State lawmakers have ordered their professional, nonpartisan auditors to examine the Alaska Board of Fisheries’ procedural actions going back to October 2023. The audit was spurred by concerns about ethics violations, lack of transparency and failures to follow policymaking procedures defined in state law, state regulations and the board’s own internal policies.
Rep. Louise Stutes, a Kodiak Republican who has chaired the House Fisheries Committee for the last eight years, said she’s heard from more and more fishery stakeholders across the state.
“A common theme that, in the eyes of the public, is growing more severe each year is the board's adherence to a transparent public process, ethical conduct, as well as its own policies, regulations, and statutes," she told legislators.
Stutes requested the audit through the legislative budget and audit committee and spoke to the request in committee last week, on July 16.
She pointed to the May decision by the state’s acting attorney general, Cori Mills, to overturn five regulations the board passed in February. Those regulations would have reduced commercial salmon fishing in some parts of the South Alaska Peninsula, commonly called Area M.
On May 19, Mills ruled the board’s votes were improper and voided the changes.
Stutes said that’s proof the board is not being ethical or transparent in its decision-making process.
“Board [of Fisheries] decisions are consequential, often impacting thousands or tens of thousands of Alaskans within a single action," Stutes said. "It is for these reasons that the Board’s processes and procedures are by law, transparent, ethical, and with ample opportunity for public comment.”
Proponents of the board’s Area M decisions, like the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, say the regulations would have also protected some of those salmon bound for the Yukon River and Western Alaska subsistence fishermen.
But opponents, like the Aleutians East Borough, say the Board of Fisheries violated state ethics laws when they approved the new regulations.
Stutes said she consulted with state auditors and requested they focus not on the outcomes of the board’s decisions, but the process leading up to them. For example, whether agenda changes or emergency petitions were accepted and considered based on state laws. The legislative committee unanimously approved her request and amended the audit to include all board meetings from October 12 of 2023 through July 1, 2026.
Kris Curtis, the state’s legislative auditor, told the committee her staff did a similar review of the Board of Game about eight years ago, which has similar processes. And coincidentally, her office recently created a new section focused specifically on performance audits of this scope.
“So I believe we’d be able to start this fairly quickly, which is unusual for the Division of Legislative Audit," she said.
Curtis told the legislative commitee that the audit could be finished by the next legislative session in January.
