Dunleavy administration seeks to stifle ore-haul study committee by ordering ‘virtual only’ meeting Thursday
Department of Transportation and Public Facilities Commissioner Ryan Anderson still has time to correct the blunder he made by ordering that a Thursday meeting of the committee reviewing the Kinross ore-hauling plan will be “virtual only.”
The meeting of the Transportation Advisory Committee from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday is a crucial one for preparing its final report. It needs to be held in person. Those who can’t make it in person can use the online approach, an arrangement that has worked well since the committee began its work.
The way to control a public meeting and stifle discussion is to ban in-person attendance and hold a “virtual only” session in which dissenting voices are easy to silence. That’s what Anderson is doing.
He needs to get his finger off the mute button.
Fairbanks legislators should intervene to get this reversed today.
The official state line is that banning in-person attendance is a way “to increase participation and provide equitable access to meeting materials and opportunities for input among all TAC members.”
Please. Someone born late yesterday might believe that. But anyone born earlier in the day can recognize a clumsy lie.
Not even the facilitator who wrote those words, Shelly Wade, can possibly believe it’s true.
She has written to members of the committee that Anderson ordered that in-person attendance be banned.
“I understand and appreciate the frustration with this changed approach. I’d also like to share that our team was directed by Commissioner Anderson to conduct the meeting virtually,” Wade wrote one member of the committee.
This is about controlling those who question the Kinross ore-hauling plan, which is enthusiastically supported by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Anderson’s boss.
I suspect the meeting, which was delayed until this week, is also about the Dunleavy administration and Kinross getting inactive members of the committee favorable to Kinross—including several who have not bothered to show up or participate online—to vote to overturn actions taken at the last meeting.
At a meeting nearly a month ago, the committee voted 5-4 to ask the state to “pause” the ore haul until the state has implemented safety recommendations.
In another motion, the committee voted 7-2 to ask the transportation department who gave Kinross the OK to start its ore haul work before the advisory committee work is completed.
If those votes change because members who have not participated in the committee show up Thursday to vote the way Kinross and Dunleavy want, the public process will be exposed as illegitimate.
The Transportation Advisory Committee—created by the Dunleavy administration under public pressure—has yet to finish its work examining the Kinross plan. There are more than two dozen members from various entities and communities.
Safety recommendations, which have yet to be completed, are under review by the committee analyzing the potential impacts of the ore haul project.
Advocates for Safe Alaska Highways, the group that has done the most to examine the safety issues created by the Kinross trucking plan, has asked that this meeting include an in-person option, in line with the previous meetings.
But even those who support the Kinross ore-hauling plan should recognize that this strong-arm tactic by the Dunleavy administration is deceitful.
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