going to hear from the Governor, the Attorney General, Special Counsel to the Governor and the Deputy Commissioner Ed Fogels. And when the Governor is speaking, if I could have the Attorney General and Randy Ruaro and Deputy Commissioner Ed Fogels come on up to the table as he's speaking, that would be nice. For those of you who have joined this particular conference, thank you. You know, I was sitting down reading last night a Statehood Commission that several people had written some years ago. It would do well, if you have an opportunity to dust that off, those of you who have participated in it, thank you. Many of those recommendations are ongoing. In fact, this Citizens' Advisory Commission is a part of that recommendation. So I was glad when Representative Kelly, back some years ago, put this back on as a way to take federal and state issues and put them up to action items.