Alaska Board of Fisheries: Committee on Board Process, Management, and Research Needs Meeting (10/21/2026)

3, 2, 1.

Recording in progress.

All right, Kyle, are we good to go? Everybody's in? We are good to go. Excellent, thank you so much. Well, good morning everybody.

The time is 9:38 AM and we're going to go ahead and convene the Committee on— Board of Fisheries Committee on Board Process Management and Research Needs. We are scheduled to go to about, I think, noonish, 1 o'clock today, but I'm hopeful that we can get through our agenda a little bit quicker than that. I know that some members of the committee have other obligations and might have to drop off a little bit early. So to that end, I'll introduce myself. My name is Marit Carlson-Van Dort.

I am the chair of this committee and the chair of the Board of Fisheries, and I will turn it over to my fellow members to introduce themselves. Mike, I see your face in front of me, go ahead. Yeah, good morning everyone, Mike Wood from Talkeetna. Tom Carpenter from Cordova. Great.

And department staff that are with us today? Commissioner Doug Vincent Lang, and I think we have two directors, Israel Payton and George Pappas, in addition to the board staff. Awesome. Director Payton, do you have any staff online that you'd like to introduce?

No, ma'am, just myself for Division Sport Fish. All right, well, good to see you. Thank you. And Mr. Pappas, how about you? No, that'd be myself today.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. All right, well, thank you guys both for joining us today. And Director Nelson, would you please introduce yourself and board staff available? Good morning, Madam Chair. My name is Art Nelson.

I'm Executive Director for the Board of Fisheries, and from board staff today, we have Kyle Campbell from Fairbanks. He's going to be handling public testimony and giving people permission to talk when it's their turn. And Annie Bartholomew behind the scenes, she's managing the stream and the meeting recording. Madam Chair. Excellent.

Thank you very much. And I believe we have Mr. Lee from Department of Law.

Hey, good morning, Madam Chair. Yes, Edward Lee from the Department of Law. Welcome. Thanks for being with us. Are there any other agencies, anybody else that I've missed that would like to introduce themselves or should introduce themselves?

Nope. All right, well, let's get into it. So if you take a look at the agenda, there's a couple of new business items that are on this agenda, and then there's an old business section that revisits the items that we had on our previous agenda. The purpose for that, if folks weren't with us a couple of weeks ago or 3 weeks ago, is to sort of give people another opportunity to comment, either written public comment or, you know, at the meeting here today with the additional context and being able to hear the discussion that we had at our last committee meeting. So, you know, we'll go through that.

I'll do it similarly where we will take up each agenda item and then I'll open it up for public comment and then we'll move move on through the agenda. Any questions on that, or does that make sense to folks? Okay. Well, our first item under the new business section is Department of Law recommendations for improving the board process. I will open it up to you, Mr. Lee.

What you got for us today, please? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to kick off today's meeting with some important announcements from the Department of Law. I'll be a little long-winded. I have a lot to say. If at any point you have any questions, feel free to just interrupt me.

We previewed Law's discussions on improving board processes at the last process committee meeting, and at that time we were still in discussions with both board as well as within Law. And at this time, I do feel like we're prepared to actually talk about this at length to some extent. And then also, just please keep in mind that a lot more of this will be made available to the public at next week's work session. There will be some action for the board to take. Pending its incorporation of Law's recommendations into its process going forward.

So without further ado, beginning with the 2026-2027 Board of Fisheries meeting cycle, this upcoming session, the Department of Law is recommending that the Board implement a new procedure to help ensure that the Board's regulatory actions can move efficiently through the Administrative Procedure Act review process. Now, before further discussing this recommendation, I want to be very clear, especially for the public's sake, that the board's existing process of accepting proposals from the public— excuse me— hosting regional board meetings with public testimony, staff reports, and the whole nine yards that Alaskans are familiar with that aspect of the board process does not need to, and it's not being recommended that that change. Rather, Law's recommendation will add and not replace any steps into the board's existing regulatory process. And so the, the recommendation that Law is putting to the board is for the board to hold an end of session adoption meeting to finalize regulatory language that has gone through public notice and legal review. This would likely be a short meeting and could be conducted virtually.

The goal of the meeting is to give the board a predictable point in the annual cycle to adopt regulations in their final form as regulatory text that have been approved vetted, considered, and deliberated on by the board during that year's regional board meetings. So for example, for this upcoming year where the board has Lower Cook Inlet, Kodiak, and Upper Cook Inlet on the docket, at the end of this session after the Upper Cook Inlet meeting in March, for the board to hold a final meeting to review finalized regulatory text that was converted from proposals that the board approved during that year's meetings. So I can pause there if there are any questions, but I'm happy to keep going, Madam Chair. Okay, thanks, Eddie. Any questions, folks?

If members— let's start with members or department staff— would raise their hands, please.

Mr. Commissioner. Well, Eddie, what I hear you saying— oh, is my mic on? Sorry, it is. Yeah. Okay.

What I hear you saying is that there's going to have to be an additional step after the board deliberates on proposals and potentially writes them into their language that Department of Law needs to review to be compliant with the Alaska Administrative Procedures Act, and then there needs to be a public notice opportunity for comment on those, and the board would have to come back then and vote on those proposals a second time after that second round of public comment that's necessary to comply with the APA. Yes, there's a couple of questions in there through the chair, Mr. Commissioner. So I want to be very clear up front. That the board's existing process as it exists now, it is valid. It complies with the APA.

However, it invites at certain points in the regulatory process challenges to actions that the board takes that then become subject to litigation and can have other effects that, you know, may lead to the board having to take additional action and to finalize regulations.

This step would basically prevent that from having to be the case. It would add a legal safeguard to the process going forward were the board to follow these recommendations. And I do think it is absolutely— it is appropriate to say that this will make it stronger the existing process as is, it is not my opinion that it is out of compliance with the APA. By taking this second step, by essentially bifurcating the process where you have the proposal phase and then you have a regulation phase— I mean, it exists now that the board can approve a proposal and during the course of the meeting at no point is it converted to actual regulatory text for the board or for the public to actually look at and consider prior to it being codified into law. This will break that process up into two steps.

And so the board still vets, considers, deliberates on the proposal as it was submitted. They can amend it, you know, as, as is practice during the course of the regional board meeting. And then at the end, if approved, a proposal will be converted to regulatory text. Then that's the point which initiates the APA review by the Department of Law. That is a statutory process where the regulations attorney, which is the head of a section called LR/LR at the Department of Law, they take the regulations, they review it for legal issues, and then they prepare it for submitting back to the department.

And then that go— excuse me, it goes to the Lieutenant Governor from there for codification into law. Once it gets to the Lieutenant Governor, there is a 30-day waiting period. And so that whole process, by bifurcating as recommended, as I'm discussing now, the board regulation— the board's regulatory process, it will, even though it adds another step, it will make that process go much more efficiently and much more smoothly and allow for regulations to be codified as soon as the board takes a look at the final language and adopts that language. So essentially what's happening is that the Board will have an opportunity that it doesn't currently have to see the final actual regulatory language before it advances through the Lieutenant Governor's process. Is that correct?

That is correct, Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. Mr. Commissioner, then Mr. Wood. Yeah, I just wanted to have this. The reason, I think it's kind of important to understand the reasoning that Attorney Lee is talking about is that the Board of Game had a lawsuit on Malchatna Caribou and the Board of Game had amended a proposal at the table and then we got sued by the public saying there wasn't an opportunity to review that regulatory language prior to going into an effect.

So this, There's— he is completely correct. There are legal vulnerabilities in not taking the APA step moving forward. Yeah, I think it makes sense. Thank you. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, Eddie, so when you say additional action, when we have that last meeting at the end of the season, and could that potentially drag us back into deeper deliberations over that individual proposal? That should have happened during the regional process? Like, if somebody was to change their vote, or this new regulation added language that was not expressed as intent in the board's deliberation during the regional meeting?

Uh, Mr. Wood, through the chair, um, it depends. So I want to be clear, the vote at the regional meeting is on a proposal where at this final meeting this final adoption meeting, the vote is going to be on the regulatory text. And so there may be instances where the board, you know, votes on a proposal, it's converted to regulatory text, and the board reviews it at that final meeting. And in fact, there are errors, there's Scrivener's errors, there are certain details that were omitted from what the original proposal entailed. In which case, the board will have an opportunity to make those changes at the final meeting, depending on the significance of that change.

You know, there's always a possibility that the— that specific regulation would have to be re-noticed and, you know, re-adopted at a later meeting. But if the changes aren't significant enough, those could be made then at the meeting and then adopted and go essentially, because it's already been reviewed by LRLR, the Department of Law, it would go straight to codification. Now, insofar as relitigating the merits of a proposal, again, I want to stress that the Board has already conducted that portion of the rulemaking process at the regional board meeting. And so the purpose of the final adoption meeting is to consider comments that were submitted within the 30 days allotted under the APA prior to that meeting, consider those comments, and then determine whether or not, you know, they would move the needle in having the board reassess the actual merits of the regulatory text. But again, that record was already built during and prior to the Board's regularly scheduled regional meeting.

So essentially, what this is, is an exercise for the Board to review the regulatory— the actual regulatory language that was voted on during our end cycle meeting. So it's not necessarily an opportunity to go back and rehash and, like you said, relitigate sort of the merits of the proposal, but rather to ensure that what was voted on is reflected accurately in regulatory text.

Correct, Madam Chair. Okay, Mr. Wood and then Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thanks. One follow-up. I just— so it— that this means that it's imperative that during the regional meeting, when we're— when we are— prior to deliberation, that all the information that we are voting on and helping make our decisions is put out there so the public can comment on it in order to build the record and give clear intent to the department and law Um, and so it seems like a way to prevent there being any major, um, oversteps, that everything has the opportunity to be deliberated through the public process in committee of a whole so that there's no radical changes, um, during deliberations or prior to deliberations.

Is that—. Does that—. Is that part of what helps this process move more smoothly and prevent law from being involved? Through the chair, Mr. Wood, uh, it depends to an extent, um, the kind of issue you've identified that would be mitigated through accepting these recommendations, because now there would be really no clear challenge to a proposal that was amended after Committee of the Whole, because there would be an additional 30-day comment period under the APA for the public to comment on those changes that were amended, that were sorted out during the regional meeting. The issue of whether or not the board wanted to, you know, disallow floor amendments or, you know, last-minute revisions to a proposal at the regional board meeting, that's still That is a concern, an issue that is well within the board's authority to regulate how it conducts its meetings.

