Thumbs up to the downtown business community
For the third year in a row, downtown Juneau businesses gave out candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. It’s an idea Christy NaMee Eriksen, owner of Kindred Post, first had back in 2014. It met with success when it was implemented in 2015. That success has only grown: This year and last, more than 50 businesses welcomed hundreds of trick-or-treaters with candy and other treats. The event is entirely organized by Kindred Post. What a great idea! It’s wonderful that so many businesses support it, and it’s wonderful it’s met with such enthusiasm from the dinosaurs, Wonder Women and Jedis of Juneau.
Thumbs down to Gov. Walker’s establishment of a ‘Alaska Climate Change Strategy and the Climate Action for Alaska Leadership Team’
We agree that Alaska needs action on climate change, and support real action taken to address the problem. We question why, however, Gov. Bill Walker established this committee three years into his term, especially when he identified climate change as an issue in his 2014 campaign. Before she became a climate change denier, former Gov. Sarah Palin established a subcommittee to address climate change. Gov. Sean Parnell dissolved that committee. Will Walker’s committee — which was established with an executive order, has a reporting deadline of just a few months before the 2018 gubernatorial election, and can be dissolved the same way — have the same result?
Alaska is perhaps the state most clearly experiencing the effects of climate change — but we’re also one of the states that has most benefited from the resources whose consumption has caused that change.
We get that it’s a tough issue, politically. Gov. Palin’s order actually called for a trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline as a way to address climate change; Gov. Walker’s executive order refers to solutions that recognize “the need for non-renewable resources to meet current economic and energy requirements during a transition to a renewable energy-based future.”
Whatever the committee comes up with as a strategy, Gov. Walker will only have time to act on those recommendations if reelected. If he’s not, then by waiting three years to take action, he’s missed out on a chance to help Alaskan communities that are literally falling off the Earth as the ocean erodes the land under them.
The odds of a committee with no teeth making recommendations that lead to nothing — again — is too high for us to applaud the governor’s action.
Thumbs up to city, state preparedness for recent flooding
The remnants of Typhoon Lan brought record-breaking amounts of rain to Juneau at the end of last week. Fortunately, due to the efforts of city workers, the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities, and a warning from the National Weather Service, the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. City workers cleaned out a catchment basin that collects sediment on Gold Creek before the event, helping prevent flooding there. Elsewhere in town, city and state workers stood all day in the cold rain, keeping ditches and culverts clear of debris. It’s the efforts of these workers that kept the deluge from doing more damage, and we thank them.
Thumbs down to further amendments to SB 54
Rising crime in Alaska is a problem, but so are overcrowded prisons and the fact that two-thirds of people released from prison will ultimately return to jail within three years. It’s for these reasons that we support Senate Bill 54, as we wrote in an Oct. 28 editorial.
In recent days, the House Judiciary Committee passed amendments adding to the bill. On Thursday, the House Finance Committee started considering amendments as well. Many amendments are adding to the overall cost of HB 54 — which, before the amendments, was around $4.3 million — and aren’t based on evidence. Senate Bill 91 exists because we need to shrink state expenses, keep from having to build a new prison, and reduce the number of people who return to prison. SB 54 is designed to fix problems with SB 91, but we need to remember why SB 91 exists in the first place.
