I'd like to call the Senate State Affairs Committee meeting to order.
They let the record reflect that today is Thursday, February 5th at 2,
let's say 3.31 PM.
Members present today, Vice Chair Senator Bjorkman, Senator Wieckowski,
Senator Gray Jackson,
Senator Tilton, myself, Chair Kawasaki.
We do have a quorum to conduct business.
I would like thank Kerry Depo from Senate Records and Chloe Miller.
moderator with the legislative information office for being here. We just have one item
on today's agenda and that is a second hearing on Senate Bill 188, the Tananah Valley State
Forest. It is sponsored at the request of the governor, rules by request to the Governor.
We do have, we almost finished our presentation, actually finished
our presentations in the NECA time at last meeting on the third.
who is online to sort of finish up and present the sectional analysis. We will then take questions
and then we will open it up to public testimony. So if Mr. Douse, if you want to put yourself on
the record and continue the presentation beginning with, I think we're not sure exactly what page
And for the record, this is Jerry B. Dallas State Forester,
Director of the Division of Forestry and Fire Protection.
And I'll let Brent Goodrum, the Deputy Commissioner,
is in the room, and I believe he's
going to go through the sectional, if that works.
Yes, that'd be great, Deputy commissioner.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
For the Record, deputy commissioner Brent
Goodroom, we're starting on slide 9,
the Sectional Analysis.
I'll get to it very quickly because it's a pretty quick analysis.
The first section repills and reenacts the legal description of the current tenant of
alli state forest to include a legal descriptions of 43 additional units.
As we talked about earlier, that's about 600,000 acres of additional acreage.
Defining section and sections as both surveyed, and I'm going to make a correction here,
and unsurveyed protracted sections, so that's what that section says.
Section three allows the Department of Natural Resources to adopt regulations.
Necessarily to implement the bill.
Section four sits an immediate effective date for section three.
In section 5, we probably have to have a little conversation about sets in now past date, July 1st, 2025 as effective date for sections 1 and 2 in expansion of the state forest.
So that is the sectional analysis, 66 pages of description, legal description of, of
the forest, thank you, Deputy Commissioner.
We hope none of those details are wrong.
Meaning, we'll have to have the bill vetoed and resubmitted.
But I did have questions looking at the map that
is part of the testimony.
It just shows, basically, checkered board.
It looks like that.
Yeah, the chequered boards.
And so there's obviously contiguous areas
that are adjacent to the proposed orange,
but then are not necessarily inside then.
if either you or the state forester might be able to just mention why it seems like those are
such sporadically placed. Sure, I will allow this as deputy commissioner Goodram Mahal at
state Forester, Jeremy Douse, speak to that. All right, for the record, uh,
Jeremy douse state, foresters, director of division of forestry and fire protection and, um,
There's a couple of different reasons on why the checker boarded non-contiguous kind of pattern on the state forest
Some of that is obviously land ownership. There are federal lands
You know lands that are owned by the military in there that that bisect where the State Forest would be and then
For the states lands, that exist within those areas in some cases, there's there through the planning process
been identified more beneficial uses to the state, so it may not be a productive site.
There might be minerals, mineral resources that exist there that,
so, it might, be classified for mining, or it, might
be, classified, for something like habitat. In some cases, there are some
forestry-classified lands that have a dual habitat or a, a
dual classification such as habitat, um,
so a variety of different reasons on why that exists.
Great, thank you, Director. Are there questions?
I do have a question in the materials packet earlier this fall.
We received a comment from the Department of Army
installation management and command headquartered
at the Army Garrison in Fort Wainwright.
And it essentially it's a two page with a map that sort of addresses
some of the state forest expansion into the area.
talking about some of the, quote, disposable interest
into this quote state forest.
I wonder if you had any comments to make on that.
For the record, Jeremy Douse,
Director of Division of Forestry and Fire Protection.
So some those areas that they are concerned about
are just north of what's referred to
as Donnelly Training Area West.
And that land, it is state land but I believe it's designated for settlement or possibly remote
recreation. It's to be stateland to disposed of and put into private lands or private hands.
And I think the army is concerned that with having private land so close to the boundary of the
They have also, additionally, there is a history of fire
coming both off of the military installation
and even some starting on state land
and going on to the Military installation,
but they are concerned because of
the somewhat, you know,
there's a History of Fire there
that they're concerned by putting people there
where it's putting the people at risk.
Another thing is there are, actually, might be a couple members of this committee that are going to be heading up to the JPMRC, which is the joint Pacific multi-readiness center, including Donley-Dome area.
And I think a lot of that area might use for strafing exercises and things like that.
And, I don't know if, and I'm not here to speak on behalf of the Army, but I,
the nature of land ownership in Alaska and you know for state as large as we are we do have some
interseeding uh interceding uses and so I think that's pretty much what the letter was
mostly discussing. Senator Bjorkman. Thanks Chair Kawasaki. Mr. Douse as I kind of look at the map
and land ownership there right in the center of the Map just west of Delta. Kind of all of that land.
is state land as I look at online mapping tools.
