'Want to go home?' Bob Penney asked fish board member
After my column on Bob Penney’s outsized role in the Dunleavy administration, I heard from numerous readers, a few of which I want to mention here.
Several readers said that the Kenai River Sportfishing Association, co-founded by Penney nearly 40 years ago, has been a pipeline to state jobs, mentioning the hiring of—former executive director Ricky Gease, now the head of state parks; Rachel Hanke (daughter of KRSA vice chair Reuben Hanke), legislative liaison, state fish and game; and Kelly Hanke (Reuben's wife), special assistant in the administration department. Kelly Hanke was one of more than 50 deputy treasurers in Dunleavy’s 2018 campaign.
Another reader called my attention to an exchange between Penney and fish board member John Wood during an Upper Cook Inlet fin fish meeting in February that the reader interpreted as a threat.
It happened during a discussion of proposal 82, to allow two regular 12-hour commercial fishing periods per week for all commercial fisheries in Upper Cook Inlet.
Introducing that proposal, Dave Martin, the representative of the Central Peninsula Advisory Committee, said, “Without the regular 12-hour fishing periods the department is basically managing blind as to abundance.”
“It’s nothing new, it worked great when we were doing it before,” he said.
One of those who testified on this proposal was Penney, who launched into a condescending and irrelevant lecture about the responsibility of the state fish board in managing state resources.
He mentioned selling state resources to the highest bidder and how natural gas, gravel, timber, gold, etc. are handled that way. He cited the laws governing the fish board and how there are seven criteria the board has to follow and that 85 percent to 90 percent of the state is managed for subsistence hunting and fishing rules. Those rules are set up to allow people to live off the land, he said, and those areas don’t have the controversy and the fights that people have in Cook Inlet.
“Now there’s five areas in the state that are called urban,” said Penney.
“Mr. Penney, may I interrupt you? How does this relate to the proposal before us?” asked chairman John Wood, a Dunleavy fish board appointee aligned with Penney.
“Economic value of the commercial fishery,” Penney said.
“I’ll allow leeway. Go ahead,” said Wood.
“Want to go home John?”
“I’m sorry,” said Wood.
“It relates to the economic value of the area. Five of the areas of the state are managed as urban areas. They are managed that way because there’s too many people to be on subsistence because they’d use up the resource,” Penney said.
The potential economic value of fish in Cook Inlet is greatest in sports fishing, Penney said. According to him, there are “200,000 registered licensed anglers” in the region and “giving more time to commercial fishing does not fit into that.”
In a followup comment, Martin said 128,961 statewide resident licenses have been sold in 2020 and there are not 200,000 license holders living in Cook Inlet.
The reader who sent me the link to the recording said that at least two people in the room interpreted the “Want to go home John?” comment by Penney as a threat. The exchange begins at 3:08:45 on Feb. 10.
Given that Dunleavy will follow Penney’s opinions in making or rejecting fish board appointments, the claim that this was a threat is not totally out of the question.
I wasn’t there, but on the tape the comment does not come across to me as a threat. It comes across as a smart-ass remark, an inappropriate comment that would only be tolerated from someone with as much undue influence over state fishing policy as Bob Penney.