But legally, there wouldn't be an issue with, you know, an RC or a last-minute change, an amendment to a proposal on the last day of deliberations at the regional board meeting because it was still— that proposal, if accepted and approved by the board, would then be subject to a 30-day APA comment period. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, Eddie, so when the, when the final regulatory language for all the proposals that were passed at a regional meeting or throughout the year, are they going to come to the board in a package so that the board would not have to go through each one independently, but could vote on or move forward through the ratification process a package or suite of proposals so that, you know, it wouldn't take an entire day to do this? So through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, that's a good question.

Um, that specific detail is actually something that the board can decide. Um, to answer your question, could the board consider everything as a package? Absolutely. Um, it could come and, you know, if there were any issues that a board member identified with any specific regulatory amendment within within that package, there is a process for, you know, under Robert's Rules as well as any policy that the board would establish to pull that out of the package and to set that aside, approve the rest of the regulatory amendments, and then go back to looking at that specific regulatory amendment that a board member pulled out. There's precedent for it.

You might see it in like the legislature when they're going through like board and commission nominees. You know, they'll just go through a page. If somebody has an objection to one of the nominees, they can just pull it out. And so it can resemble that very much so. For me, and I think for most of the board members, you think of these regulatory amendments in terms of proposals.

So there's also potential opportunity to consider the regulatory amendments associated with each proposal at the final adoption meeting. But I just want to be clear that it is something at the discretion of the board, how they consider and how they prosecute that final, uh, well, that adoption meeting at the end of this session. Okay, so just, it seems pretty clear to me that we just need to ask for whatever form we would like to see presented to us. Yeah, and I think that's a good discussion to have probably at the work session. Um, and I think also, yeah, I mean, just to facilitate and make sure this is efficient and timely.

There might be some growing pains, but we'll get this hammered out. Okay, thanks. Mr. Nelson.

Eddie, I know you—. I think you paused and you may have more to talk about, and so I'll hold the question if so, but I kind of wanted to talk about timelines for this meeting because there will be time needed following the regional meetings to develop that regulatory language that the board would review and to try to get regulations in place for the following summer. Do you have more on that later, or should I just go ahead and ask the questions now? Through the chair, I think that's a great question, Director Nelson. A lot of what I had to say was actually spoken to by the commissioner and through the answers to some of my questions.

But insofar as next steps, yes, there would need to be some consideration to the board's calendar for this year, not so much this year, but especially for next year. Obviously, most salmon fisheries in the state begin in June. I think Copper River starts May 22nd or as early as May 22nd. And so looking forward, Department of Law has prepared timelines for this year as well as a timeline for next year. Next year for the 2027-2028 board session.

Uh, the last meeting is at the end of March. I think it's statewide selfish. Um, that will be problematic to have regulations codified prior to June 1st for all the meetings next year. Um, and so I know I've discussed this a little bit with you, Director Nelson, off record about some of the scheduling that may need to be shifted around. But the board will be briefed on that.

Like I said, I have documents with anticipated calendars on it for this year and next year. Those will be provided to the board, and when they're ready for publishing, provided to the public so they can have an idea of what's being contemplated going forward. Because obviously this step is going to require, you know, buy-in from the Department of Fish and Game. I realize this does incur some budgetary issues and just logistics, and, um, those concerns are being, um, dealt with.

Mr. Commissioner? Yeah, I guess that, that's where I'm going to jump in a little bit, is the, the expectations of the department. Um, we understand the need to do this legally, and we're ready to address it, but the questions I have kind of get into Mike Wood's, um, questions is what's the expectation of the department? So what I understand is that after the board meeting, we'll go through the process of drafting the regu— LLR, we and the, and Department of Law will draft a set of regulations and regulatory language that will then get sent out for public review. And there'll be a whole set of public comments that are potentially coming back to the department, to the, to board support section.

I guess what is the expectation of the department in summarizing those comments or providing the board advice on, on what they're hearing from those comments? And number two, is there any expectation that we're gonna be requested for new information based on what they may have heard in those comments? Because if, if that is the expectation rather than what I heard earlier, we're just ratifying the regulatory language and we're not taking a fresh look at it, that, that could add significant time significant cost to the department and time of department staff to prepare the board for that meeting. So I, I'm pretty comfortable with if it's just a regular, it's a review of the regulatory language and the board has to kind of look at the comments they get and move forward. But if there's requests for new information or summaries of documents and department comments, I can see that taking, if not 2 to 3 weeks, to just move forward.

So I don't know if we're going to sort that out at the board meeting or what.

Through the chair, if I may, Madam Chair.

Yeah, um, so Commissioner, I think you raised a lot of good questions. Insofar as department input on those APA-submitted comments, um, I think that is really at the discretion of the board as to how much input from department of Fish and Game staff they want on those comments. The board members themselves, you know, other than, you know, board support staff compiling those comments and forwarding them to the board members, I guess that's kind of the phase in which you've addressed in your concerns about department input. I mean, the board members can take those comments. They have an obligation to consider them.

They are exempted under the APA from having to provide a written explanation as to those comments and their position on them. But, um, they can consider them. They have to consider them under the APA, um, and in their decision to finalize and adopt that final regulatory text. Now, if there is a request for new information, um, the first thing I want to note is that it's probably going to be And I'm sure you could, you know, conjure up some situations where it would be an issue, but between the board's regularly scheduled, you know, regional meeting and that final meeting, I suspect that oftentimes there's not going to be a whole lot of new information because, again, the departments are going to be, you know, be providing, you know, staff reports that contemplate public testimony, and there'll be discussions at those regional meetings about the merits of the proposal. The APA comments are really just on the regulatory text and the board's decision of whether or not— you use the word ratify— it's to approve that final, adopt that final regulatory language at the final meeting.

So, to summarize, in answer to your questions, the department's input on those comments will largely be at the discretion of the board. And, you know, in full transparency, it might be a little attenuated, the schedule for this year, potentially next year, just because we're rolling this out somewhat late in the process. But, I can say from the Department of Law, we are committed to facilitating, whether through staff, whether through time, whatever it takes to make sure that this process goes as smoothly as it can for this year. And we're appreciative of the department's willingness to lend its support to these recommendations. So a couple of things here.

I mean, I guess from what I'm hearing, and I imagine that we're going to have more— well, I know, not imagine, we will have more discussion about this at the work session with the full board and talk more about sort of the, the, the mechanics of the calendar and the scheduling challenges that we need to talk about, what this ratification or approval process actually looks like, and then what the responsibilities or expectations are of the department. I mean, at the— at a bare minimum, I would see the department essentially collating and batching the comments that it receives through the, this additional 30-day public comment period on the actual regulatory text. So, but I want to make clear that one of the primary concerns that I have is that this not devolve into essentially the board's reconsideration process. That's very important to me. That is the time and space for that is deliberations.

And the record that is built during the deliberative process in the board's regular meetings.

And so that's something that I'm going to be especially keyed into as we enter the work session and we get a little bit more context or something that the public can actually look at and respond to and the board, the full board can respond to at the work session. I suspect what we'll have is some kind of an introduction to this at the work session, and it may require that we have some kind of a subsequent online meeting that allows the public to give us a little bit of feedback on what has been contemplated or what will be contemplated at the work session. This is going to be, you know, it's a little bit undefined, right? And I'm not quite sure what the requirements are But I want to make sure that the public has ample opportunity to hear what the issues are, consider them, hear the board's response to it and discussions about it, and then consider those and, and provide feedback to the board. How that all is going to be able to work itself out over the course of a pretty protracted timeline, which is this, this board cycle.

You know, I'm just going to have to ask for everybody's patience, I think, up front and being you know, vigilant about what our meeting schedule is and as responsive as possible. But the intent here is to make sure that the full Board and the public has an opportunity to consider what LAH is proposing and presenting to us here. But from my perspective, I want to make sure that this doesn't, like I said, devolve into another, you know, another reconsideration type process, especially around particularly contentious allocative decisions that the board makes during its regular cycle. Mr. Nelson. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Eddie, a question for you regarding, you know, the final regulatory adoption meeting. Say, you know, through the comment period or, you know, a comment raises a valid point or a board member feels that the final regulatory language doesn't— didn't meet what they thought the board's intent was, and the board does pluck something out and make a change at that meeting. If it's a small change, can that still go forward, or does that immediately pull it out and it has to go back through another 30-day APA comment and approval process?

Through the Chair, Director Nelson, so a small change, let's take for example, say you wanted, you know, a fishery to start on the 5th, and in the final regulatory language that comes back, it says the fourth. Something like that small that could be, you know, chalked up to just an error in how it was drafted. Something like that could be amended at that final adoption meeting and then codified from there. If it's a significant change, like, you know, it adds new subject matter or an area of the Fisheries Management Plan that wasn't contemplated in the original proposal, that might constitute a, uh, that might warrant another 30-day notice period, in which case, um, board would potentially have to come back or just table the proposal altogether at that point. Because the other thing we're kind of running up against here is that the board changes over in summer, um, and so there's, there's a couple of considerations that'll have to take place at that that adoption meeting, but I do think the timeline can be scheduled to allow for a subsequent adoption meeting if that were necessary prior to June 1st and, you know, a board changeover in, you know, the coming years.

And I think that's why this idea, this conversation around what that process is that the board determines for itself about how to consider this and what elements to consider is going to be very important because, you know, I don't want this again to turn into a tactic, um, for a member who didn't like the proposal passing to continue to sort of make these changes and kick the can indefinitely down the road so that it never is enacted, essentially. So, I mean, there's a lot to discuss in that, but I, I think that from my from my view, I think the most important thing is to make sure that this becomes essentially an accuracy review of the intent and the language that was deliberated and voted on during the in-cycle meetings. And I'm not quite sure how to do that, but that's one of the things that I just want to flag for you, Eddie, and the department and members here at this meeting to think about for, um, the discussion at the work session. Mr. Commissioner? Yeah, I just wanted to just kind of comment on your, your statements, Mart.

