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Vol. 50, Issue 6
Projects to get $400K from state By Victoria Petersen Peninsula Clarion
More than $400,000 from the state is set to be accepted and appropriated by the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly for community projects. An ordinance appropriating $426,303 for community projects from the state will be considered at Tuesday’s assembly meeting. State funding, through the Community Assistance Program and the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, will be sent out to 27 unincorporated communities within the borough. Each community will receive $15,479.41 to support services and/or projects for a public purpose, Brenda Ahlberg, community and fiscal projects manager, said in a Sept. 26 memo to the assembly. The program and projects will go through approval from the assembly. Ahlberg will oversee the program for the borough. The program was originally known as the Community Revenue Sharing program, but was changed in 2017 to Community Assistance Program. Qualified nonprofits or Tribal entities can apply with the borough for funding to produce projects and programs on behalf of unincorporated communities. The community must host a publicly documented meeting to agree upon a project or projects that are publicly available to every person in the community, according to application information provided by the borough. Meeting minutes, sign-in sheets and other documents are needed for the application. Once a project is identified, a grant recipient will need to be identified. The funding will be awarded to an entity, which will be responsible for the project, and which must reside within the unincorporated community. People in the Kalifornsky area are already gathering to make plans for the state funds. At the same time as the assembly meeting, Tuesday at 6 p.m., Kalifornsky residents are invited to Love INC to help make recommendations on how the program funds should See funds, Page A3
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Recall campaign is ready for a fight By Peter Segall Juneau Empire
The Recall Dunleavy camp is gearing up for the next phase of the campaign, whatever that may be. The campaign is waiting on two decisions from the State of Alaska, and each of those decisions will set off its own chain of events. “We’re gearing up for the phase that’s in front of us,” said Claire Pywell, campaign manager for Recall Dunleavy. But what that next phase is, isn’t quite clear.
The campaign submitted roughly 49,000 signatures Sept. 6 and the state has 60 days to review and verify each of those signatures. If the state takes the full amount of time, that will be in the first week of November, though the state could make its decisions at any time. At the same time signatures are being checked, the legal case the campaign has made against the governor is being reviewed by the Department of Law and Attorney General Kevin Clarkson. Either of those two things can be
shot down by the state. The Division of Elections, which ensures signatures are valid, could declare that not enough valid signatures were submitted. That’s the reason the campaign submitted so many signatures to begin with. The campaign needed 28,501 for a recall application to be considered valid. With so many extra signatures it seems unlikely the campaign will fail to reach the threshold. The campaign also submitted a 200-word letter outlining the legal grounds for the removal of Gov. Mike
Dunleavy. That argument will be reviewed by the Department of Law. The Attorney General’s office couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, but the recall campaign is ready for a fight. The campaign has its own legal team with their own (former) attorney general. Jahna Lindenmuth and Scott Kendall, both of whom worked for Gov. Bill Walker, are on the campaign’s legal team, as well as Jeffery Feldman and Susan Orlansky. See recall, Page A3
‘Catastrophic mistake’ on Syria President Donald Trump defends his decision against GOP pushback to abandon Kurdish allies in the country ahead of a likely Turkish attack. By Robert Burns, Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday cast his decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria as fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East, even as Republican critics and others said he was sacrificing a U.S. ally and undermining American credibility. Trump declared U.S. troops would step aside for an expected Turkish attack on the Kurds, who have fought alongside Americans for years, but he then threatened to destroy the Turks’ economy if they went too far. Even Trump’s staunchest Republican congressional allies expressed outrage at the prospect of abandoning Syrian Kurds who had fought the Islamic State group with American arms and advice. It was the latest example of Trump’s approach to foreign policy that critics condemn as impulsive, that he sometimes reverses and that frequently is untethered to the advice of his national security aides. “A catastrophic mistake,” said Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican leader. “Shot in the arm to the bad guys,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Trump said he understood criticism from fellow GOP leaders but disagreed. He said he could also name supporters, but he didn’t. Pentagon and State Department
Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley during a briefing with senior military leaders Monday in the Cabinet Room at the White House.