And so I'm wondering, as we look
at this very large contiguous chunk of stateland
west of Delta, why there are portions
of that chunk-of-land carved out?
Why is that not in the state forest
and the other parts are?
Through the chair, Senator Bjorkman, if you're referring to that, there's a on the map, it's
a white piece of ground. It's not classified either green or orange or not symbolized that
way. Anyways, is that the area that you are referring? Correct.
Currently classified, I believe it's for remote recreation.
And so that's state land that has a different classification.
It's not classified for forestry, it is a site that is classified
for disposal.
Okay. I understand.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Are there any further questions before we go to public testimony?
Okay, hearing and seeing none the State Affairs Committee will open a public testimony
Public testimony is limited to three minutes if you can try and confine it to the three-minute time limit
First up we only have one person here to testify at this point. We have Joe Young owner of Young's Timber Incorporated in Tokalaska
If you would state your name and your record or name an affiliation for the record
Welcome to The Senate State of Affairs committee
Well, Joe Young here, I'm the owner of Young's Timber Inc. in
Polkalaska and had been operating in the timber industry for 33 years
within the 10 dollar state forest. And Youngs Timber
Inc is a generational business. Not only do I work it on my
children and my grandchildren help me work good.
And I highly recommend that the state that there's can be
passed S E one 88 proposed expansion of the Tana
By designing these, they've been made in these four state classified lands into the
Panama Valley State Force, management then transfers to the Alaska Division of Forestry.
This expansion will protect the boreal force from other risk and development such as subdivisions.
This bill reduced state costs as it eliminates both the Division Of Forestry and Division
Together, time on timber sales for both the business and concentrate their divisions on
the resources and their division.
Reduce in state costs and this time of budget crisis needs to be considered.
The expansion creates a larger timber base for capital investments into the timber industry.
Young's timbering invested $480,000 in September processing equipment in January 2026.
and plans to invest another half a million dollars in 2026.
So that's about a $1 million investment that Young's Timber Inc is investing into the harvesting
equipment for harvesting timber for its sawmills. The timber industry needs access to stable,
long-term supply timber resources for growth. A primary purpose of the state force
incorporating multiple use. In the last 33 years at YTI's and building logging roads,
skid trails, multiple users come in right behind us to pick berries, especially blueberries and
raspberries in the upper 10. Now, shopping, trail walking, hunting, and even beehives are starting
to show up for honey. And many other uses besides that. Harvesting creates access for fire protection
this is very critical to control the fire thank you for allowing me to testify and please pass
Senate bill 188.
Thank you very much mr. Young for your testimony. I'm just looking at the map and it's not a very
blown up map of the area around TOC but it looks like there's a pretty considerable
maybe a little bit prior to the urbanized area of Tok there and the motel. Can you tell me what
the current, what that land looks like? Is it all forested? is it at all? You know we have these
bills that are in front of us all the time and unless you've been there you don't really know
what it really looks and so I'm just curious from your perspective what the area looks
Again, we don't have a blow up of the map here with us right now.
Yes, what I could say there is it is a continuous forest and one of
the biggest problems we have in the Toc area, of course, is fires.
And, you know, as everybody knows, in 1990, TOC almost burned down from the
type harvesting prescriptions or units is that not only can we help and control fire
mitigation, but also aesthetically, you know, when you fly over, it looks great from the
air.
Yeah.
Um, thank you.
Senator Bjorkman has a blow up on his phone that he just showed me and it's,
Nice looking nice looking area
Are there any other questions for mr. Young under public testimony?
Okay hearing and seeing none is there anybody else who'd like to testify on Senate bill 188 today and
We do plan on holding Senate Bill 188 committee for a little bit
There's nobody in the room would like testifies or anybody. Else online who would likes to test by on senate bill
Okay, we'll keep public testimony open on the Senate bill.
If you do have, if you'd like to send an email to the
Senate State Affairs Committee for testimony for
against the bill, you can send that email
to senate.state.affairs at akaleg.gov.
That is senate dot state.
at some point over to the resources committee where the process will continue.
I'd like to thank Brent Gudrum for being here today to present the sectional of the bill
and some of discussion we've had. I would like thank Jeremy Dow, State Forester and Director of
the Division of Forestry. Is there any other comments or questions?
I wanted to let the Senate State Affairs Committee know that we did have a bill that was potentially
heading to us. We're trying to waive it and if you can just sign that memo before it is a
resolution, a simple resolution by member of this committee on the semi-sesquicentennial,
the 250th anniversary of the U.S. So just want to thank thank you for bringing that forward and
That concludes the meeting for today.
The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, February 10th.
We will hear two bills, Senate Bill 126 regarding
correctional facilities and placement.
It is by Senator Yunt.
We did hear the bill at least once before in the last year.
We'll also hear Senate bill 71 on
pretrial services, supervision, and agreements.
also by the governor, by The Rules Committee by request of the Governor, we did hear that one
more time and then we will hear at least something of a briefing by Department of Corrections since
there will be in the capital city the following week. If there's no other business to attend to
you at this time we'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting of The Senate State Affairs Committee