I think it is imperative that this does not rehash the entire debate. And to me, there are other tools that the board has, has at its disposal to bring new information forward through agenda change requests, emergency petitions, and a variety of other things. But I can tell you right now, the department is going to be very this process will considerably slow down if there's an expectation that for every proposal that you deliberated on, like Lower Cook Inlet, Kodiak, and Upper Cook Inlet, to have some new information brought forward. That's just gonna— it's, it's gonna take a long time for that data to get through. And especially if there's asked for reprioritization of, of that data moving forward, because we're, we're preparing for management of fisheries at that time of year in the department.

So I just encourage it to become a, a review of the regulatory language and the public comments rather than a, a rehashing of the, of the comments and use the existing processes. If people have problems with the pro— with new information, other things moving forward. Yeah, thank you. I, I couldn't agree more. And really I see this as being a, a discussion or an opportunity to address technical legal issues that may have been brought up.

By the department or the attorneys or the public, you know, but not, you know, being used as an opportunity to sort of rehash or get second and third bites at the apple on a proposal that they may or may not— somebody may or may not have liked to have passed. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I agree with both you and the commissioner. We don't want to see this devolve into an ACR process on steroids.

And I think what matters is that we are— that board does due diligence so that the public doesn't feel disenfranchised and understanding the language and the ability to comment on the language that is voted on prior to the vote. I think there's a lot that we can do within the board to make sure that that doesn't happen, and I look forward to being a part of trying to make that work. So, but yeah, I— we don't want to rehash stuff a month later. Thanks, Mike. Any other questions of the panelists, staff, board members?

Eddie, do you have anything else that you'd like to add to this conversation before I open it up? Um, just briefly, Madam Chair, I just want to reiterate that this will be further discussed at the work session. I know the public's going to want to have input on as they should. I think this is, you know, quite frankly, this is kind of a historic change to how the board does business. And I think being a part of this, I think, necessitates that public input.

Obviously, I think the board members, as you've shown here, have a lot of good feedback for Law. I also want to make mention that these discussions have been happening at least internally at Law for some time. And there's been some briefing for the board members on certain, you know, proposed changes. This is the results of a lot of work that has been happening at least over this summer in the last few months to make sure that the board's business going forward is as legally sound as it can be. And I'm happy to be part of this.

So if between now and the work session, if any of the process committee members have any questions, or any of the other board members who may be tuning in have questions, feel free to reach out to me and I look forward to working on this with all of you going forward. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks, Eddie. Uh, Mr. Carpenter? Yeah, just one final comment or maybe question for Eddie.

Um, it seems like there's a pretty clear path forward here. I think, you know, some things regarding the timeline and how the board would like comments from the public during that final period presented to them, etc., etc. But If the board were to— because I think the board itself has quite a bit of authority to create kind of the process that it wants to use, as long as it kind of complies with most of the requests from the Department of Law. If the board were to create a policy or a finding, and I'm thinking about this in the context of future boards and you know, kind of, this is kind of going to be a first step that's going to be part of the process moving forward. If we were to do that and to put everything in a policy or a finding that we thought were adequate measures to address some of these concerns, is this something that the Department of Law is going to need to review prior to us implementing it, or is it something that we can implement ourself without that?

That's a good question. Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, um, It depends how far the board wants to memorialize this. You know, there are aspects of this that could be codified into regulation, in which case you would obviously go through the review process, kind of— it's kind of a meta codification of this process into law. There are other steps the board could take, putting it in written findings in a policy.

You know, the board could take this up with the Board of Game in the future as a joint board and, you know, approach it that way. Right now, this is just limited to the Board of Fisheries, and I want to be clear about that. This is—. The Board of Fisheries is up first for this year.

And yeah, to summarize, in answer to your question, yeah, this can be memorialized. Right now, were the board to just follow the recommendations without any sort of policy or regulation in place, um, it is consistent with the APA. And at the end of the day, that is the benchmark for the board to make a properly valid regulation. And so, um, absent a regulation or policy finding prior to the board following this process, I do believe without having a whole lot of time to actually consider this question, I do believe the board's process would be upheld and any regulations promulgated through this recommended path would be legally sound. Okay, thanks.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So I'm going to go— if I don't see any other hands raised from the panelists, I'm going to begin to open it up for public comment here. And we're going to keep it pretty loose and not terribly formal.

I just want to remind folks that if you are signed in through the app or on your web browser, please use the raise hand function so that I see it and I can call on you. If you are calling in through the dial-in number, Art, is it star 6-9 or star 6-9? Boy, that's my age there, right? What is it, star 6 or—. It's star 9 to raise to use the raise hand feature.

*9 Will toggle your hand up and down if you're dialed in. *6, If you're dialed in, will mute or unmute you. So, hey, remember *69? That was the, the see who the last caller was on the rotary phone, on the old phones. Yeah, anyways, that was close.

I had the numbers right. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and open it up for members of the public to, to comment here. The first hand I see raised is Monty Roberts. Go ahead, Monty.

Thanks, Madam Chair. That was good discussion. The one concern that I didn't hear raised was how do we get the information out to the public after the regulatory language is ratified in a timely manner for the season? The handy-dandy books tend to get printed, you know, pretty shortly after the board. So we, we all have to abide by these regulations.

So we're just— I'm wondering what timeline looks like. Yeah, good question, Monte. And I think what I heard discussed is that we're gonna, we're gonna have a more robust discussion about that, um, at the work session to sort of calendar it backwards, because this is going to require at a minimum an additional 30, probably 45 days in between sort of when the when the board's last regular in-cycle meeting is and when the actual codification can happen and those reg books get printed for the public for the season. So I'm not quite sure exactly what those dates are, but, you know, we're very sensitive to trying to be able to complete this process prior to June 1st so that the public at least prior to June 1st, so that the public can know what the rules are as you guys enter the season. But it's a good question, and I would just again sort of raise the flag for everybody to pay attention to the board's notifications, the public notices, for not only this meeting that is being contemplated, but also meetings between, you know, now and probably the next couple months, because I I suspect that we're going to have to have additional conversation or process development after the work session so folks have some time to comment on the discussion, the more robust conversation that we're going to have at the work session with the full board.

Thank you. Yeah, sure. Anybody— would anybody else like to add to that?

Yeah, I can just— Madam Chair, if I could. Yeah, that's clearly on our mind too, because this adds 30 days in advance and we're we'll probably publish after the board adopts them. But you're right, we're gonna have to— there's a bunch of things on our side that we're gonna have to adapt, adapt to this. So, Manny, I, I understand it, and we'll bring some recommendations forward to the, to the board. So, and just to go one step further, if I could, Madam Chair, uh, you know, some of the things that we have talked about already is that, you know, this, this final adoption meeting would most likely be sometime in April.

We can't probably pick a date right now. It'll depend on when that final regs package is ready to go out for public comment, and then that starts a 30-day clock. And, you know, so that's going to be fluid until we know when we have the final regs package. So there's essentially— oops, sorry, Anne, go ahead. Oh, no.

And I was also going to say, I believe Eddie kind of mentioned it earlier, that March meetings for area regional meetings is also problematic for this process, especially anything in mid to late March. So we're going to be looking at future calendars and taking that into consideration to really try to make a June 1 implementation target for all parts of the cycle. So there's essentially now 2 additional 30-day periods that the timeline has to accommodate. One, the 30-day comment period prior to ratification or adoption, or whatever the nomenclature is that we're using for the board, on the regulatory language, but then there's an additional 30 days at the Lieutenant Governor's review stage as well. So it's going to be adding quite a bit of time, and that's going to be reflected in future schedules.

I see Gary's iPhone hand raised. Please go ahead, Gary.

You are muted, sir.

How about now, Madam Chairman? Loud and clear. Okay, thank you. Yeah, Gary Hallier, King Island, Alaska. Yeah, I opened up a pretty big can of worms with this.

Seems like the wheels of state bureaucracy runs pretty slow. I've been waiting for the proposal booklets for Upper Cook Inlet to come out. Maybe they came out last week, but the deadline was April something, 10th, and still don't have them. But I don't know if this is the right time, Adam Chairman. I just like to— I guess this committee is about board protocol, and I'm really concerned about board-generated proposals.

I know that the board generates— takes a group of proposals during a regular cycle and groups them into something and makes a general board-generated proposal. But a board-generated proposal out of cycle, I think, is just wrong. And a prime example, everybody at this meeting Alaska knows this. At the state— at their last regulatory meeting for Upper Cook Inlet, uh, beach sanding was brought up to be an alternative gear type and was voted down and was thoroughly vetted. Well, at the statewide meeting a year later, it was brought up out of cycle at the last minute, no public comment, and passed.

And I think that this is just wrong, and I think this is something that this committee should— should bring up Uh, as far as the public process really was, uh, circumvented in a, in a bad way. And I appreciate you, uh, letting me talk about this, but this has got to be brought up because this is one of the— as far as Upper Cook Inlet, this is a, a big deal when Board of Fish, uh, the Board of Fish can make board general proposals out of cycle with no comments and then pass into regulation. And so, and thank you for your time. Thanks, Gary. My recollection was that that BGP was adopted at the statewide and then was noticed for 30 days, and then the board took final action on it during a special meeting.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about, Madam Chairman. This wasn't even brought up. It was thoroughly vetted a year before and failed on a 3-3 vote. And so to bring it up at the very end of a statewide meeting is just wrong. That's in my— after attending every every Upper Cook Inlet board meeting since 1986.

I've never seen that happen, and I think that that's just wrong, and I'd just like to bring it to the attention of this committee that maybe that could be discussed. And so thank you. Thanks, Gary, appreciate your comments.

Um, any other comments from the public on this agenda item? Patrick, please go ahead.

Yeah, hello, can you hear me loud and clear? All right, thank you, uh, Madam Chair. My name is Patrick Brown. I'm a Sandpoint Advisory Committee chair member. We did submit on-time public comments that were not between— they were lost somewhere between board support and getting to you guys.

So, um, I do have some, some AC comments here, and it seems appropriate to this meeting that You know, talking about board processes and having our public comments kind of fall through the cracks, you know, just with sort of the short notice and everything. But if you don't mind, I would like to read the AC comments that we—. If you wouldn't mind, hold on a second. I wanted to keep the comment period specific to this agenda item. We're going to move through the agenda.

