State commission approves plan for new borough in Southeast Alaska

A five-member state commission has approved plans for a new local government centered on the Southeast Alaska town of Hoonah.

Approval sets the stage for a local election on the proposed Xunaa Borough. If voters approve the borough’s creation, Hoonah will be dissolved as a town and reincorporated as a city-borough with governmental authority over a wide swath of northern Southeast Alaska, including much of Glacier Bay National Park.

It would be the state’s 20th borough and the first new borough since the Southeast town of Petersburg created a city-borough in 2013.

The Local Boundary Commission approved plans for the proposed borough on a 3-2 vote Tuesday after hours of technical discussion.

“I believe that the best interest of the state, clearly, is to establish this borough, and I believe that the (legal) standards have all been met, including the boundaries,” said commissioner John Harrington, who cast the decisive vote.

Within 30 days, commission staff will draft a written report finalizing the commission’s recommendations. Once the commission adopts the report, the state will hold an election.

Voters are expected to approve the borough, in large part because the new borough excludes three neighboring communities — Gustavus, Tenakee Springs and Pelican — that have opposed the new borough.

That exclusion caused commission staff to recommend that the commission reject Hoonah’s plans as incompatible with state law, regulation and the Alaska Constitution.

Hoonah has attempted at least twice before to create a borough, and the Local Boundary Commission itself recommended the creation of a “Glacier Bay Borough” in 1992. The Alaska Constitution requires that all of the state be included in “boroughs, organized or unorganized,” much as all parts of the Lower 48 are included in counties or county equivalents.

The borough’s operations would be funded by a local sales tax whose proceeds would principally come from the large tourist cruise ship port at Icy Strait Point, near Hoonah.

Commissioners Larry Wood and Clay Walker each voted against the proposed borough.

“The best interest of the state is to create greater economies of scale and greater efficiencies, and this proposal, while commendable in so many ways, doesn’t hit that target,” Walker said.

Because it excludes three small communities, there’s no consolidation of government services — such as school administration — that would make things more efficient, he explained.

Wood called the boundaries of the borough “the crux of this case” and said they were his principal reason for voting against the proposal.

Those two were outvoted by commissioners Harrington, Ely Cyrus and Clayton Trotter.

Trotter said he believes a borough makes sense and compared the three excluded communities as “crabs in a bucket” acting to pull down another crab, Hoonah, that was making moves to climb out of the bucket.

At Harrington’s suggestion, the commission voted unanimously to recommend that the new borough — if created by voters — negotiate with the three excluded communities on terms to incorporate them into the new borough as soon as possible.

Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.