officials held out the possibility of persuading Turkey to abandon its expected invasion. U.S. officials said they had seen no indication that Turkey had begun a military operation by late Monday. Trump, in late afternoon remarks to reporters, appeared largely unconcerned at the prospect of Turkish forces attacking the Kurds, who include a faction he described as “natural enemies” of the Turks. “But I have told Turkey that if they do anything outside of what we would think is humane … they could suffer the wrath of an extremely decimated economy,” Trump said. In recent weeks, the U.S. and Turkey had reached an apparent accommodation of Turkish concerns
about the presence of Kurdish fighters, seen in Turkey as a threat. American and Turkish soldiers had been conducting joint patrols in a zone along the border. As part of that work, barriers designed to protect the Kurds were dismantled amid assurances that Turkey would not invade. Graham said Turkey’s NATO membership should be suspended if it attacks into northeastern Turkey, potentially annihilating Kurdish fighters who acted as a U.S. proxy army in a five-year fight to eliminate the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate. Graham, who had talked Trump out of a withdrawal from Syria last December, said letting Turkey invade would be a mistake of historic proportion and would “lead to ISIS reemergence .”
This all comes at a pivotal moment of Trump’s presidency. House Democrats are marching forward with their impeachment inquiry into whether he compromised national security or abused his office by seeking negative information on former Vice President Joe Biden, a political rival, from Ukraine and other foreign countries. As he faces the impeachment inquiry, Trump has appeared more focused on making good on his political pledges, even at the risk of sending a troubling signal to American allies abroad. “I campaigned on the fact that I was going to bring our soldiers home and bring them home as rapidly as possible,” he said. See syria, Page A2
Opioid crisis still cuts deep in Alaska By Peter Segall Juneau Empire
Over a six-year period from 20062012, nearly 6 million prescription pain pills were supplied to the city of Juneau. That’s enough for 27 pills per person, per year. In the entire state of Alaska the number of pills was over 138 million. On July 16, The Washington Post published a database maintained for years by Drug Enforcement Agency which tracks pain pills throughout the United States. The database, known as the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System, or ARCOS, tracks prescription drug sales throughout the country and provides records from 2006 to 2013. The DEA had maintained the database for years, but it wasn’t until the Post and other media companies sued the agency under the Freedom of Information Act that the government was forced to make the data public. The data reveal a stunning
amount of prescription opioids flowing to almost every community in the country, even in some of the most rural regions of Alaska. Prescription opioids are widely credited with fueling America’s opioid epidemic, and in the past year, especially in the past several weeks, billions of dollars have been paid out to families, cities, counties and states as pharmaceutical companies begin to take responsibility for their role in America’s massive public health crisis. The ARCOS data tell us not only how many pills were prescribed, but the manufacturer and the purchaser, along with a number of other data points like dosage and type of drug. It does not tell who the prescribers were or what the pills were prescribed for. In Juneau, the largest distributor of pills was Fred Meyer, with a total 1,909,330 over six years. Second was Safeway with 1,549,990, and third was Ron’s Apothecary Shoppe with 832,870 pills. The two largest pharmaceutical
companies to sell to pharmacies in Juneau, and in all of Alaska were the McKesson Corporation and Cardinal Health. Far and away the largest manufacturer whose pills ended up in Juneau and Alaska was SpecGx, a subsidiary of Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. According to the Post, the vast majority of pills sold in the U.S. can be traced back to just three companies, Mallinckdrodt being one of them. The sheer number of pills flowing into the community was the result of over-prescription. Pharmaceutical companies like the recently bankrupt Purdue Pharma spent billions of dollars convincing medical providers that prescription opioids like OxyContin could be prescribed casually, in a manner similar to non-narcotic painkillers like ibuprofen. In February 2017, then-Gov. Bill Walker issued a disaster declaration in response to the crisis (President Donald Trump declared a national state of emergency in October that same year.) and the state created a
number of plans, working groups and programs to address the issue. In 2016, the Juneau Opioid Workgroup was created. The workgroup is a collection of local health care services and agencies brought together with grant money from the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. Among the members of the group are Juneau Alliance for Mental Health Inc. (JAMHI), Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) and the Alaska Division of Public Health. The group works to educate the population about opioids and reduce the number of pills in the hands of the public. The working group also distributes drug disposal bags to local pharmacies which are given to patients receiving narcotic medication. Patients can put unused pills into the bags and add water to create a chemical solution that destroys the medication. Jessica Spurrier, Partnerships for Success See opioids, Page A3