If there's something that we didn't capture, Um, you know, with the, with the agenda, then, then I'll open it up at the end for final comments. But if, if you have AC comments that are specific to the agenda item 2 that we're talking about right now, I'll take those now. Okay, and that's in like response to like board-generated proposals and RCs. We're talking about right now, we're talking about, um, the Department of Law's, um, process that, that they just, um discuss with the board. With the—.

Okay, thank you. Uh, may— yeah, when the time is more appropriate. Yeah, if you stand by, we'll make sure we get to you. Okay, thank you. I just didn't want to miss opportunity.

Yeah, for sure, we'll make sure that we hear from you. Um, any other comments specific to agenda item number 2? Um, Colin, last name's— or last number 0039, please go ahead.

Yes, Madam Chair, can you hear me?

Yes. Madam Chair, this is Russell Clark. One quick question about the agenda item. Uh, during the comment period for the public, is there any way that the public can be instructed as to, uh, submitting comments that would, uh, be considered legal issues, uh, questions that might substantially affect the proposed regulation instead of having the Board having to receive an onslaught of comments that perhaps may not pertain to the issue at hand.

I'm not quite sure I'm following your question.

Are you asking for— go ahead. Okay. For the additional public comment, right now on proposals, public comment is liable to consist of just about anything. So after regulation is adopted by the board, and then there's additional public comment on that regulation. Is there any way that the board could limit the comment, the public's scope on the comments, to potential challenges, statutes that may— that the public may be— may feel like have been violated?

That way the board would not be having to go through comments that may not even pertain to what could change the outcome of the regulation. I think I hear what you're saying.

So, in the context of the discussion that we just had, I think that that second piece of public comment period that's being contemplated, I think, would, would allow for, for just that, um, for precisely what you're describing, for members of the public to comment on, um, the reg— the actual regulation language and probably whether or not they would agree or disagree with, um, with its legality or whatever the comment might be. Eddie, I might have you weigh in here, but I think that that's what that is intended to encompass. And in terms In terms of how broadly the public comments could come in as, they're really focused on the call. So they're focused on the areas that the board is considering and the proposals that were adopted during the regular in-cycle regional meetings. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question very well, Eddie.

You might want to weigh in here.

Well, for example, just like what Gary just brought up on the board-generated proposal.

So if that would have gone, you know, if we would have had this in place and then we would have had an additional 30-day comment period, we could have addressed potential statutory problems that we stall with this instead of debating whether, you know, debating the logistics of the gear type.

You know, in the additional comment period, we could have brought forward our legal concerns as to the legality of the gear type instead of whether or not if, you know, the gear address this issue or gear address that, that issue, which would, uh, would have been discussed during the regular, uh, board cycle meeting.

I think if I'm following you, then yeah, I think, I think that, that yes, that that's the, the type of public comment that would be contemplated in that during that time period. Okay.

And Madam Chair, if I may. Please. Just to supplement, the APA, the comment period as would be provided under the Department of Law's recommendation here, the APA requires that the agency, this case the board, shall consider all factual, substantive, and other relevant matter presented to it before adopting, amending, or repealing a regulation. So, if a comment was submitted in that timeframe that was completely irrelevant to what the board was actually considering, the board wouldn't necessarily need to look at it. This would be an opportunity for members of the public to raise legal challenges or legal issues they see in a regulation.

And quite frankly, that's appreciated at that point because it may be something the Department of Law missed, and that can be brought to the board's attention prior to the adoption meeting. But yes, that period is reserved for relevant comments on what the board board is anticipating doing at that meeting. So I think—. Okay, thank you. That's right in the APA.

Of course. Okay, thank you. Yep. Great, thanks. Appreciate the question.

Um, Dan Norman, go ahead.

Morning, Madam Chair and the board members. I think maybe there's, uh, some of these proposals— well, all the proposals— there's staff comments that kind of go along with it. I know it'd be a huge lift for the Department of Law, but it may be a kind of preliminary legal review of the proposals beforehand. So as the deliberations start, Committee of the Whole, we have a little bit of headwork because the way that I've seen it go now is it's kind of right at the very end of the— right before the final vote of a proposal is, you know, that's, that's when you hear from the Department of Law if there's anything there. It's, um, and, you know, I think it's a little bit too late in the process and Maybe that'll kind of stem off some of this 30-day, 45-day things after the fact if they have a little bit of an opinion beforehand.

Anyway, it's, I know it's a big thing, big lift for that department, but something maybe to consider. Thanks, Dan. Right now, when members are working on substitute language, they are working and getting the input from the department. Of Fish and Game, the Department of Law is part of that review, substitute language review process, and also Department of Public Safety, among others. And also the regulation specialist that's sitting at the board table too is typically working with the member that is sort of sponsoring or offering substitute language at the board table.

So typically any legal issues in the generation of substitute language are being at least raised with the member at the time and then certainly during deliberations if warranted. But I hear where you're coming from and I appreciate the comment. Thanks, Jennifer. If I might add—. Please, go ahead, Mike.

Yeah, I also like to say I don't know if it's available to the public, but prior to each regional meeting, we also hear from the troopers and law on on certain proposals and the parameters that we're like, that we have to work within. So they are looking at those proposals ahead of time to give the board a heads up on kind of some side rails that we can operate in. So I don't know if that's available to the public online as well, but it does, law is law and the troopers are looking into this stuff even before we sit down at that table. Yeah, thanks, Mike. Yeah, maybe I've just missed it.

I just haven't seen that before, and if it's my ignorance, then I apologize. Thank you for raising it. I'm sure you're not the only one. Appreciate it. Any other questions on or comments on this agenda item?

Going once, going twice. Okay, let's go ahead and move on. Thank you for— thanks everyone for the good discussion and the questions and comments. The next item is item number 3, I believe, and this was sort of brought up a little bit at the last one, but it was kind of in response to some of the written public comments that we had received. So I wanted to just bring it up and give folks an opportunity to weigh in on it.

It's something that I hear from time to time from members of the public, and I just thought we would have a discussion about it, and I would invite certainly the department to weigh in on this too, since since board support would have a lot of coordination if something like this were to go forward. But again, from time to time, we hear a request for remote public testimony at board meetings, and it has not been the practice of the board to invite remote public testimony, oral public testimony. The ways that the public engages with the board is through the written public comment period and then through oral public testimony at the meetings. Um, so, but I know that there's been a lot of requests for that over the years. Um, there was an instance during COVID I think it was for the Southeast meeting 2 cycles ago, where we did implement a remote public testimony option just because of the logistics of having to change the location of the meeting.

Um, and all manner of things related to COVID challenges. And the way that the board approached it at that time was to allow remote public testimony from ADF&G offices so as to try and hopefully manage the volume of public testimony that might come in if we just fully opened it up. I will say that, you know, as the chair, one of the things that's concerned me about remote public testimony is, is the volume, frankly, and how we would manage that. Given the, the protracted time, or the, you know, the limited amount of time that we have for each meeting. And then, of course, the, the effects that that would have on the department, not only to have to manage what could be thousands of additional public testifiers if it were remote— certainly hundreds, I think, is a reasonable number, and in terms of cost for the actual meeting time, but also the logistics of being— of creating that structure.

I know that the legislature does it, but they also have 4 or 5 months in which they operate, not 4 or 5 days. So I just kind of wanted to start that conversation, get some feedback on it. Let the department, if they have any concerns about, about the opportunity for providing remote public testimony to the Board of Fisheries, but I just kind of want to throw that conversation out there and get a little, take the temperature of the public and the department and other members. So I'll open the discussion up to members of the committee and department if you'd like to weigh in.

I will. Um, yeah, I just say, I, I, at first, when I first started, I thought that maybe this was a good option as well. Um, but then I started realizing that it takes days just to read through all the public testimony as it is, days and hours. And that's not to mention all the other, uh, stuff we have to read from the department. And I I agree.

I think the volume, like the amount of time it would take in a meeting to have the kind of the remote testimony would— the volume would be probably pretty immense and add days to our meeting. I think my comment would be, you know, this kind of falls in line kind of with the next item on the agenda, the review of opportunities to a certain degree. I think one of the things that's concerning to me is that, and it, it varies from meeting to meeting, um, if we were to include remote testimony, um, there's already a crunch, um, when it comes to the amount of time that we have to effectively communicate with the public, um, at an in-person meeting. And then still be able to have enough time to deliberate effectively. And I think that remote testimony would add potentially days depending on the subject matter and the board meeting that we're in.

And I just think that, I think that it would lead to rushed decisions, bad decisions. Because of a lack of time. You know, the department only has so much money to hold meetings so many days a year, and I just think that this would be problematic. So that's just my general comment.

Thanks, Doug. Yeah, so would this just be for oral public testimony, or would this be for Committee of the Whole and for participation remotely with the traditional knowledge reports and other things. So, you know, I, I already see the meetings from my perspective getting rushed at the end, and we— this would probably add significant amount of times. Like, for instance, if you had a trawl proposal, you could get outside people testifying from across the United States based on a single Facebook posting that would— a good number in the hundreds of people if if they want. Now whether they'd all show up to testify would be a different thing.

I'm all for public participation in the process, but I don't think it always has to be oral. I think board members do a very good job of reading their public comments that are written, that are provided in advance of the meeting. You know, you guys do your due diligence doing it, and I don't think you always have to have that opportunity to participate on in a phone call. So I guess I just urge you to think this through prior to rushing into it and just make sure that you're aware of the consequences of what you could be facing and in providing a different form of opportunity to participate other than written or oral. So yeah, no, I appreciate those comments, and I think, you know, I really see that if we— if the board chose to sort of go down the path of allowing remote public testimony at board meetings as they're currently structured, I just see it as being sort of a fundamental, almost wholesale change in how the board would need to operate state.

And rather than sort of a— what is essentially a volunteer board, I would see it having to really sort of move to almost like a commission type of structure where it would require almost year-round processes in order to accommodate that. It could anyways. That being said, I think you brought up something very interesting, Commissioner, that I've been thinking about. And I often get the request as the chair for remote public testimony or remote testimony for ACs, RACs, and TKs. And that, I think, is much more manageable.

