State directed ore-haul study contractor to shut down 'independent' committee
Dunleavy administration officials and their consultant met to settle the fate of the Transportation Advisory Committee reviewing the Kinross ore-hauling project. A November 13 email with the subject line “The Way Forward” explained the master plan.
The details of the so-called “Way Forward” are being kept secret, as shown in the blacked out section of the email below, though other information proves the general idea was to shut down the committee as soon as possible. The committee was scheduled to meet November 16.
The redaction leaves the public only with the opening line promising “these outcomes” and a closing line in which consultant Randy Kinney asked, “please correct me if I’ve misstated anything.”
State officials were irked that a couple of members of the Transportation Advisory Committee—a group that in theory has about 30 members, though many don’t participate—were part of the lawsuit about the ore-hauling project and “are actively involved against the state,” in the words of an email from DOT Commissioner Ryan Anderson on November 11.
There were also upset that facts and analysis done by the Transportation Advisory Committee was providing important information about public safety, road maintenance costs, bridge capacities, school bus safety, braking distance, visibility, traffic congestion and other issues that ended up being used against the state in the lawsuit.
The Dunleavy administration can’t bring itself to admit that this research has exposed real defects in its approach. It’s time to implement one of the 12 steps—“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
The Dunleavy administration assumed that all critics of the project on the TAC were part of the lawsuit, which was not true.
A third source of state indigestion is that the committee had asked for a pause in the ore-hauling project to work out safety issues. DOT Commissioner Ryan Anderson said the state wanted “consensus-based recommendations from the committee, not anything that needed a vote on which people disagreed. He also said that DOT employees were not allowed to speak at the November 16 meeting.
The day before the state and its consultant, Kinney Engineering, still hadn’t decided if the committee would be allowed to meet the following day at all.
“Today’s meeting is a critical one as our discussion today will focus on whether we go forward with tomorrow’s TAC meeting,” an engineer for Kinney Engineering wrote in a November 15 email copied to eight DOT employees, among others.
We don’t know exactly what happened at that meeting, but the state allowed the November 16 TAC meeting to go forward. At the end of the meeting, the consultant announced that the state had called a halt to future meetings.
There was “a lot of blowback” from the surprise announcement that it was the “last TAC meeting for the near term,” Kinney wrote to DOT Commissioner Anderson early the next morning.
Kinney apologized to his staff and a subcontractor for having failed to explain to them in advance that he had been given directions by the state to end things.
“Dan Bross on KUAC pretty much summarized the meeting on the news this morning. It was not kind to the DOTPF,” Kinney wrote Anderson. Here is the KUAC story he mentioned. It was accurate.
Kinney also wrote that during the November 16 meeting, Kinross had called him during a break in the action to complain that he had said in public that the mine trucks would do a test that day of traveling on the roundabout on Chena Hot Springs Road. The mine trucks are too heavy to use the Steese Highway bridge.
This incident is revealing. Kinross is part of the TAC, but participated behind the scenes that day.
What the small sample of emails about these events reveal is the degree to which the state directed and controlled the consulting company before and after pulling the plug on the Transportation Advisory Committee.
This is in contrast to the promised independent analysis that had been alluded to when the administration of candidate Dunleavy approved this study effort in March 2022.
The public deserves to learn “The Way Forward” adopted by the Dunleavy administration, as this should not be a state secret.
The state began moving to shut down the committee sometime after a lawsuit filed October 19 by a separate group, Committee for Safe Communities, seeking an injunction to stop the ore haul project.
Anderson had first decided that the consultant would hold what turned out to be the final meeting by Zoom only, a decision that drew protests from members of the Transportation Advisory Committee who saw it as a way to limit and control debate, which it was.
“Did DOT direct you to do this TAC meeting as a Zoom meeting?” TAC member Jon Cook asked Kinney November 10, a question that Kinney relayed to Anderson that day.
Kinney wrote Anderson that “I had to reply yes, but qualified my answer as I think it is the appropriate way to conduct the alternatives meeting . . .”
Sen. Click Bishop talked to Cook and called Anderson to say the meeting should be held in person and not just over Zoom. The November 16 meeting was held in person.
At the conclusion, Kinney said he “wanted to make sure we sent a clear message that this would be the last TAC meeting for the near term. I did so because I sensed that there was an expectation by TAC members that we were to continue meetings.”
They had that expectation because the group had not finished its work and the state had kept its plans to shut down the committee a secret. The consultant will wrap things up by email.
“Thanks for doing your best Randy,” Anderson replied to Kinney 45 minutes later.
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