A look ahead at 2006 with Sen. Ted Stevens.

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) remains one of the most powerful individuals on Capitol Hill. Therefore, he has a strong sense of what's ahead in the congressional year.

Stevens recently sat down with Alaska Business Monthly to offer his predictions about how Alaska could be affected in the year to come, particularly from the viewpoint of the Commerce Committee, which Stevens chairs.

For the sake of space, clarity, grammar and being current, some comments and questions have been edited or omitted.

ABM: As you look ahead, from an Alaska specific perspective, what do you think are going to be the key issues in Congress this year?

Stevens: Well, we have so many. I hope to finish the Magnuson-Stevens Act renewal. You know it expired.... It'll be the No. 1 issue (this) year. But certainly, Essential Air Service (guaranteed air service for underserved populations) issues are right out there in front of us, and the Universal Service Fund for communications. We're replete with just issues on issues now that affect Alaska that are coming up in our committee....

ABM: Let's talk about aviation. Real specifically, what do you anticipate this year that you'll have to deal with in the aviation area that will affect the state?

Stevens: We have to deal with the problems of the bankruptcies of so many of the airlines; we're dealing with modernization of the airways. We're seeing now enter into the aviation field a whole series of very small jets, but they take up the time of the air controllers; they take space on the airways systems, and those are almost at the point of maximum capacity now. We're spending our time on finding ways to get the money to modernize our system. It'll take a sizeable amount of money. I'm working with the FAA administrator trying to see if we can find a way to create a special corporation that can borrow the money and bond (in order) to go ahead and do the modernization in a short period of time, rather than wait for appropriations in this period we're in now....

(Sen. Stevens continues on to a discussion of fisheries.)

Stevens: I think the fisheries issues are paramount in terms of Magnuson-Stevens (MSA), and we certainly have to do something about the deep-sea dragging that's starting now. (The MSA is the primary law governing marine fisheries management in the federal waters of the United States.) Some of the trawlers are going into the deep sea and really destroying the breeding ground to much of the food for our species as you know, salmon (and) halibut. Particularly salmon, (they) migrate around the North Pacific....

ABM: As far as telecommunications, what do you see as some key issues that you'll have to deal with that you simply didn't have time to deal with last year?

Stevens: Well there again, I hope we can deal with the Universal Service Fund. (The USF is paid for by telecommunications companies and their consumers to ensure that telecommunications services are available to all Americans, including those in rural, remote and high-cost areas, at reasonable rates.) It's under severe attack, as you know.... We have the problem of how to bring about the survival of the Universal Service Fund concept, who's going to pay into it. Long-distance will soon be a thing of the past. We're not dealing with long-distance anymore ... in the traditional sense of going over wires and cable. We're going into VoIP, the Voice-over Internet Protocol or broadband wireless. There are so many changes in the communications area that will affect us directly, and currently, the communications that most villages have ... (come) from the Universal Service Fund, and that fund is running out of money. So, it's going to be a really tough year for us. I can't remember a time that's been tougher to represent Alaska than right now.

ABM: As far as transportation security, what do you see as an issue that you'd like to work on this year?

Stevens: The main thing is our concept of security is more critical at the airport than it is in terms of our ports. Now, Los Angeles has an enormous seaport; we have an enormous air cargo port, so the security factors of the Anchorage airport as it affects cargo are critical. It's expanding. We expect it to continue to increase, and that leaves the additional security problems, fantastic security problems, because this is the port of entry.... I guess we are now the No. 1 cargo landing port in the United States. So, everything we're doing now concerning airline security affects Anchorage.

ABM: In terms of just an overall sort of summation or message, as people pick up this issue of Alaska Business Monthly in January, and they look to you and your committee for the year ahead, what would you want them to know perhaps at that time, to think about in terms of what your committee might be doing for the state, or a general thought you'd like to leave with people?

Stevens: I don't know on a single-thought basis; I don't know. I would want them to understand this Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over anything that moves. Just think of it that way, anything that moves is within our jurisdiction, interstate commerce.... So we expect to be affected by the changes that are made in these systems because of (the) reduction in funds available. These (hurricane) disasters will have taken, before we're through, about $200 billion out of the budget. The bulk of that is spent in the discretionary sense, but its offsets are going to come from both the entitlements, those fixed costs of the federal government, as well as the discretionary money that we spend through the appropriations process. So, you have to blend together the Commerce Committee and the Appropriations Committee's activities to look at Alaska, as far as I'm concerned. I would want people at home to understand the intricacies now of representing a state the size of ours, with the demands we have, most of which are expensive and a population base that we have that's so small. I think the attack (an attempt to cut funding for a Knik Arm Crossing and a Ketchikan Gravina Bridge) that (Sen. Tom) Coburn (R-Okla.) made on us is just the first such attack.

ABM: And you anticipate those (legislative) attacks to continue this year, not just this past year?

Stevens: Oh, I think that they'll be increased sizably. Because it costs more money to operate in Alaska, it costs more money to build in Alaska, and therefore, our funds that we seek are higher than we'd seek for similar activity in the South 48. And most people forget, the great portion of the money we get in Alaska is related to the federal government activities in Alaska, defense, FAA, Corps of Engineers, Fish & Wildlife Service, National Park Service, the whole wilderness system, all of those things cost money.... We have to fight for what we get because most of these budgets are figured in relationship to population, not in relationship to the size of the state.

ABM: These budget threats are not unique because of the hurricane? You anticipate them this year as well for the state?

Stevens: We're going to be paying for the hurricanes for at least three years. That money doesn't all go out and get spent before the end of this year (2005) or even from the end of this fiscal year (2006). It's a three- to four-year recovery period down there, and every year we're going to be under strain, and every year there's going to be more attacks to take money from Alaska because we have inflated budgets related to our size, related to the operation of the federal government in our state, and related to the costs of operations in our state, and so it's just more difficult every day.

(ABM then proceeds to wrap up the interview, but Stevens then turns to his staff, and decides to add further points.)

Stevens: Fisheries, beyond (the) Magnuson-Stevens Act, present overwhelming problems for us, particularly in terms of the increase of imported products. And, I'm afraid that right now because the fisheries off the coast that was affected by Katrina and Rita and Wilma are almost destroyed, we're looking at trying to find ways to increase Alaska production, so we can offset that temporarily to prevent our people from that part of the country becoming totally dependent on imported fish from Chile and other offshore countries that have been flooding us and trying to destroy our industry as far as our basic fisheries industries. So fisheries is (sic) going to be big on the scene. And you have to keep in mind there are three of us. You know, most states that have problems like we have, have two senators, but they have 40 and 50 congressmen. So this has become an increasingly difficult task in view of the massive amount of attacks on Alaska, to represent Alaska.

Seth Linden is the Washington bureau chief and correspondent for KTUU-TV (NBC), which is based in Anchorage. His reports also air on KTVF-TV (NBC) in Fairbanks.