Fish board member found in ethics violation makes the order public before Area M vote

A state Board of Fisheries member whose ethics violation led the attorney general's office to void five Area M salmon rules made the confidential order against him public Wednesday.

Curt Chamberlain, deputy general counsel for Calista Corp., the regional Alaska Native corporation for the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, waived confidentiality at the board's work session in Anchorage and released the May 19 order.

It found that he "failed to provide a complete disclosure" before the board's February meeting on Alaska Peninsula fisheries, where three of the five rules passed 4-3 with his deciding vote.

At that meeting, Chamberlain said he had never advocated for closing Area M fisheries. The order said that denial "is not supported by the record."

It cited his February 2023 testimony to the board, as Calista's assistant general counsel, that "Calista supports Proposal 140," the main proposal that year to restrict Area M's June fishery.

It also cited his testimony to a state Senate committee that year on a bill that would have closed Area M to commercial salmon fishing from June 10 through June 30. The order called that testimony "advocacy dressed as fact."

On Wednesday, Chamberlain said of the Senate testimony, "Of course it was advocacy." He called the finding "politically motivated" and said he stands behind his disclosures, because the department "did not find a conflict."

"A violation was found, but whether or not that constitutes a conflict of interest is something for the ethics attorney" to address, said Eddie Lee, the board's Department of Law attorney.

The order left that question for an advisory opinion. Chamberlain said he has waited three months for it. Lee said it can't be finished because the department still has questions for him.

In the meantime, Chamberlain may vote Thursday when the board considers agenda change requests, which ask it to take up proposals outside its normal schedule.

Several address the voided rules, Chamberlain wrote to the department in September. Lee said members may vote on such requests even if they would have a conflict on the underlying proposals, because the vote would have an "insignificant or conjectural effect" on their interests.

Board Chair Marit Carlson-Van Dort, who as Chamberlain's ethics supervisor had cleared him to vote in February, called "factually incorrect" the order's statement that she didn't give members a chance to object once new information about his advocacy came up.

At that same meeting, the board voted 6-0 that she could take part in Area M votes after her own ethics challenge over her role leading a Chignik Bay village corporation.

The voided rules would have put Area M on a fixed calendar schedule instead of adjusting fishing time to conditions, cutting June fishing time roughly 39% for drift gillnet vessels and 30% for purse seiners.

The Aleutians East Borough and Area M fishing groups sued over them and dropped the suit after the acting attorney general voided them in May, the first time the state had disapproved regulations the board adopted. The order said the board may take the rules up again with a new vote.

Legislators have since ordered a special audit of the board, and the ruling came up in the governor's race. At a Kodiak debate in September, candidate Treg Taylor, a former attorney general, said the state got the call right.