How Do You Spell A Long, Deep
Sigh of Disappointment?
That’s my reaction to the Alaska Marine Highway Reshaping Work Group’s final ‘report.’ It had such potential, but it ended up being a shapeless sack of fantasies, blame, and half-baked ideas.
At one point, the group was making real progress toward reforms to make the ferries more efficient and schedules more stable. But about a week before the report was due, the governor’s chief of staff met with the chairman, and when the outline of the report came out, it didn’t look much like what they’d been saying in their meetings. Member after member expressed ‘concerns.’ So the chair just turned the outline into a report and had the members email him their comments. Then DOT issued the report on behalf of the group without public discussion or a vote.
So what's in there?
Instead of a public corporation to put some distance between ferry management and politics, it recommends the governor appoint a new advisory board (just like the current Marine Transportation Advisory Board.) This time, the report says, things should be different because DOT should start listening to them.
Instead of replacing the elderly Tustumena on the Southwest run (Homer, Kodiak, and villages out the chain) they recommend… not, but still sailing between Homer & Kodiak. That would require using the Kennicott, which could work. Except they also say the Kennicott should make the Juneau – Whittier cross-gulf run and never, ever sail around the corner from Whittier to Homer. The report doesn’t say what boat should sail between Homer and Kodiak. Perhaps the report is thinking of public paddleboards? A squadron of skiffs? A 150-mile group swim?
The report goes on like that for page after page: fantasy ferries, numbers from nowhere, and setting up sailors to get blamed for the cuts. It keeps calling for saving vast amounts of money on paying crew, but only makes a few very small suggestions on how. Then it says if the state doesn’t get everything it wants at the bargaining table with sailors, we should end service to small communities. Nice.
The report even suggests the AMHS budget can be cut to about the level the governor wanted in his first budget. Even the error-filled Northern Economics ‘study’ we paid $250,000 for says we can't go that low if we’re going to have a ferry system at all.
Sure, there are a couple of parts I like (better maintenance planning, forward funding so we can publish and stick to a schedule,) but they aren’t enough to turn a sack of shapeless glop into a report worth reading. It’s a real shame they wasted so much time on it.
