After the Alaska Fisheries Conservation Alliance submitted 43,000 signatures on June 10 to the Alaska Division of Elections seeking a 2016 ballot initiative that would ban setnets in urban areas of the state, the organization scrubbed its website to remove a link to a group it has previously claimed isn’t related to the effort.
Although the AFCA shares several board members with the Kenai River Sportfishing Association, or KRSA, including the latter’s founder Bob Penney, the group has strenuously denied the two groups are linked based on their different tax-exempt status.
AFCA is a 501(c)6, which allows it to take part in political campaigns and issue advocacy while KRSA is a 501(c)3 which is not.
As of the morning of June 10, the AFCA website was offering an invitation and discounted entry to the Kenai River Classic run by KRSA for corporate level sponsors donating $25,000 or more.
When asked about this connection at a press conference following the submission of signatures, Penny explained that law would forbid such an offer.
“AFCA is a 501(c)6 organization,” Penny said. “KRSA is a 501(c)3. It is not allowed by law to do any such action like this.”
After the press conference, the offer was taken off the website but the Journal of Commerce was able to take a screen capture earlier in the day.
According to Clark Penney, executive director of the AFCA and the son of Bob Penney, the board of directors asked Northwest Strategies to take that offer down months ago, but it had not done that until Wednesday.
Northwest Strategies has been paid $11,000 so far by AFCA to “monitor, assess and coordinate” media coverage for the group.
Pending the outcome of an Alaska Supreme Court ruling, the initiative could be on the Alaska Primary Election Ballot as early as August 2016.
After the initiative was filed in late 2013, former Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell rejected it in January 2014 as an allocative measure, which is prohibited under the state constitution. The group appealed and won a reversal in Superior Court that allowed it to begin collecting signatures.
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