CIAA is twenty million dollars in debt to the State of Alaska and has no viable way of paying it off, ever. By their accounting, they have assets valued at $8.7 million, debt of $19 million, and they go further in debt every year. There is no project in the world that can fix this.
CIAA receives (on average) less than half-a-million dollars a year from the 2% fish tax. If they ceased operations now (stop going further into debt!) the fish tax could pay the loans off over the next 40+ years. If they are allowed to continue to increase that debt (given another un-repayable loan) eventually a bankruptcy judge will extinguish CIAAs’s entire debt to the State of Alaska as completely un-payable. It would be against the State’s best interest to let that happen.
Any worthwhile project operated by CIAA right now (i.e. pike eradication in upper Cook Inlet) can be done by watershed protection groups. The balance of program benefits vs. cost is so negative that it isn’t worth maintaining. The most prudent action now is for the Division of Investments to stop providing un-repayable loan funds; CIAA to cease operations; designate all future 2% fish tax funds toward debt re-payment.
My summary of CIAA Financial problems: the organization was founded and sustained with excessive grant monies (via Ted Stevens) until 2008. By 2010 CIAA was scrambling to keep their multi-million dollar unsuccessful projects funded, but were unable to understand the need to make projects actually pay off. It was (and still is) too difficult of a switch. The entity was created to funnel huge amounts of federal funds to Alaskan pockets–NOT to succeed. The long list of worthless projects they’ve initiated have only HARMED natural runs. The CIAA director in 2010 told a Board of Fish work-team that he had no idea what a business plan was (I was there).
I cry to think of the *good* those millions and millions of dollars might have done in the hands of people who truly care about Alaska’s resources,
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