{"id":103527,"date":"2023-10-11T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/empire-archives-juneaus-history-for-the-week-of-oct-15\/"},"modified":"2023-10-11T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T05:30:00","slug":"empire-archives-juneaus-history-for-the-week-of-oct-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/empire-archives-juneaus-history-for-the-week-of-oct-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Empire Archives: Juneau’s history for the week of Oct. 15"},"content":{"rendered":"

Empire Archives is a series printed every Saturday featuring a short compilation of headline stories in the Juneau Empire from archived editions in 1985, 1995 and 2005.<\/em><\/p>\n

This week in 1985,<\/strong> Juneau’s legislative delegation agreed that a $46,000-a-year flat salary was much better than the then-proposed per diem system. The per diem system proposed at the time would have cut their pay nearly in half, but in turn would constitute a $109-a-day per diem.<\/p>\n

During this year’s session, lawmakers missed the deadline to block an abrupt 67% pay raise for legislators, and around a 20% raise for the governor and his commissioner, that was originally OK’d by the five members of the Alaska State Officers Compensation Commission.<\/p>\n

When the proposed hike happened, House Bill 135 was brought forth by a handful of legislators from the House who argued the actions taken by the compensation commission were not “transparent” and eroded public trust.<\/p>\n

However, at the deadline for legislators to pass the bill the day came and went without the bill moving forward with a final vote. Now, beginning in 2024, legislators will be paid $84,000 per year — a $33,600 increase — and the governor will be paid approximately $176,000 per year — a 31,000 increase.<\/p>\n

Original Story: “Local delegation favors current legislative pay” by Kirk McAllister. 10\/15\/1985.<\/em><\/p>\n

This week in 1995,<\/strong> the municipal election was certified, showing a defeat of a proposed $9 million bond issue (about $18.2 million today) for a new police station. The vote was 61.5% of voters against its construction, while 37% voted in favor.<\/p>\n

At the time, opposing voters said they believed the new station was needed, but not at the proposed location at Bus Barn Park.<\/p>\n

However, just a year later during the 1996 municipal election, ​​a temporary 1% sales tax was approved by voters to fund a new 27,000-square-foot police station in the Switzer-Lemon Creek area. The new Juneau Police Station was officially dedicated on May 12, 2000, and is still in service today.<\/p>\n

Original Story: “Police station bond fails” by Mark Sabbatini. 10\/14\/1995.<\/em><\/p>\n

This week in 2005,<\/strong> a coalition of environmental groups issued a report that pronounced the Tongass National Forest as “endangered due to logging, drilling and mining. The report criticized the then-Bush Administration for increasing the amount of logging in national forests even though the economic worth of the federal timber sale program was marginal at the national level.<\/p>\n

In January of this year, the Biden administration announced a ban on logging and road-building in the nine million acres of the Tongass National Forest. The decision was aimed to settle a two-decade battle over the fate of the forest.<\/p>\n

Biden’s move reinstated protections that were first put in place in 2001, but stripped by previous President Donald Trump in 2020. In September, the state of Alaska filed a complaint challenging the Biden administration’s reinstatement.<\/p>\n

Original Story: “Report says Tongass and 11 other forests are endangered” by Elizabeth Bluemink. 10\/13\/2005.<\/em><\/p>\n

• Contact reporter Clarise Larson at clarise.larson@juneauempire.com or (651)-528-1807.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three decades of capital city coverage. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":890,"featured_media":103528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[73],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-103527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-ccw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/890"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103527"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=103527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}