{"id":25803,"date":"2016-03-11T09:04:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T17:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/lawmakers-focus-on-cook-inlet-during-fish-board-hearing\/"},"modified":"2016-03-11T09:04:30","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T17:04:30","slug":"lawmakers-focus-on-cook-inlet-during-fish-board-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/lawmakers-focus-on-cook-inlet-during-fish-board-hearing\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers focus on Cook Inlet during Fish Board hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>JUNEAU \u2014<\/strong> Deep divisions between fishermen harvesting Cook Inlet salmon again dominated discussion as legislators quizzed two appointees to Alaska\u2019s Board of Fisheries during a confirmation hearing Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The Senate Resources Committee heard from board appointees Al Cain, a former Alaska Wildlife Trooper, and Soldotna conservationist Robert Ruffner, who had been previously appointed.<\/p>\n<p>Gov. Bill Walker appointed Ruffner to the board in 2015, but lawmakers did not confirm him.<\/p>\n<p>Sens. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, and Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak, quizzed Cain about his opinions on restrictions to commercial fishermen to leave more fish for sport and personal-use fishermen in Cook Inlet.<\/p>\n<p>Both senators voted against Ruffner last year, but they said they were more comfortable with his appointment as it is to a seat that has traditionally been reserved for commercial fishermen. Wielechowski went as far as to pledge his support for Ruffner.<\/p>\n<p>During Ruffner\u2019s 2015 confirmation, segments of the fishing industry sought to frame him as a nominee who disturbed an unwritten balance on the board between commercial, sport-fishing and subsistence-fishing representatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JUNEAU \u2014 Deep divisions between fishermen harvesting Cook Inlet salmon again dominated discussion as legislators quizzed two appointees to Alaska\u2019s Board of Fisheries during a confirmation hearing Wednesday. The Senate Resources Committee heard from board appointees Al Cain, a former Alaska Wildlife Trooper, and Soldotna conservationist Robert Ruffner, who had been previously appointed. Gov. Bill [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-25803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25803","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\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25803"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}