Dunleavy's 2019 plan to shut down ferry system led to 2020 ferry system shutdown

The problems of the Alaska Marine Highway System began long before the Dunleavy administration, but the leadership failure of the Dunleavy administration has certainly helped push the system to collapse.

Every vessel except one is out of service, a situation that is ruinous for coastal Alaska communities.

We still might have ended up in this position had Dunleavy taken action a year ago to support the ferry system, instead of taking steps to shut it down. But his insistence on gutting the system created political chaos that continues to this day.

Hoping to avoid a veto that would have led to the end of the ferry system, the Legislature cut more than $40 million for this year, a decision that looks foolish in retrospect. But starting in early 2019, Dunleavy made it clear he wanted to cut far more than that.

This contradicted his campaign promises in Southeast.

“There is no plan to hack, cut or destroy the marine highway system,” candidate Dunleavy promised the Ketchikan Daily News before the election.

Then, a year ago next week, he revealed he wanted to hack, cut and destroy the system. There was not any room in his so-called “Honest Budget” to plan for a future.

Dunleavy and his staff said the 10 ferries, serving 35 ports, were far too expensive and he planned to shut down service last October.

Service to Homer, Kodiak, Aleutian Chain, Whittier, Cordova, Valdez, Chenega Bay, Tatitlek, Yakutat, Prince Rupert, Angoon, Tenakee, Pelican, Hoonah and Gustavus would end Sept. 1.

In the meantime, the state would have a consultant to look at making it a private venture, an idea championed by former temporary budget director Donna Arduin and cheered by Dunleavy.

Last February Arduin showed her limited grasp of travel in Alaska with these immortal words: “The cost to transport a vehicle on a state highway is about 2 cents per mile, where it’s about $4.58 per mile on a ferry.”

“The department will work with a marine consultant to investigate options available for moving the AMHS towards privatized service or service provided by public/private partnership, with the intent of reducing the State’s financial obligation and/or liability,” the Dunleavy budget summary said.

In each of the disastrous Koch Network/Dunleavy budget shows, either the governor or Arduin portrayed the marine highway system as an extravagance the state could no longer afford.

“We certainly haven’t profited on the system,” Arduin said, unaware that the system was never intended to make a profit, but provide a service. She claimed the state could run the system at 25 percent of what the state was paying, though there is no reason to believe that was true.

At one of his road shows, Dunleavy said the people who are no longer using the ferries may be flying or using “some other type of watercraft vehicles to transport themselves and their goods.”

When the long-awaited study on the future of the system finally appeared last month, the state and the authors hid Dunleavy’s role in cutting funding last year.

The study concluded that the Dunleavy/Arduin dream of privatization wouldn’t work.

“Selling or leasing AMHS assets to private entities is not feasible if minimum levels of service are also stipulated,” the study said. The only break-even routes would be in Lynn Canal and from Ketchikan to Metlakatla.

One obvious omission from the study is the decision to not give Dunleavy credit for proposing the target of the study—reducing the current subsidy by at least 50 percent from the $48 million in the current fiscal year.

This year, with the recall threat looming large, Dunleavy has a new strategy—hoping that everything he said a year ago will be forgotten, along with all of the nonsense Arduin contributed with his blessing.

Ben Stevens, brought in by the governor as the chief of damage control, said the governor wants to get the system operating.

"The No. 1 priority of this administration for the Marine Highway System is to get boats operating because they're not,” Stevens told the Southeast Conference this week, the Juneau Empire reported.

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