And, and I think that that could really help allow for better and more advisory committee participation. I think as it stands now, I believe, and you can correct me, Art, or Commissioner, that AC representatives are only sponsored by the department or paid for by the department to attend one meeting. Is that correct?

Or do you know that number? Yeah, we, we do, we do bring ACs to at least one meeting a year if our budget allows. We will try to do more if there's multiple meetings that affect a committee, but one is, one is the minimum that we will definitely provide. And more is just kind of depends. So, right.

And I know that there's, you know, I don't know what's the current number, 80-some-odd ACs in the state right now? Is that 84, I believe? Yeah, yeah, somewhere around there. I mean, I would be much more interested in creating a path for ACs, TK, and RACs to participate remotely to try and get at that. And one of the issues I think also for ACs is that When they're physically at the meeting, the representative often has a difficult time in convening and talking with members of their committees to respond to changes in language, for example.

So if they have the opportunity to weigh in remotely, that might be able to allow for a little bit more input from the advisory committees in real time, because unlike just members of the public who can drop an RC that we see during the meeting, the ACs actually have to have conversations with their membership for the most part, or would like to. So I, I, I'm inclined to want to explore the opportunity for remote public testimony for the advisory committees, traditional knowledge, and RCs, sort of that category of testimony that the board is seeking So, thoughts on that, Mike, and then Doug? Yeah, I think one reason why, especially during COVID and then other regional meetings where people are really remote, just because of the nature of Alaska being so far away and accessibility to Anchorage and the cost, it seems like a really great idea, honestly. But how to separate just Alaska Alaska residents from the rest of the, you know, of America is, would be tough and probably not legal. So, but I do totally respect the fact that it's really hard for some of these more remote communities, difficult in terms of expense and time and even like you said, language to come to Anchorage to do this.

So, but on that, That is where I, I think there's the wiggle room with either going to an LIO or, or going through the AC might help. Yeah, I think that either way we're looking at a recognition that it would require additional time, and we've already heard thus far that there the time is compressed and people feel rushed.

At, at the end, um, in the deliberation phases. So just again, just things to think about, Commissioner. Yeah, I think there's a difference between the ACs are part of the board process. Mm-hmm. And you know, it, we, that's probably relatively cost neutral because it costs us a lot to send these people into, to board meetings, participate.

Now it's beneficial to have 'em there in person, but it's, it's important that there, since they're part of the board process to be there providing some kind of input into the board. So I'm fully supportive of looking at ways to get the AC member or the AC chairs or some representative in providing, if they can't be there in person, the opportunity for public comment through remote means. Yeah, um, thanks. And the other piece, um, I just want to— are there any other board comments or staff comments before before I open it up to the public. I just want to flag a couple of comments that came up in the chat.

From Gail Vick, she mentions that she wants to remind everyone that ACs have money for only one board meeting in a cycle. And then Mark Somerville is asking the question if it's possible to allow remote oral testimony during committee for a proposal author to speak, that it often appears as if If a proposer is not present at a meeting, their proposal gets little traction. And I think that that is a legitimate perspective. And I don't, I don't know. I'm kind of curious what the logistics of that would be.

I mean, either way, I think we're looking at additional time to the meetings. I don't know what the current budget allows. It seems that almost more than anything, it currently, it would be a budget restriction and something that would need to be favored by the department and then advocated in the department's budget to move forward with. But certainly I'm interested in exploring that, maybe doing some little test pilots on, on how it might work.

But I'm kind of curious if anybody else has any thoughts on that before we go forward. Art? Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I, I, one thought is that, you know, if, if especially for ACs, there's going to be an opportunity to accommodate them. We, we have made some exceptions in the past and, and tried to do that.

There have been speed bumps with that as well. And one, one way that I think the board, if, if we, if we want to entertain this, is that it needs to be a very fixed, clear time because We did it, for instance, at the meeting in Fairbanks. We had two ACs that couldn't get into Fairbanks, and so we tried to tie them in and it was quite a bit of extra work on my staff, our AC coordinators, to make sure that when we were ready for them, that they were also available online and brought into the Zoom to talk. And then it ended up being that we couldn't get in touch with them at the last minute and, and so they weren't able to do it. And it was just a whole lot of additional staff time to try to coordinate that.

So just a few things to think about. No, I appreciate the perspective. And, you know, whether or not it's something that could be implemented for this year, I don't know. We might be able to test a couple of things or use it as an exception basis for folks that are unable to travel due to weather or circumstances, I don't know, to continue to sort of test how it might work on a broader basis for future cycles. Those might be a way to approach it, but I'm curious again just sort of what the public's take on it is.

So I will go ahead and open it up now to the public. If you want to comment on the potential for remote public testimony, now is the time.

Go ahead, Monty.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Monty Roberts, the chairman Kina Soldotna, Fish and Game Advisory Committee. So that I agree with the assessment that it would add substantial time. One of the board decisions that leads to this desire is the meetings always being held in Anchorage, and I've, I've heard the discussions around that. I support the, the ease and the infrastructure that Anchorage provides.

But moving the meetings around to areas might mitigate some of the public's feelings of disenfranchisement and not being able to go to Anchorage. That being said, the ACs— there are 84 across the state. The proposers and commenters that can't get to Anchorage are welcome to come to RAC, express their opinions, and we would be happy to, you know, relay that information to the board that the proposers spoke. And, and, and so there is an avenue for people to get involved in the process without having to travel to the meeting. As long as the board, you know, considers our AC comments and validates that, yeah, we had lots of discussions about this.

Thanks, Monte. I think perhaps that's Russell Clark, phone number 0039. Please go ahead.

Yes, Madam Chair, this is Russell Clark.

May I suggest possibly what, like, the boroughs and the city council, what they use for remote testimony? You can contact them in advance, the schedule, with a synopsis of what your testimony would be. And with the meetings being scheduled, there should be plenty of opportunity in advance to where people that needed to testify remotely to be able to get in touch with the board with a description of what they wanted to testify to. And in the city council meetings and the borough meetings, you are restricted to a certain time period. So if the board wanted to use this option, perhaps they could have a set-aside time specifically for remote testimony, such as what occurs in like city council meetings and such.

I appreciate that. I think those are some good suggestions. Thank you.

Any other comments on this section?

All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move on to the next section of our agenda, which is to kind of review some of the old business. Again, this is bringing up items that were discussed at our last process committee meeting to provide a little bit of context to what we were initially contemplating, but also having the benefit of discussion from a few weeks ago to add on to it or refine discussion. So I'll go ahead and open it up. At the last meeting, again, we, we discussed the review for opportunities for public input at board meetings. This is very similar to the discussion that we just had around testimony, TK Committee of the Whole, and record copies.

Is there redundancy, repetition? Are there ways to improve meeting efficiency, or does the public utilize or value each of the opportunities and mechanisms mechanisms to communicate directly with the board. And I think that initially that was placed on the agenda to have a discussion around whether there was a lot of redundancy between public comment, oral public testimony, written public testimony, and then the Committee of the Whole process. And I think what I heard at that last meeting, and anybody on the committee can correct me if I'm wrong, is that I heard that that members really valued both opportunities to hear from the public, that there was some redundancy, but really that was kind of incumbent upon how the Committee of the Whole was run to make sure that we were capturing new information or responses to potential substitute language. But if any members of the committee or the department want to build on that discussion or has any additional comments, now's the time, and then I'll go ahead open it up.

Um, I, I think last meeting when we talked about this particular topic, you know, I do feel that based on your level of confidence that different people are very comfortable in different formats. I think, um, I think that's, that's pretty clear. And, but I, I've thought about it since then, and I, and I don't think that we should take those options away necessarily, but I've been thinking about what would happen if we just tell people they have to pick one.

If you would like to go get up and give public testimony, you have that option. If you'd like to participate in Committee of the Whole, you have that option. Option. If you submit an application to the chair to provide a TEK report, you have that option. I, I don't know that that's a solution, but I do know that part of what would come out of that is less repetition.

And so I just, you know, I'm not suggesting that that is the avenue that we take, but I do think in regards to repetition that that would solve a lot of that. So Thanks, Tom. Mike? Yeah, um, I think what Law has put before us today is even more reason why we should use both processes because there's public testimony based on the proposals as they are submitted to the department, but then, um, the additional information that we get in committee of the whole could, could address new language or language that's created by board members so that the public can address it directly rather than down the road through just an RC process. So if the board— I know this is kind of difficult, but there are always those key proposals that come out that are going to be the most contentious and the language with that.

And so having the ability for the public to weigh in on that language as it had evolved from the original proposal, Committee of the Whole is a great time for that rather than that being left to the evening of or the morning before deliberations when they don't have any other way to discuss the topic, but the proposal before us as it evolved in person. They only have an RC process and And I, my, I have had frustration with that in the past, and I feel like we could be more efficient with how we use both of those processes. And, and I look forward to talking about this more with the board. Yeah, yeah, no, thank you. No, I appreciate where you're coming from, and that's one of the things that I've been sort of, you know, noodling a little bit too, is, you know, what if we had a requirement for substitute language to be submitted prior to the Committee of the Whole for that group.

That being said, though, I don't want to place an expectation that there may not be changes to proposals or proposal language or substitute language as a result of the deliberative process, because there's oftentimes where there's a lot more information or perspective or issues that are brought forth in deliberations that may require alteration of language. So I, I just wanted to throw that out there, that I think that we could probably make a good faith effort to try and get the public to, and members of the board, to submit substitute language prior to those committees in a more formalized way. Certainly that's something that I have continuously requested, and sometimes it is just a matter of timing, making sure that the staff is available. They've been really good about that in the last couple years, I think. And sometimes it's getting the stakeholders together to discuss substitute language.

So there are challenges to doing that, but I think that that is important to your point, Mike. But how formalized we want to be with that, I think, is something we need to consider and probably talk about at the work session with the full board in an effort to try and, you know, do the best we can to satisfy the flexibility that I think that's required of the board itself and members and the deliberation— deliberative process, but also the expectation of the public to be able to comment on changes to proposals. Go ahead, Mike. Well, I agree, and I just think, you know, it could allow for— we could have refinement after the Committee of the Whole, after people have had a comment. But a lot of the process issues that have happened is basically last-minute pork being added to things that the public didn't even have a chance to weigh in on.

