Borough, Young work to ease regulations on businesses

WASILLA — Head of the Mat-Su Borough Planning Department and a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Don Young assured Valley business and political leaders Friday they were working hard to make their lives easier.

Eileen Probasco, chief of the borough’s planning department, and Chad Padgett, Rep. Young’s state director, told Mat-Su Business Alliance members and guests at their monthly lunch meeting at Evangelo’s restaurant that it’s their goal to reduce regulations and streamline permitting processes for developers and others hoping to improve the local economy.

“The planning department is really excited to have a group representing businesses in the borough,” Probasco told those gathered before pointing out the latest Census figures revealing the amount of growth experienced in the Valley in the past two decades, reaching nearly 89,000 residents last year. “When I first arrived in 1971, the borough’s population was less than 7,000. So we know we need to continue to be prepared for growth,”

Probasco said that with the completion of the borough’s Economic Development Plan, the borough has combined sections of the permit center to reduce the time it takes to process a permit.

For example, land use permits used to take two or three weeks to process. They now will take only three or four days.

She said her department also is working to reduce redundancies in the permitting process for Port MacKenzie developers and users, as well as making it easier to access port land by changing the way parcels are appraised.

“We’re trying to make it less expensive for developers and faster for them to get through the process,” she said.

After her brief presentation, Probasco was given a certificate by the Mat-Su Business Alliance to recognize her efforts to bring business to the Valley. Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss recommended Probasco receive the award, according to Kay Slack of the MSBA.

Padgett told the group that Young continues to work against federal regulations aimed at locking up the state’s resources — as he did more than 30 years ago when he wrote his thesis “The Great Terrain Robbery” in 1979.

“Congressman Young is very much a conservationist. He just didn’t want to see the preservationist element taking over,” Padgett said. “The federal government has created more czars in the last couple of years than at any other time in our history.”

He said that when President Obama’s health care bill was passed, it came with 54 new czars, adding to the federal bureaucracy.

When Padgett asked those in the audience to raise their hands if they’ve noticed more federal regulations in their lives and businesses in the last couple of years, most lifted an arm.

Businesses spend about 25 percent of all their time on administrative paperwork because of increased regulations, he said.

“It costs $1.4 trillion per year for the federal government to handle all the regulations out there,” he said, adding they could balance the budget in the next 13 years just by cutting down on regulations and their costs to maintain them.

Padgett said he got a call earlier in the week from the Federal Aviation Administration informing him that Grant Aviation in Valdez had to ground 28 Cessnas because of new maintenance regulations. He fears the same will happen to Hageland Aviation, a Valley company.

“They’ve decided to start enforcing more regulations and now are going to shut a business that serves 100 Alaska communities,” he said. “What are we going to do about that? If you fly these days, it’s almost impossible to meet every regulatory term.”

Padgett pointed out that Young is also hoping to block funding for certain environmental agencies and programs that are slowing growth.

“The EPA has come out with new regulations since the New Horizon oil spill in the Gulf,” he said. “They’re proposing that dairy farmers should fall under the same category of regulations so that they’d have to put $500 per cow into a clean-up fund to cover spilled milk. That’s what they’re considering. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Don’t cry over spilt milk.’“

And even if you’re not in the dairy business, the costs of additional regulations would eventually trickle down to everyone, he pointed out.

Young is still very much in favor of earmarks, he said, because that’s the only way Alaska can get federal funds for essential projects, such as “the bridge to nowhere.”

“If Congress doesn’t do earmarks, the president decides where the money goes,” he said. “The intent of every earmark Young has asked for is to build Alaska. He believes we can be the energy capital of the world — no matter what form that energy is in.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.