Petersburg Pilot

Lieutenant Governor Campbell

speaks at Chamber banquet

Mike Tozzo

February 18, 2010

Saturday evening was the annual Chamber of Commerce banquet dinner and featured guest speaker, Lieutenant Governor Craig Campbell. “Tonight is just a good night for the Chamber of Commerce,” said Campbell. As Campbell encouraged the chamber to keep up their good work in the community he also touched on some things going on in Southeast and around the state.

Campbell says the recession is not as bad in Alaska as it is for most places down South. “The forecast as of now for 2010 is that we are still going to see a downturn in the economy for a little while,” Campbell noted. “By the end of the year we should start seeing a reversal decline.”

In Southeast, Campbell stressed the issue of keeping an eye on timber. There is very little milling going on in Southeast Alaska these days and Campbell notes that, “There are places down South doing so much more with timber and they don’t have near the number of trees we have here,” he said.

Campbell touched on the fishing industry in Southeast Alaska, specifically the halibut quota in the next coming years. “It’s going to be hard on some people but we want to see the maximum harvest of what’s available, while doing the proper thing for the environment,” he added.

Things have been tough all over the state for Alaskans the last couple of years and Campbell recognizes this. According to Campbell government spending needs to be held in check. “Governor Parnell and I believe in smaller government and are trying to find ways to get an effective state budget going that we can also be sustainable on in the future,” Campbell explained.

When asked about the spending freeze and how it’s affecting spending in Alaska, Campbell responded, “There have been significant changes in the last year for the state of Alaska and it’s not just a freeze but we are seeing far less federal revenues coming to Alaska right now.”

Campbell said you can measure the difference in federal revenue right now but is not sure why. “I’m not sure whether it’s just politics or a change in the senate seat, all I know is that we are not getting as much,” Campbell explained. Two different options right now are to either stop doing things are start paying for things that the feds used to pay for.

However, Campbell did mention that Alaska is an oil state and stated that 85% of Alaska’s state coffers come from oil money. “When oil is $145 a barrel, things are great in Alaska and when the oil is at $30 a barrel, things are not so good for us,” he explained. Oil is currently stable at about $70 to $75 but Campbell is not fully convinced that it will stay this way. “We can’t expect that oil is going to rise to the level we need to compensate for federal funding,” Campbell said.

Transportation is always a big issue for Southeast Alaskans as it is essentially a life-line to the outside world. Campbell said that there is some money in the capital budget for a road to Juneau and the Governor is looking at the bridge in Ketchikan to the airport. “He is not committed to building it just taking a look at it right now,” he said. When it comes to the ferry system, the Parnell administration is looking into replacing some of them.

“As you know there are some issues with the high-speed ferries running into logs and such,” he said. “As we go into the replacement generation we need to develop more streamlined ferries that are reliable.”

According to Campbell, we should expect to see some things evolve in the next year or two as far as replacing some ferries and getting more efficient in Southeast. Campbell ended his speech with a brief history of how he became who he is. Campbell came to Alaska in 1981 with the military and got out in 1984 because he wanted to stay in Alaska.

Campbell spent about 17-18 years in airport consultant work, working at nearly every airport in Southeast Alaska. “I was mostly in planning and environmental work with the airports,” he said. He was also elected to the Anchorage assembly in 1986 and served for 10 years, acting as chairman twice.

Campbell also served as the Executive Director of Planning, Public Works and Development for the City of Anchorage for about two and a half years in 2000. At the end of 2002 Campbell was appointed as the Adjutant General of the National Guard in Alaska by Governor Frank Murkowski.

Governor Sarah Palin kept Campbell on board when she got elected and became Lieutenant Governor when Palin resigned. In closing Campbell referred to a letter to the editor that appeared in the Fairbanks Daily News in which a reader asked why Parnell would appoint someone with only military experience, not from Alaska, knows nothing about Alaska and hasn’t been here very long.

“The military has really played a small part in my life, I have worked all over the state, in both business and politics and have done a lot of stuff beyond the military as you can see,” Campbell concluded.