Juneau Empire Story Archive

UA land bill needs instauration

Letter to the editor

Regarding the University of Alaska lands bill, it is clear from public testimony and editorials that Alaska citizens have rejected the injustice and imposition of the governor's land-transfer scheme for the University of Alaska; and through the minimally provided direct legislative interfaces, which are in any case inappropriate and inadequate for resolution of the significant substantive matters involved, they have demonstrated correctly and passionately their opposition to subversion of Department of Natural Resources area plans and a general absence of meaningful, representative, democratic process.

Instead of initiating the land transfer proposition in the patent form of an edict and having a small group of "distant" DNR and University personages select parcels, a locale-up process should have been followed, somewhat similar to area plan development.

The argument that expedition was paramount, citing that previous transfer attempts would have taken too much time and incurred too great a cost, does not hold water. It's a 'fer-piece' from zero dollars and time to 10 years and $17 million, and the extant maneuver sits comfortably close to the origin.

The UA lands bill is tall on privatization and short on funding, and the manner in which effectuation has unfolded reflects overtones of an autocracy embedded in an oligarchy.

This lands bill should be aborted and any instauration constructed such that the affected players in communities hold the trump cards.