Saturday, December 03, 2011

Commission to decide if mine opponent broke law

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - State regulators are scheduled to deliberate next week as they try to decide whether an air service owned by an opponent of a proposed mining project broke election laws by flying candidates into remote Southwest Alaska villages to campaign.

The Alaska Public Offices Commission was unable to reach a decision on Friday after a contentious, 11-hour meeting the day before, the Anchorage Daily News reported ( http://bit.ly/uXkiT4).

Commission staff accused an air service owned by Pebble Mine opponent Bob Gillam of breaking a ban on corporate campaign contributions. The air service, RBG Bush Planes LLC, charged only for gas when it flew in two candidates running for the Lake and Peninsula Borough Assembly.

Gillam owns a home in the borough and has financed efforts to fight the Pebble Mine prospect, which he and other opponents say would endanger the salmon runs of Bristol Bay. Most recently, he bankrolled a successful borough ballot initiative that's meant to stop the mine but is the subject of court challenges.

Assistant Attorney General John Ptacin, who is representing the commission staff in the case, said it's illegal for a corporate air service to charge candidates only for fuel and not factor in the costs associated with the flight, such as pilots, pilot lodging and airplane maintenance.

"I think this case was made when (the accused) agreed they only charged fuel," Ptacin said. "Everything since then is just a reverse engineering to try and convince you that fuel only is somehow commercially reasonable."

Gillam's air service company is not a commercial service. The planes are used to transport him or anyone he chooses, and also are sometimes used by his McKinley Capital Management to fly executives visiting Alaska to the Bristol Bay area for recreation. McKinley provides the pilots in return for Gillam allowing the company to use his planes.

Gillam argued that the candidates were hitching a ride and that the plane trips were part of the ongoing travels throughout the region by George Jacko, a Gillam employee whom the businessman described as "my eyes and ears in Bristol Bay." His lawyer, Tim McKeevor, said the fuel charge met the "commercially reasonable" test described by the Public Offices Commission in a 2006 opinion, which described how much a candidate must pay for campaign air travel.

The candidates had no control over the timing and the itinerary so it's not fair to compare it to a charter flight, he said. "The bottom line here is that these ladies got a ride on an airplane at a time and place not of their choosing," McKeevor said.

The candidates argued they acted in good faith, paid what they thought was their fair share as calculated by Gillam's air service, and that APOC staff failed to prove they got an unreasonable deal. Kalmakoff paid $1,184 and Ravenmoon $346.

McKeevor said the amounts that the candidates paid represented half the cost of the fuel for a trip three-day trip beginning Sept. 3 and, inadvertently, the entire fuel cost for a two-day trip beginning Sept. 17.

Federal Aviation Administration rules would not allow RBG Bush planes to charge fares for the flights because it not a commercial airline, McGeevor said.

Ptacin, the state's lawyer, disputed that interpretation of FAA rules. Even if it were an accurate interpretation, Ptacin argued, it meant Gillam's aircraft should not have been flying candidates for political office.

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