And I think so if it's minor tweaks, weeks here or there, I get it, that that's exactly what is being asked for in, um, under this new— adding this new meeting. Um, but I, I think anything of substance, um, should be put out there ahead of time, and, um, and so there's no new language that's submitted that really catches people off guard. Okay, Doug? Well, I don't know if I want to weigh in here or not, but, uh, you know, I got two boards. I got the Board of Game and Board of Fish.

Board of Game doesn't committee of the whole. And yep, I think there's some, there's some times where they could benefit from a committee of the whole, but at the same time, there is a lot of repetition in comments that are coming through the board process because you have an opportunity to provide written comments and you have an opportunity to provide oral comments and you have opportunity to provide comments if you want to give a local knowledge report through that. And then you get 4 shots at the thing. And oftentimes it's not new information. So I think there's value in these different forms of participation.

Like Mike said, there, people feel more comfortable in some opportunities than other opportunities. And I think the board is doing a good job in providing that. But I think the board needs the, the, the people that are in charge of the committee hall and public testimony need to make sure that you're abiding by timeframes and you're abiding by not new information. You know, this isn't another shot at the, at the, at the crack here. Here.

And if you do that, I think then you provide people that opportunity to be heard. The, the question as to when you hold the committee, the whole is going to be a little bit trickier because you're probably going to have to take a pause after you take public testimony. And, you know, if you want regulatory language drafted based on what you heard in public testimony and, and the, um, traditional reports for the department and the board to get together and craft that language and put it out before the committee as a whole. So it's going to require some process changes in how we're currently doing it. So yeah, um, yeah, you know, it's— I'm glad we're having this conversation, and I hope the public is hearing, um, some of the challenges and the constraints that the board has.

You know, I often kind of think of the, the saying, you can have it fast, cheap, or easy, pick two. Yeah, um, you know, uh, and I think that that's kind of similar to the circumstance. I know that there's an expectation of the public to want to have an opportunity to comment on every aspect of the board's process, but I'm not sure that that's possible or reasonable all the time. To your point, the Board of Game doesn't even do it, and I think that that has created problems for that body at times. So there's a lot of trade-offs, I think, but either way, what we're hearing is if we are to meet the public's expectations for engagement and involvement, it is going to add time to the meetings, full stop.

Mr. Nelson.

Yeah, just one thought I've had on Committee of the Whole, and I I guess I'd be curious if there's any legal concerns with it, is that, you know, we've, we've put essentially every proposal that's at the meeting into one of various Committee of the Wholes, and it could be something the board could consider, or at least committee chairs to consider, that, that maybe they don't need to put every single proposal through a committee but pick kind of the ones that people— that the attention is focused on, that the board members feel some additional discussion would be valuable for, but not necessarily schedule every single proposal for a committee and/or grouping proposals that are similar in nature. So just something I wanted to throw out. Okay, interesting. Thanks. Any other staff or committee member comments?

All right, let's go ahead and open it up to the public to weigh in on this on this item?

Feel free to raise your hand. Mr. Norman.

Madam Chair, so I think it was Member Carpenter mentioned it last time, kind of a final Committee of the Whole. You know, we talked about a little bit, there's a handful of like really contentious issues. So maybe during, you know, everything's kind of scheduled, or maybe if we go Art Nelson's route, or if there's not a lot of comments on it, you can go straight to deliberations. But during a Committee of the Whole, when things are scheduled, if it just kind of drags on, you just have to maybe pull that out. And that's where you create, you know, that final Committee of the Whole, I guess, just to give some more time for RCs or public comments or Department of Law Review or, you know, whatever needs to be done, you know, during the Committee of the Whole, first Committee of the Whole process.

You can be like, okay, here's our focus. X number of days or hours, you know, to get to the next deliberation point for this specific topic. Anyway, that's just kind of— I liked what Member Carpenter said last time about, you know, the final, final committee, the whole. Yeah, no, I think that makes sense because, you know, as we get into the meetings, right, you start— the ones that are what we call the drivers, if you will, sort of start to percolate and rise to the top and be identified as as ones that there's a lot of discussion that's coalescing around or angst or whatever it is. So I think that that makes sense and that might be something we could experiment with a little bit.

Yeah, it's—. Easily. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. And it's just kind of be up to whoever the chair is for that Committee of the Whole just to make a recommendation and be like, hey, let's move this to whatever you want to call it, but later.

A later date in the meeting just to provide more time. Thanks, Dan. Appreciate your comment. Thank you. Any other discussion, comments on this one?

Okay, seeing none. Question for folks here, do we want to take a little bit of a break and then work our way through the rest of these or just keep pushing?

I'm going to have to drop off at 1 o'clock, 12 o'clock. Mike, your time. So yeah, Mike Wood does too. So I'm kind of thinking we might just keep, keep her moving, but go ahead, Tom. No, I was going to say, let's just keep going.

So, okay. Agreed. Thank you. Just wanted to take everybody's temperature and see how they're doing. Okay, let's move on.

I don't see any other comments on this one or raised hands.

Consider the rules applied to proposal submissions for future calls. And we had a discussion last time about requirements to use the board support forms and considering a page limit on proposal submissions. And I think both of those are reasonable requests. I think it's reasonable to require that we use the board support forms so that it just cuts down on the formatting, the guessing that the department staff needs to do in terms of how they present the proposals. And and also a limit on proposal submissions where you have that public comment period to add on to whatever you want.

But really what we're looking for in those proposal submissions are what the changes that you're seeking and why, without it going on and on and on too much in the form of the proposal, you know, format. Request format, I guess. So I, I think that I'd be interested in implementing something like that to again sort of help make it easier on the board support staff. I don't think it would be limiting the public in any meaningful way, but I'm curious about what people's thoughts are on that as well. So I'll go ahead and open that up.

Those are my thoughts. I agree with that. I think that, uh, you know, a standard form that staff helps develop with the board. We can make tweaks here or there, but I think it's straightforward to the public. Everybody's kind of on the same page.

Doesn't really give an advantage to one person over another or one group over another. And, you know, I don't know, I guess it's possible that there could be, you know, for the advisory committees, I don't know if they have a different inform than the general public does, you know, that could always be considered. But I think it's a good idea.

Yeah, I think it's a great idea as well. Keep it simple and concise. No, it's all right. Thank you. So, Art, my question for you is, and to the committee members, in terms of recommendations for what they think a reasonable proposal submission length should be, you know, we have 10- and 5-page page thresholds for RCs that are submitted.

I can't imagine a proposal that would require more than a couple of pages. So something between 2 and 5 pages, I think, would be reasonable in my estimation. But, but I, I just, I, I don't— 2 might be a little bit short, but I, I, I can't imagine what you get across in 5 pages.

Or—. Yeah, Madam Chair. Yeah, I was kind of thinking, I was kind of thinking 3 would be adequate. Again, what on these really long proposals, what we're getting is a lot more content that is more of kind of the sales pitch, which really, again, as you mentioned, we want them to kind of briefly give us, okay, what's the change they're looking for and why are they asking for that? Size that is needed.

And then we have very generous page limits for public comments prior to the meeting, even for RCs during the meeting, for people to kind of do that sales pitch. But let's keep it brief for the proposal book up front. So that, that's kind of what I was thinking, and I have that drafted in the call for proposals for next year that you guys will be reviewing at the work session. But of course, it's, it's your decision on what you guys ultimately want to put in there. Yeah, and I think that if, if there were, you know, if they were having to sell, whether or not the board would accept a proposal, I think that that sales pitch would, you know, would be warranted and make more sense.

But that's not the requirement. Essentially, anybody could, you know, submit a proposal on anything that meets the call. You know, really, the ones that are rejected are ones that are either duplicative, are not in the call, or the board doesn't have jurisdiction over. So the call is very, very broad. And so having to, justify why you're submitting the proposal in the first place isn't really necessary.

That's what the meeting portion is for if your proposal is accepted. And it's very, very, I guess, generous in terms of the sideboards for accepting proposals.

And the other reason for my suggestion about the requirement to use the form is you already touched on it, in part is that it does take a considerable amount of extra time for us to convert proposals into the actual proposal book when they don't come at us on the forms. And at least clearly putting it up front in the call for proposals that if they do not use the forms, that your proposal may be rejected because of that. And I would be completely fine, you know, if somebody was having problems using the form, if they reached out to me prior to the proposal deadline about that, and I would be more than happy to work with people about that. But if somebody is calling me on April 11th, the day after the deadline, looking for accommodations, that's going to be a harder sell there. So, but at least spelling it out up front that if they didn't use the form, their proposal may be rejected.

Any heartburn with the 3-page recommendation to the full board during the work limit? No. Okay. No. Any other comments from members before we open it up?

All right, let's go ahead and open it up for public discussion. Anybody want to comment on this one? Mr. Roberts.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Monte Roberts for the record. The only thing that pops to mind is sometimes we see these proposals that are management plan forms, and those can get very lengthy. And I could see putting— if you put a limit on it, you might end up with 5 proposals to deal with rather than 1. And so it might actually end up adding time to your meeting instead of shortening it, which I've kind of heard through the discussions on the previous agenda items that we were looking to make things as expedient as possible.

So I don't know if we gain anything by putting a 3-page limit on it.

Okay, any other comments?

Mr. Payton.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was going to echo the same thing Mr. Roberts did. Quite a few of our management plans are over 3 or 4 pages, so we'd want to make an exception if someone wants to modify a whole management plan and, or a different way to address that if they want to put the whole management plan in and then make changes for it, because 3 pages, I'm looking through just the Cook, some of the Cook Inlet management plans or statewide ones, and they would surpass that 3-page mark. So just— and that would be the instance if somebody is rewriting an entire management plan versus making, you know, specific changes to a management plan. Basically would be an instance of a complete rewrite, right?

Or maybe they're changing something in the preamble and something at the very end, or you could parse that out. So I guess the question is, would board support and the board want the whole management plan in there if there's only a few changes? I just wanted to make it clear that there's management plans that are well over 3 pages. Yeah, no, fair enough. Do you see many that are over 5?

