02/10/1997 03:30 PM Senate RES

          SJR  8 PRIMARY MFG OF PUBLICLY OWNED TIMBER                         
                                                                              
  VICE-CHAIR GREEN  called the Senate Resources Committee meeting to           
 order at 3:30 p.m. and announced Chairman Halford was excused for             
 a family emergency.  She noted the presence of Senators Taylor,               
 Torgerson, Leman, and Sharp.  The first order of business before              
 the committee was SJR 8, sponsored by Senator Torgerson.                      
                                                                               
  SENATOR TORGERSON  gave the following overview of SJR 8.                     
 Legislation identical to SJR 8 passed the House and Senate last               
 year.  SJR 8 asks Congress to grant approval to the State of Alaska           
 to regulate, restrict, or prohibit the export of unprocessed logs             
 harvested from state lands, and lands of political subdivisions and           
 the University of Alaska.  SJR 8 was introduced because after a               
 recent sawmill closure in Seward, the State held a timber sale in             
 a nearby area.  The logs from that sale were exported to Oregon for           
 primary manufacturing.  Alaska was not included in the 1990                   
 Congressional Act that exempted 11 contiguous western states from             
 Commerce Clauses and extended the ban on unprocessed log exports in           
 that area.  Trees from those states cannot be purchased and sent to           
 Alaska for primary manufacturing; primary manufacturing must occur            
 in those regions.                                                             
                                                                               
  SENATOR TAYLOR  commented in Southeast Alaska for some time, private         
 land owners clear cut their properties, then left half of the                 
 felled logs on the land to rot because the Japanese, who were the             
 primary purchasers of the round logs, only wanted the highest grade           
 logs to make musical instruments, among other things.                         
 Consequently, the value-added jobs, as many are trumpeting as the             
 cure-all for this industry, were shipped out since the mid-70's.              
 The tragedy is that the none of the people who owned that resource            
 had the benefit of the majority of those jobs.  Even the jobs in              
 extracting and harvesting the resource did not involve a majority             
 of the people who owned it.  Today, most of the people who own                
 those lands are in about the same economic straights they were                
 before they harvested the land. In retrospect, we find the resource           
 has been depleted and the owners were only peripherally benefitted.           
 Had a sustained use policy been used on that same land, thousands             
 of people could have been employed forever.  Once again, Alaska has           
 to beg Congress to allow the people of Alaska to control their                
 destinies.  He discussed the case of Southcentral Timber                      
 Development, Inc. v. Wunnicke.  SJR 8 will allow the state to make            
 certain that timber jobs remain in Alaska.                                    
                                                                               
 Number 167                                                                    
                                                                               
  SENATOR LEMAN  noted he supported this legislation last year when it         
 was before the Senate Resources Committee.  The Legislature needs             
 to do a lot more to help local economies.  SJR 8 will be a small              
 step toward that goal.  He moved SJR 8 from committee with                    
 individual recommendations.                                                   
                                                                               
  VICE-CHAIR GREEN  stated there was no further testimony on SJR 8,            
 and hearing no objections to the motion, moved SJR 8 from                     
 committee.  She commented the Mat-Su area is in need of a continual           
 supply of timber.