I don’t know how it happened, but the Dunleavy administration reversed itself on the Transportation Advisory Committee meeting plan, dropping the ban on in-person participation.

The meeting is set for Thursday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Key Bank Building at 100 Cushman Street in Fairbanks.

This was the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do was the earlier decision by Transportation and Public Facilities Commissioner Ryan Anderson to ban in-person participation to better control the group.

The claim from the powers that be was that banning in-person participation would improve communication.

Here is what I wrote Tuesday night.

The ban on in-person communication was clearly an attempt to stifle dissent. I believe that the delay in the meeting was also part of an effort by the state and Kinross to get certain committee members to attend who have skipped previous meetings and not participated, expecting they will vote to overturn actions the committee took at its 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.

In a letter delivered to committee members late Wednesday, Anderson rejected the “pause” request, saying the committee was supposed to operate by reaching consensus, not by taking votes. He said the state wants to hear “consensus-based” proposals.

I think this means he is saying that the votes don’t mean anything and will be disregarded. So perhaps there will be no effort to overturn the votes, just an attempt to ignore them.

He also said that the department had no authority to allow or not allow the Kinross trucking plan.

He also said that some of the committee members are also members of the group that has filed a lawsuit against the state and that some of the issues are part of the lawsuit. “I have asked my staff to not engage in dialogue as the matters under discussion are the subjects of the ongoing litigation,” he said.

Here is his letter.

UPDATES:

• The Fairbanks Area Surface Transportation planning board voted 5-2 Wednesday to object to the inclusion of a new bridge over Chena Hot Springs Road, a project pushed by the Dunleavy administration to help the Kinross trucking operation. This means the existing bridge will remain and Kinross will have to use the roundabout to cross Chena Hot Springs Road.

• The Juneau Empire republished the important investigation by reporter Kyle Hopkins about the travesty in Kotzebue—two women were killed and no one has been charged. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and other Alaska newspapers have so far failed to share this stunning report with their readers. Hopkins is a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica.

• Nothing yet from the offices of Sen. Dan Sullivan and Sen. Lisa Murkowski about what they plan to do regarding the vacant judicial position in Alaska and Sullivan’s decision to reject the traditional process of vetting candidates. If anyone writes the senators and receives something other than a boilerplate response, please send it my way. dermotmcole@gmail.com

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