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P E N I N S U L A
Vol. 50, Issue 41
In the news Palmer man charged in road rage episode
PALMER — A 47-yearold Palmer man suspected of firing a shot in an apparent road rage episode has been charged with felony assault and misdemeanor reckless endangerment. Brian Burton was arrested Sunday and jailed at Mat-Su Pretrial Facility in Palmer. Online court documents do not list his attorney. Alaska State Troopers shortly after 4 p.m. Sunday were contacted by a man who said a driver had fired a shot at him and his son near Palmer High School. A witness provided a description of the suspect and his vehicle. Troopers and Palmer police contacted Burton at his home. Investigators say Burton became angry at the other driver for some reason, stopped his vehicle and fired a round from a pistol across Bogard Road from Hemmer Road. Troopers seized a pistol.
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Tuesday, November 19, 2019 Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
Correction The story “Two candidates file for Soldotna may o ra l e l e c t i o n ,” published in the Sunday, Nov. 17 edition of the Clarion, contains an error. Tautfest is a director, not the director of the Peninsula Community Health Services of Alaska. She serves on the Governor’s Council on Disabilities and Special Education, not special needs.
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Cities back online sales tax initiative By Victoria Petersen Peninsula Clarion
The cities of Kenai and Soldotna are joining municipalities and boroughs across the state in an effort to collect sales taxes from online retailers. At their city council meetings on Nov. 6 and Nov. 13 the city of Kenai and Soldotna voted to sign onto the statewide initiative, which could
result in greater sales tax revenues for the cities. The plan, which is being administered by the Alaska Municipal League, will create a sales tax commission for the state. The Alaska Remote Seller Sales Tax Commission — an intergovernmental entity — will contract MuniRevs, a Colorado-based software company, to collect taxes from online vendors.
Both cities approved resolutions authorizing them to become a member municipality of the commission. The resolutions also designate a city representative to the commission. Kenai City Council member Henry Knackstedt said he thinks the initiative will help “level the playing field.” “There are businesses here
that are paying taxes within our city,” Knackstedt said at the Nov. 6 Kenai City Council meeting. “If you want to go buy a shirt or buy a good of some sort, you do pay taxes here. (The initiative) brings the online a little more in line with that kind of competition, so I appreciate that aspect.” Newly appointed Soldotna City Council member Pam Parker also said the initiative
will help balance local and online retailers. “The collection of online sales taxes will level the playing field for some of our brick and mortar businesses in town,” she said at the Nov. 13 Soldotna City Council meeting. Sales tax revenues help s u p p o r t g ov e r n m e nt See taxes, Page A2
Looking at future of pioneers’ homes Alaska
village wins coastal grant A fund partnership is helping threatened places around the country fight erosion.
Driver dies in Parks Hwy. crash ANCHORAGE — A driver died on the Parks Highway south of Talkeetna after crashing into a semi-tractor trailer. Alaska State Troopers say a southbound sedan drove in the wrong lane of traffic Sunday night and crashed head-on with a northbound commercial tractor-trailer at Mile 95. Troopers responded to the crash at about 8 p.m. Medics declared the driver dead at the scene. The name of the driver was not released because next-of-kin had not been notified. Heavy snow had fallen on the highway and conditions were icy. The truck driver was not injured. — Associated Press
Rain, snow
By Janet McConnaughey Associated Press
was among the staffers in the Situation Room who listened and took notes during Trump’s July 25 call with Zelenskiy. In closed-door testimony to impeachment investigators earlier this month, Williams said Trump’s discussion of specific investigations in the July phone call struck her “as unusual and inappropriate.” The requests, she said, seemed tied to Trump’s personal political agenda instead of broader U.S. foreign policy objectives, and seemed to point to “other motivations” for holding up the military aid. Yet Williams said she never raised her concerns with anyone at the White House, including her boss, Pence national security adviser Keith Kellogg. Williams said she included a copy of the call’s rough transcript in the vice president’s briefing book, but she had
NEW ORLEANS — Projects to protect Texas marshes from erosion and an Alaska village from the Bering Sea are getting help from some of the 44 grants awarded by the National Coastal Resilience Fund, a public-private partnership assisting communities threatened by storms and flooding from rising and warming seas. The $29 million in grants announced Monday are being matched by nearly $60 million from government agencies and nonprofits in 20 states, the District of Columbia and two U.S. territories. “This is the way things are supposed to work,” said U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-La. “It’s bipartisan, leveraging millions of dollars” in a way that will pay off exponentially, he said at a news conference. The fund partnership was created last year after severe weather caused a record $306.2 billion in damage in the U.S. the year before. It seeks to blunt the impact of extreme weather, flooding and other threats on diverse areas including wetlands, coastal beaches, rivers, streams, oyster beds and coral reefs. The program got 176 applications, including far more high-quality projects than the 44 the fund was able to support, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s director of coastal conservation, Erika Feller said after the news conference at a project site in suburban New Orleans. The Texas General Land Office is getting $3 million, the largest grant on the list, and contributing another $9.5 million to restore about 80 acres of coastal marshes in Galveston County’s Swan Lake. The tiny Native village of Shaktoolik, Alaska — listed in 2009 among a handful of Alaska communities that should move “as soon as possible” because of coastal erosion and repeated flooding — is matching $1 million from the foundation with nearly $5 million to build a coastal berm to protect the spit of land where the village
See Pence, Page A11
See coast, Page A11
Volunteer Victor Carlisle sings and plays the piano for Juneau Pioneer Home residents on Friday.