I'd have to look through the 1,000 pages of codified real quick, but probably not many. Okay, thank you. Appreciate that. If I could on this issue, I think the proposal is to make a proposal to the board, probably to modify a management plan or something else. There's nothing to prevent somebody from coming into the board meeting for the— and debate and bring their proposals.

And here's the— here's the RC that I want to submit on that proposal. So I don't know if you need to accommodate the entire management plan. The board can find out what that management plan is, but very rarely do they want to change the entire management plan. They want to change some aspect of that management plan, and that language could be provided either at the board or that smaller part can be provided in the proposal comments. So that gets to the, you know, that substitute language piece though, because, you know, again, I want to make people aware that most of the proposals that are received are not in actual regulatory language, that there is language that is developed around the concept.

That is presented through the proposal. And so that is effectively substitute language. At least that's how the board sort of handles it or deals with it. So I just kind of want to throw that issue out there because most people, unless you have, you know, sophisticated consultants or a history or a lawyer or something like that of intimate knowledge with the regulatory process and language, are able to write actual regulatory language that wouldn't require some alteration.

Okay, any other comments on this? So, you know, maybe the number is 5. We can talk through this a little bit more when the committee provides its report during the work session.

Okay, not seeing any more. Moving on to the 3-year TK review, are there any changes needed going forward?

I think we, we talked about this quite a bit at the last meeting, but I'll go ahead and open that up for any discussion now as well. First from the department or members of the committee.

I don't have any more to add from our last discussion. Okay, thanks, Mike. Commissioner? Yeah, I, I think all in all it's been— had a few hiccups and a variety of other things in terms of repetition in the process, but I think it's a good opportunity to provide certain individuals opportunities that they would not feel comfortable in providing public testimony or, or participating in a committee hold process. So I think it's been a good addition to the board process, and I probably wouldn't have said that 3 years ago, but when I heard the testimony, there's oftentimes very good information that's presented, that's presented in a way that gives that individual the opportunity to present it in a different form.

So I, I think it's good. I also like the fact that you're all— you're providing that opportunity to just not, um, traditional ecological reports, but you're providing people that have lived in the communities a long time, local knowledge opportunities to provide that information connection to the board process. So I think it's been a good addition. I just, again, the comments we had earlier about you don't want to hear that same comment when you stand up at the Committee of the Whole on public testimony. You just want to provide those unique perspectives during that testimony.

Thanks. And I, you know, just from a chair perspective, it's something that I think a chair is going to need to manage going forward, you know, so that you don't, get a lot of redundancy and that we're truly getting the perspectives of the communities and entities that are being delivered by somebody who's recognized as having that information and being important to the communities in that space. But I do think that there's a lot of room for creativity, as I mentioned before, and how this time is used, but also opportunity for sharing of science from the various entities that, that do have, you know, scientific programs and protocols that are, I guess I would describe it as more Western, if you will. But I've really appreciated the space and I've heard almost unanimous feedback from members of the board that they found it beneficial. So I think that, you know, I, I don't want to make any changes necessarily or restrictions to how that agenda item is carried out, but I think that it is a space that will would benefit from refinement going forward if, if necessary, and based on how people experience it, members of the board and members of the public as well.

Okay, any other comments before I open it up?

Okay, anybody would like to speak to the TK portion of the agenda?

All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move on to consideration of hatchery production-related proposals and committee meetings during the board's 3-year cycle. We had a pretty good discussion about this during the last meeting. I think what I recall is that there was an interest in continuing to sort of have production statewide related conversations at that statewide meeting, but more localized, I guess surgical if you will, sort of changes to particular areas be still open and available, particularly related, I think Tom, some of your examples are related to special harvest areas and things like that, times would be appropriate for the in-cycle regional meetings. Anything else that we would like to talk about related to the hatchery proposals and committee meetings during the board's 3-year cycle that we didn't discuss at the last meeting? No, I don't think so.

I think, and I'm going to keep my comments very brief on this because I don't want to preempt, you know, a discussion that we're going to have at the work session. But I think the board should, if this gets brought up in miscellaneous business, I think the board should also consider how this applies to ACRs. And I'll just kind of leave that. What do you mean? Specific to production-based.

Oh, I see. And I'll just kind of leave that for now. No, I understand what you're saying now. So not process-related, but substance-related.

Gotcha. Okay.

No, I'll just refer to my past comments at the last meeting as well. I have nothing to add. Okay, thank you. We'll go ahead and open it up to public. Any comments on hatchery proposals and committee?

Okay, not seeing any. We'll go ahead and move on to timing between determinations of SOCs and adoption of action plans. 2 Pieces there were to consider making stock of concern designations at the work session 1 year prior to each area's regular in-cycle meeting, um, to allow department staff more time to develop action plans and for ACs and the public to input before final action is taken. And then the second piece is, should the board consider out-of-cycle SOC determinations even if the consideration above is adopted? If so, how?

And are agenda change requests appropriate for this? I think we had a pretty good discussion about this at the last last meeting as well. And I, um, but I'll go ahead and open it up to members and the department, um, if you want to recap any of it or refine any of the comments from the last discussion. I don't, I don't want to recap. I just, I guess I'm looking forward to what the department will kind of bring to the work session, um, regarding, you know, timeline type issues.

And how that'll work. And I'll just kind of wait and see what that looks like when they do that.

Yeah, Madam Chair, I've given this a lot of thought since last time, and I think especially now what I heard from the Department of Law that we're not going to have any meetings. We're going to have to really have more meetings in November and December. The timeline for the department to put together an action plan that the public can review in context of the proposal is going to be very tight. I'm leaning more and more towards moving that either at the end of a meeting cycle or at that previous year's work cycle. So we have AC input into an action plan out there.

So I, I just, the more I think about it, the less I'm, I, I just don't see a way of getting the public actually engaged in those action plans if we do it under the current structure. I, I agree. I mean, the only thing we just need to be mindful of. But I think it's just, it's one of those things you just have to deal with it because of, you know, the constraints that we have, is that you're going to be potentially dealing with different boards at different points of this decision-making process, um, good, bad, or the other. So somebody is going to be playing catch-up, right?

And I, I know it's 3 or 4 year, 3 or 5 years, but yeah, you could add another year in there. But realistically, the department's gonna be taking measures if we're missing those goals anyway. So I So I think it's more important to have the public input in that stock of concern, especially if it's going to go into regulatory language, to just rush it and put it out there and just— and then have you really no opportunity for ACs to weigh in or anything else. Right. I agree.

And I also agree, I think, with sort of what I heard the conclusion sort of being generated out of the last discussion is that really the ACR process isn't appropriate for stock of concern designations. And, and I would agree with that as well. So, but I do think that it would be important for the department to try and outline or articulate how this would work so the board can consider it fully at the work session and, and give folks a heads up on how it's going to work. I'll add that to the list. I'll add that to the list.

Yeah. The list is long, I know, and I appreciate it. Any other comments? Well, I just like to say I agree with what the Commissioner said as well. I think we're kind of faced with that right now in this year and in this board cycle, and it's making it tough.

And it would be nice to have some advance on knowing what those are going to be and how to— how we'll deal with it. So, or how the board wants to— or sorry, department wants to deal with it. So I'm very supportive sort of of that.

Cool. Thank you. Anything else before I open it up? All right. I'll go ahead and open it up for the public to comment on sort of the Agenda 8 item.

Hopefully everybody's still listening. Patrick, welcome.

Yeah. Hi, Madam Chair. This is Patrick Brown, Sandpoint AC. Our RAC had a thorough discussion about stocks of concern, and we even put together a few comments about, about how that all carries out. For example, our sentiment is that the department should have the final authority over what the scientific criteria and the designation or delisting of stocks of concerns.

And that the Board of Fisheries should retain authority to approve or disapprove the associated action plans, but when a stock meets the established criteria for delisting, the process should provide for an automatic trigger rather than a political deliberation by the board.

Thank you. Thanks, Patrick, and appreciate your comments, and I'll also just let you, if you wanted to speak to the BGP part of things, since we're getting towards the end of our agenda here, if you want to give the full AC report, you're welcome to do that now if you'd like, or you can wait. Yeah, you know, just as far as, you know, our sentiments did sort of echo a lot of stuff about what you said previously, so I didn't really want to weigh in. It sounded like you guys had a pretty good handle on things. Um, and then the stock of concern, like I said, you know, we, the— we had a thorough discussion about how, you know, it should be more something that, um, yeah, that it's just automatic.

But as far as, uh, BGP and stuff, yeah, I don't really have a whole lot extra to say. But, um, yeah, board-generated RCs, just, uh getting a little bit out of control without having public deliberation. Just want to echo that from before. And I would like to hopefully that these comments could just be sent to you guys and that, you know, I don't have to sit here and read everything, you know, give you guys a chance to kind of go through what we've went through. So hopefully that can be forwarded on to you.

Yeah, for sure, Patrick. Thank you. And I appreciate the AC taking the time to to consider, you know, these issues and submit comments. And at the very least, we'll make sure that they get emailed to this committee member, but I would also ask for you to RC them for the work session. We do accept RCs during the work session.

I think the comment period may or may not have closed. Art can verify that. But at the very least, I would appreciate if you'd RC it so that the full board has access to your AC comments. That's a great idea, Madam Chair. Thank you.

We will, uh, we'll talk to our board support about, uh, submitting those for IRCs. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Monte, go ahead.

Madam Chair, just really quick to follow up on Patrick's comments. We did email, um, their— the AC's comments to the three of you this morning, so we— so you have those in your inboxes. Um, and do apologize, you know, that that came through to one of our staff's email addresses over the weekend before the deadline, and, you know, they— it was the weekend, they weren't looking at their emails. So, yeah, appreciate that. But I do think it'd be great to get it RC'd for the work session so that not only the public can see it, see the comments, but the full board as well.

All right. Oh, so am I unmuted now? Yep, you're good to go. So yeah, I was just waiting for that discussion to end. I am supportive of the concept of getting the stock of concern designation out and being able to discuss it for a year prior to taking action on it.

I just wonder, I'm not fully up to speed with all the discussions you had for, how does that end up falling into or out of regular scheduled meetings?

Or how would it— would we have had to designate the stock of concern last year for Upper Cook Inlet, or do we have to wait 4 years now if there's another stock of concern in our area?

