INITIATIVE: PR firm attacks effort to require $50 head tax, disclosures.
By PAULA DOBBYN
Anchorage Daily News
Published: May 19, 2006
Last Modified: May 19, 2006 at 01:53 AM
The cruise-ship industry and its supporters are preparing a media blitz and get-out-the-vote campaign in hopes of defeating an Alaska ballot initiative that would impose over $50 million a year in taxes, anti-pollution permits and other measures on the foreign-flagged vessels.
Oregon public relations firm Pac/West Communications is developing the strategy through focus groups and polling, and it has launched an advocacy group called Alaskans Protecting Our Economy to lead the grass-roots efforts, said Paul Phillips, Pac/West president. Former Fairbanks legislator Steve Frank is among those heading the group.
Television, radio and newspaper ads should be appearing soon, urging people to defeat a measure opponents consider anti-business. Letters to the editor, signs, phone calls, newsletters and public speeches are also planned. Some of the work has already started.
"We want to inform the people of Alaska about the ballot initiative and let them know that we think it will be bad for our economy and bad for jobs and that will be kind of an opportunity for frivolous lawsuits," Frank said Thursday.
The campaign won't work, supporters of the measure predict.
"Alaskans are not stupid," said Joe Geldhof, a Juneau lawyer. "For the average person sitting in a bar, it takes five minutes to figure out this is a tax on the guy from Ohio."
The initiative will appear on the Aug. 22 statewide ballot.
The measure would make every cruise-ship passenger pay $50. With the industry expected to bring up to 1 million people to Alaska this summer, that would mean $50 million in new state revenue. The initiative would also tax 33 percent of the income cruise ships make from on-board gambling, and it would make the fleet pay corporate income taxes.
Among its other features, the measure would require cruise ships to get state-issued pollution discharge permits and place "ocean rangers" aboard to police the vessels' environmental practices.
The initiative would also make the cruise industry disclose the commissions it makes from selling land-based tours and activities aboard the ships.
"We're very aggressively asking people to oppose the initiative," said John Shively, vice president of government and community relations for Holland America Line, this week.
Alaskans Protecting Our Economy has prepared "talking points" that say the measure would discourage tourism, beef up state bureaucracy, encourage lawsuits and disclose confidential business information.
"Stay away from discussing the fact that one million people are brought to Alaska each year by the cruise industry. This isn't a positive point with voters," the talking points say.
"Refrain from arguing the industry's old environmental record," they continue.
Two cruise lines have been convicted of criminal pollution violations for illegal dumping in Southeast Alaska between 1994 and 2002. Regulators have cited cruise lines for civil violations as well. After paying millions in fines and investing tens of millions in new systems to treat sewage and other wastewater, the industry says it has turned a corner.
Phillips, the Oregon public relations executive, would not say how much the North West CruiseShip Association is paying his firm. But it's less than $1 million, he said.
Besides Pac/West, an Anchorage advertising firm, Bradley Reid & Associates, is also working for the cruise industry. The firm is airing TV ads extolling the industry's contributions to the state's economy and its environmental performance.
"I can safely say that we will probably be outspent on this campaign a million to one, and I still think we're going to win," said Gershon Cohen, one of the initiative's chief organizers.
"The fact is $50 is not going to stop anyone from coming to Alaska," Cohen said. "Their whole campaign is based on a false argument."
The Alaska Travel Industry Association, the state's biggest tourism organization, is leading an effort to register new voters to defeat the measure. ATIA president Ron Peck said the group is urging tourism business owners to encourage their summer employees to cast ballots in the Aug. 22 primary.
That effort outraged Skagway tourism operator Kathy Hosford, owner of Chilkoot Trail Outpost. Hosford said she was astounded to hear an ATIA executive talk up the voter registration drive during a recent presentation in Skagway.
"I couldn't believe what he said," Hosford said. "I find it to be a manipulation of the democratic process."
Cohen said he doesn't think the effort will pay off.
"It's disgraceful, but I don't think it will amount to that many people," he said.
Rod Pfleiger, Alaska representative for the North West CruiseShip Association, says getting out the vote is a legitimate strategy.
"If you have employees that support the opposition to this type of legislation and they're eligible to vote in Alaska, encourage them to register," Pfleiger said.
Initiative organizer Geldhof acknowledged that his side may be outgunned. But he said he's not worried.
"This is a classic David versus Goliath thing," he said. "The citizens are going to have one chance to throw a rock and knock out Goliath. But sometimes all it takes is one rock."