Michael Penn / Juneau Empire
Rate increase could drive away seniors, raise cost for state By Peter Segall Juneau Empire
On Sept. 1, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services raised the rates for the Alaska Pioneer Homes by increases of 40-140%, leaving many of the state’s seniors wondering if they had the money to pay for their retirement. Costs for the home’s lowest level of care rose from $2,588 to $3,623 a month, and new tiers of service were added with the highest level of care costing $15,000 a month. That rate increase was met with a lawsuit on behalf of pioneers’ home residents and family members on Nov. 4. “Pioneer’s Home residents relied on the rates under which they signed their contracts and reasonable annual rate increase when they sought admission to the Homes,” the suit alleges. “They did not reasonably expect their rates to increase so astronomically in a single month.”
In addition to causing financial worries for pioneers’ home residents and their families, the rates have thrown the program’s financial future into uncertainty. The pioneers’ homes are a statefunded assisted living program open to seniors 65 and older who are in need of aid, benefit or safety, according to the DHSS website. The state has subsidized the cost of care, but earlier this year Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposed cuts to the state spending in an attempt to create a budget where expenditures equal revenues. For the pioneers’ homes, that meant reducing the amount the state subsidizes the program by raising rates on seniors who could afford to pay with the state-funded Payment Assistance Program. “You’ve got someone in the pioneers’ home paying a regular rate, and you raise the rate and that person leaves, someone else who may be low-income comes in,” David Teal, director of the Legislative Finance
Division, said. “Instead of paying the rate, you made empty beds of people who had a lower level of care and replaced with someone with a higher level of care who may not be able to pay.” That would create a situation where the amount the state needs to subsidize would actually increase. It’s too soon to say if that will in fact be the case, Teal said. There are a number of factors which affect people’s decisions to stay or go, and there won’t be enough data for another year or so to know what kind of impact the rate increases will have, according to Teal. Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner declined to comment for this article as it concerns ongoing litigation. Turner referred the Empire to the Department of Law. DOL could not immediately be reached for comment but the department does not typically comment on pending cases. See home, Page A2
Aide’s testimony renews focus on Pence By Jill Colvin and Aamer Madhani Associated Press
WASHINGTON — He knew nothing about the Ukrainian backchannel, his aides say. He was unaware of a pull-aside meeting in Ukraine set up by a member of his own delegation, they insist. And he was in the dark about a monthslong campaign to push Ukraine’s leader to investigate President Donald Trump’s Democratic rivals, they attest — even as he met with and held calls with that leader. Questions about what Mike Pence knew about the events that sparked the House impeachment investigation — and when he knew key facts — are back in the spotlight as an aide to the vice president testifies this week at a public hearing of the House Intelligence Committee. The inquiry centers
on whether Trump abused his office for his own political gain by withholding crucial security aid from Ukraine as aides pressed the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to announce an investigation into the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and into the business dealings of the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. Pence’s team, for its part, is walking a thin political line in trying to make the case that the vice president was out of the loop on questionable aspects of Trump’s Ukraine policy while also presenting Pence as an influential voice in prodding the president to release the military aid. Jennifer Williams, a career foreign service officer who was detailed to Pence’s office from the State Department, is set to testify Tuesday. She compiled briefing materials for Pence on Ukraine, was in the room when he met with Zelenskiy in September and