Good question. I think for the purpose of this year— Doug, maybe you can speak to it— I don't think we're anticipating any changes to the process for this cycle, but if there are stock of concern designations for next year, that they would potentially be considered this year with the action plans to be dropped and discussed and commented on in cycle. Is that correct? Yeah, there's gonna be a transitional period. We're gonna— this year is gonna continue on as it would.

The next work session, we would probably have to have a transitional phase for, for getting into this new cycle of the year before. So we'll try to figure that out in the next couple days and get that in front of the board. Sounds good. Thanks. Thanks, Monty.

Any other comments Comments from members of the public.

Seeing none, I'll go ahead and just open it up broadly for anything that we've talked about on the agenda today for members of the public, process-related, research-related, management-related, before we conclude.

Mr. Clark, go ahead.

Yes, Madam Chair, I'd like to bring up 3 points basically. Russell Clark, by the way.

One of the things I'd like to bring up is whenever the Border Fish was developed and founded by the state, It was developed in order to preserve the fisheries resources.

And what has happened is that conservation of the resource, I feel like, has not been— has become the secondary goal behind allocation allocation of the resource.

Right now, whenever the board makes an allocative decision, there's no— I mean, there is no requirement for the board to write down exactly which user group it affects adversely the most, which user group is the beneficiary of that regulation the most. And I feel like over time we lose something because board members come and go and they don't really have a record of which allocation allocative decisions have affected each user group in the past. So what we have right now is we have where the board can't go back, say, like 10 years and say, okay, these regulations were allocated against, say, like subsistence group or, you know, a Cook Inlet-specific gear group or an in-river user.

There's no place to go to basically to show where each decision, how it affected each user group.

And what I would like to see happen is that whenever the Department of Fish and Game makes the determination that a regulation could potentially be allocative, that there's a record as to who it's allocative against and who is the beneficiary of that regulation. That way there is a written record of it.

Board members, future board members can go back and say, okay, here are the regulations that have been passed and this user group has bore the brunt of these regulations time and time and time again. Right now there's no history of that. And I feel it's important make a record of this where, you know, each user group can see how these regulations affect them.

The next thing I would like to bring up is the Alaska Ethic Act. Ethics Act prohibits board members from acting out of financial interest that will benefit themselves. They have to bring up conflicts of interest, you know, and right now board members bring up conflicts of interest based on financial aspects, how it would benefit them financially. However, the Alaska Ethics Act does not stop there. If a board member has made statements of personal bias against specific user groups, that in itself is a conflict of interest.

And I feel like that whenever board member does make these public statements, that the chair, uh, should be able to go in and ask the state's attorney, should this board member recuse himself?

And because this has happened in the past, the next thing that I would like to ask is that, uh, whatever recusal process that the board uses, that they use it the same way and they apply it the same way every time to every board member. I think that's important in order to have the trust of all user groups. And I just think these are changes that, you know, need to be made within the board in order to protect both the board and protect the other user groups. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Clark.

I appreciate your conscientious thoughts and your sharing them with the committee. Any comments, questions, Mr. Clark?

All right. Thank you for your comments, sir. Any other members of the public wish to make any comments before we adjourn? Mr. Roberts.

Hey, thanks, Madam Chair. I'm Monte Roberts, chairman of the Fish and Game, or Kena'isildatna Fish and Game Advisory Committee, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to to kind of bring up that an issue that we've noticed over the last few years is that the AC comments and the reference to the AC comments in deliberations has led AC members to feel like they were, for lack of a better term, wasting their time, and that we've just you know, met for 100 hours discussing all these proposals, coming up with consensus with a broad spectrum of community members. And in deliberations, we might get an afterthought mention that there were 2 ACs in favor and 1 opposed. And that's about all the acknowledgment we get for the effort we have. And I do— this is not meant to be slight for any board members.

I appreciate all the discussions. I know that we have more input than that, but I'm asking for those members that are not present in the room at these board meetings that they'd be given a little more acknowledgement of their efforts in, in those deliberations, and, and, and maybe a little more attention paid what the discussions were around that.

Okay, thanks, Monte. Thank you. Any other— any board or member comments? Mike? Um, no, I just want—.

Just popped up on my screen, so I wasn't sure if you were starting to talk. Sorry, I have a habit of that, I guess. I'm twitchy. Um, so I appreciate some of Russell Clark's Mark's comments regarding the ethics advisor and perhaps, you know, getting law involved in that as well. But as to Monte's point, I think there is— I think it would be good to let ACs know that we really want to hear about the discussion that they had that led them to the pros and cons of supporting or not supporting upper proposal.

And hopefully that could be a really effective way of using that, um, that time rather than just reading what they supported and not, because there'll be some that really do matter. And as, as we read all their comments prior to a board meeting, typically it could be on the board as well just to ask them directly, can you spend more time asking why you came to this decision? And I know we have done had in the past, and I think it just acknowledging the amount of effort the ACs put into, into these deliberations of their own to give us guidance is really important, and to hear that on the record is, is, uh, it's a very good thing. So rather than just an afterthought of reading, you know, 20 supported and 13 didn't, you know, so. Yeah, no, um, I appreciate your comments, Mike, because, you know, that also sort of brings forth the, the wide variety of minutes that the board receives from those AC meetings too.

And I think that really getting into the, the discussions about why the ACs voted the way that they did or recommended specific language that they have is, is, is really beneficial. As a board member. So, but thanks, thanks, Monte. Appreciate your comments and your advocacy for the ACs. Yeah, thanks, Monte.

Dan Norman.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Something that I think is hard, you know, as a commercial fisherman, is we're limited entry. You know, there's only 400, roughly 440 permits in the fleet in Upper Cook Inlet, yet we're far outnumbered by all the voices from the general public. So it's important to ensure that the board is following the equal access clause. You're supposed to manage the resources for all Alaskans, and just because we're outnumbered in voices, it doesn't mean our opinions and our livelihoods and all those things things don't matter.

You know, there's been comments before previous board that, you know, they want all gillnets gone from Cook Inlet. You know, that going back to Russell Clark, that's, that's an unethical statement. There's been comments about, well, there's 400,000 people that come down and they want to go sport fishing, so therefore they have the priority. That's a violation of the equal access clause, right? So some of these legal arguments, because we're limited entry, are kind of lost when we're— only so many people can show up and say, I want to continue my livelihood as a commercial fisherman, and there's 400 people behind me that say, well, I want to be a sport fisherman.

So those 400 voices are going to overshadow the few voices we have. So just something to— I think has kind of gone astray these last few board cycles that I've been part of. Okay, thanks for your comments, Any questions for him?

All right, and before we conclude, I saw a comment come in on the webinar chat a little while ago that I failed to read, but from Olivia Irwin, she requested or asked, would the Board consider a page limit for submitted ACRs in addition to standard in-cycle proposals since, to Marit's point, authors don't need to include a sales pitch for regular in-cycle proposals, but ACRs could require that type of sales pitch for it to be taken up and considered by the board. I see the ACR process as being a little different from those sort of the standard proposal stuff. I guess my knee-jerk is that I don't think I would want to restrict the ACRs the same way as the proposal requests, but I guess we could open that up for any thoughts or discussions before we close. Close out here.

Doug? No, I just put my camera on. I'm going to give some closing remarks. Okay. All right.

Any other comments before we move to final comments? Yeah, on that last point, you know, regarding the proposals, I, you know, I brought it up because I considered it to be kind of a more recent issue that I was dealing with, and, and I haven't really seen it for the ACRs with extremely long ACRs coming in. And so I guess if it became something that I viewed as a, as a problem in the future, then maybe, but I, I wouldn't be recommending any limits on ACR right now. So thanks, Art. Appreciate that.

All right, not seeing any other agenda-related Discussion, we'll go ahead and do some closing comments and Commissioner? Yeah, I— this, the board process is incredibly important for the public to be able to engage in how they want to see Fish and Game managed and I really value that process and I'm really happy that Mart, you've led this effort to look at that process and ways it could be improved based on the experience we've had over the last, you know, two decades. So I think this is a good fresh look. It's a good fresh start. And, and I really appreciate the opportunity to allow the department to engage in this discussion of the board process because whether we like it or not, we're all ingrained in this and we're, we're in it together.

And, and I think there are some improvements that could be made and I think there are some things that are working really well. So I look forward to continuing this discussion at the work session. Great. Thanks, Doug. I appreciate those comments.

And I also wanna say thank you to you and the department for engaging in these discussions. You have some insights that certainly we don't have and that, you know, oftentimes members of the public don't have. And you're right, it affects all of us. So thanks. I appreciate your time on it.

I got to run. Thank you, guys. All right. Go ahead, Mike. Yeah, thank you.

I just want to say—. Go, Pat. I really appreciate Eddie from LA talking about everything that they're going through. As with all challenges, it can help develop us into better— having a better process, because I think bad process equals bad decisions and good process equals good decisions. And I think we've been in kind of the in-between stage.

And so I appreciate law being more involved in this and giving us guidance and stepping up our game. Game as well on a board. I look forward to, um, to us kind of seeing what we can do to make, to make this work, especially for the public, and, um, and so to make sure they feel like they're being heard and, and that's reflected in, in, um, in what we do as a board. Thanks, Mike. Any other comments?

I would just make the comment that thank the public for participating. And I think that the agenda we've had these last two meetings, we've had some good discussions on, and I look forward to seeing some of the discussion at the work session, I guess, potentially in miscellaneous business, so that maybe we can come to a reasonable idea of how to move forward with some of these things in the future. So thank you, everybody. Yeah. All right.

Well, again, Nicole Schmidt. Thanks to everybody who's taken the time to listen in, to engage, to submit comments on ways to improve the process. If you know, nothing is static, right? And things change and they need to change. And there's been a lot of different technological changes to society.

And I think that the board thinking about how we can incorporate that and making the whole process more accessible is, is a worthy discussion. So I just want to say thank you. I look forward to working with support staff to sort of pull together some minutes or talking points, outcomes of the last couple of process committee meetings, and perhaps some recommendations for the board to consider either at the work session or at some, some kind of subsequent time. Either this cycle or others, next one. So anything else?

All right, appreciate everyone. Thank you for, for weighing in, and we will adjourn at 11:51 AM. See you at the work session next week. Thank you. Bye.