Posted on 03/21/2007 6:54:35 AM PDT by thackney
Gov. Sarah Palin has backed away from the broad statement of support she gave the Alaska Gasline Port Authority in a 2005 advertising campaign in which she appeared with former Alaska Govs. Jay Hammond and Walter Hickel to proclaim the port authority’s plan as “the best and only proposal that provides maximum benefits to the state.”
The full-page newspaper advertisement was paid for by the port authority and was published in conjunction with advertisements on radio and television as part of a campaign that began in late April 2005. The newspaper ad that carried the statement that Palin has now recanted appeared in the Daily News-Miner on May 6, 2005, and carried the signatures of Palin, Hammond, Hickel and former state Sen. Rick Halford, who at the time was serving as the port authority’s lobbyist.
Palin, in a statement issued by her office earlier this month, said her support of the port authority was based only on the information available at the time from all the proposals that had been circulating.
“Because of the secretive nature of the Murkowski/producer process, at the time of the ads, the port authority proposal was the only one with terms available to the public. Thankfully, conditions have changed so radically since then, I no longer agree with the statement,” Palin said in an e-mail message sent to the Daily News-Miner by spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton and attributed to the governor. “COULD the port authority end up with the best plan? Possibly — we need the competitive process to determine that.”
Palin, in the e-mail, said the competitive nature of her gas line legislation — which the administration calls the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act — makes it inappropriate for her to express a preference about who should build the pipeline, which is seen as vital to Alaska’s economic future.
“[I]t would not only be premature, but counter to Alaska’s interests, for any conjecture on which applicant or set of applicants will assemble the best overall project. I will not do that,” she wrote.
In a follow-up exchange with the News-Miner, Palin was asked about the wisdom of making such a strong statement of support for the port authority in the absence of information about other pipeline proposals.
She replied that “It’s not a question of wisdom — it’s a matter of principle. Without competition you cannot maximize the benefits of commercializing North Slope gas. My administration is committed to the competitive process that will result in the best project being chosen for Alaska.”
Palin also wrote that “all other entities that were interested in proposing their gas line projects were ignored or sidelined by the previous administration. Whether they had better proposals than the port authority was unknown to the public, and that ‘unknowing’ was unfair to all Alaskans. My administration refuses to engage in secret negotiations with merely one entity, hence our open and competitive process (AGIA) is what’s being vetted today in public.”
Palin’s gas line legislation is known as the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act and is the subject of hearings in the state House and Senate this week.
Port Authority Chairman Jim Whitaker, who is also mayor of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, doesn’t see any problem with Palin discarding her earlier support of the port authority plan that he has been pursuing.
“We’ve never asked the governor to do anything other than give us a fair chance,” he said Tuesday. “In order to be fair to others, I don’t think she has a choice but to make a statement.
“We do not take exception to what she has said and are very supportive of her efforts.”
But did Palin overreach in 2005 by signing on to such a strong statement of support for the port authority without having information on the other projects?
“I think it means she didn’t have all the information that she currently has, and now she has a responsibility to look at all that information and ensure others that they have some fair opportunity to compete,” Whitaker said.
In 2005, the port authority — a government entity created by votes of the North Slope Borough, the city of Valdez, and the Fairbanks borough — was struggling to gain attention in Juneau. Then-Gov. Frank Murkowski and his staff were negotiating with the major North Slope leaseholders — ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and BP — and challenged the viability of the port authority’s proposal, noting that the port authority itself holds no gas leases. The port authority also had few champions in the Legislature.
The advertising campaign sought to create public pressure on Juneau to get the port authority some consideration. Whitaker said port authority officials called Palin, who at the time was being talked about as a candidate for governor but had not declared, and asked to show her their plans.
“We made what we thought was a fair comparison to what we knew about the Murkowski approach and let her make up her own mind,” he said.
Palin was later asked to appear in the ad, which also included a comparison of the port authority proposal and the proposal by the three oil companies.
The ad was called inaccurate by ConocoPhillips Vice President Joe Marushack, who said the port authority’s ad underestimated the number of jobs the oil companies’ project would create for Alaskans, wrongly stated that the local gas customers would be charged the same rate as buyers in Chicago, and wrongly claimed that the oil companies’ project would bring less revenue to the state treasury.
Does anyone know the history of the formation of "Port Authority"? Why are they created and what gives them "authority"?
Our local Port Authority is totally collaborating with all the CANAMEX corridor ideals. They seem to be tool to accomplish those structures through our community.
Are they are formed under Governors' executive orders or under their task forces created by those orders?
I also would appreciate input about these hollow "stakeholders meetings".
Transparency=smoke and mirrors
Anyone out there with information, I would certainly appreciate it. Thanks
This should help with some of your questions
http://www.allalaskagasline.com/
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