The main job of Kim Elton, the top Alaskan on the Obama team at the Department of the Interior, is to make sure his boss, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, knows the political lay of the land in the last frontier. He is also the department's Alaska ambassador. A bulletproof vest might be helpful for the latter duty.
Elton, a former state senator from Juneau, is at his Interior Department office by 7 a.m. On the three days this week when I was in a position to observe, he never left the office before 6 p.m.
In interviews Elton, 61, made it clear that he loves his new job, and doesn't find 11- and 12-hour days a problem. But he does have his frustrations, one of which surfaced when he tried -- with no success -- to call up his electronic in-box from Monday. "It's an horrendous system," he commented. (Some things never change: former Alaska State Sen. Drue Pearce, who held Elton's job in the early years of the Bush administration, voiced similar complaints.)
Another exasperation, Elton says, is how much of his time is sucked away from working on the administration's environmental and energy priorities by issues created or exacerbated in the final weeks of the Bush administration; a "drill-baby-drill" leasing plan, for example, was released the day before Obama was sworn in.
"Maybe this is normal," Elton admits. "I sure hope we do a better job when we finish." He plans to shift some of these leftover issues to Pat Pourchot, another former state senator, who will soon join Elton's staff in Anchorage.
Interior has 67,000 employees; Elton supervises only six, five in Anchorage and his assistant in Washington. Yet that number belies the importance of his job. Interior "owns" more than half the land in Alaska, and from the other perspective, just under half the land Interior manages in the entire U.S. is in the 49th state.
During my visit, Elton met with officials and lawyers from the North Slope Borough on multiple issues including endangered birds and offshore oil development. Officials from Doyon, Limited, the Interior Alaska Native corporation, showed up later to discuss a possible trade of potentially valuable federal mineral land for wildlife habitat now owned by the corporation.
Elton hopes he might contribute to resolving some of Interior's long-standing Alaska issues -- subsistence, oil exploration in Bristol Bay and the Arctic -- but he is a realist about trying to make big things happen from what is essentially a staff job. "You can't order people, you have to persuade." But every morning he leaps out of bed, excited to try. "It's exhilarating -- and a little scary."
--
In my April 26 column I said Anchorage High School's class of '59 was the only class from that year holding an Alaska reunion. Not so. Fairbanks' Lathrop High's Class of '59 and Juneau-Douglas High's statehood class will hold reunions in July. E-mail me for details.
Juneau economic consultant Gregg Erickson is editor-at-large of the Alaska Budget Report. E-mail, gerickso@alaska.com.
GREGG ERICKSON
COMMENT