KABATA winds down: staff moves on, board remains

ANCHORAGE — In the wake of the state Legislature’s decision this year to roll the Knik Arm Crossing project into the Department of Transportation, the group formerly tasked with moving the project forward has all but dissolved.

“We had a pretty small staff to start with but all of the consultant contracts, the people that were working on the project were primarily consultants, all of those contracts have been transferred to DOT,” said Judy Dougherty, DOT’s Director of the Knik Arm Crossing Project and, until the Legislature’s decision, the executive director of KABATA. “The staff here have all been transferred (to the state) with the exception of one, Mike Rovito, just got a new job elsewhere so he left our employment.”

Rovito, a former Frontiersman reporter, was KABATA’s legislative liaison. He’s now working for the Alaska Power Association.

The Knik Arm bridge is planned to span from Anchorage near the Port of Anchorage to Mat-Su near Point MacKenzie. The idea is to provide another transportation link between Anchorage and the Valley by spanning a narrow spot on Knik Arm — less than 2-miles from shore to shore. KABATA had worked to secure private financing to build and operate the bridge. It drew fire from state legislators who didn’t believe traffic projections the authority relied on to calculate potential toll revenues. That discontent in the Legislature eventually took the form of an attempt to roll KABATA into the Alaska Housing Financing Corporation, and, eventually, the successful push to put the project under DOT.

KABATA’s offices actually belong to DOT so KABATA employees transferred to the state to work on the Knik bridge project will stay put, Dougherty said.

As for KABATA’s board of directors, it also remains intact, but its duties are greatly curtailed. Rep. Mark Neuman, R-Big Lake, is a non-voting member of that board and described its new duties succinctly:

“The only duties left for the board is after the bridge is built to set up an authority to collect tolls,” he said.

Two board meetings — one set for this month in Kenai, the other for October in Wasilla — have been cancelled.

“At the last board meeting the board made some changes to their bylaws to accommodate this kind of lull while we’re waiting for the bridge to get built. We’re required to have an annual meeting every year in November and then additional meetings can be added at the discretion of the chairman,” Dougherty said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.