Alaska is exempting hundreds of businesses from health mandates.

But it’s keeping their plans secret, for now. (thread)

#AKleg

https://www.alaskapublic.org/2020/04/14/alaska-is-exempting-some-businesses-from-health-mandates-but-its-keeping-their-plans-a-secret-for-now/

Businesses that wanted to operate as "essential" in Alaska had to draft plans for how they'd stay open without jeopardizing public health and submit them to Gov. Mike Dunleavy's administration.

More than 700 came in. We filed a public records request for them.

Reporters were initially told that these documents were confidential. Now, we've been told that the documents will be released...but it's going to take a while and there's no timeline. Here's the response from Dunleavy's office.

We also asked the Department of Health and Social Services for an interview about how these plans are being vetted. Obvious questions abound: Who's doing the vetting? What are the criteria? How many plans were rejected or sent back for revisions?

Response:

"If you have filed a public records request we need to let that process work its way through the system.

As you know there are special rules and regulations with records requests."

(That's true, but those rules don't bar an agency from talking about something) #AKleg

One interesting thing we also noticed:

The state initially limited what could qualify as an essential business to a defined list of industries.

Then it expanded the criteria considerably: any business that could meet social distancing requirements.

Some municipal leaders want access to these plans so that they can decide whether they need to put their own more stringent health mandates in place, beyond those adopted by the state.

But the state won't share them. See:

https://www.kstk.org/2020/04/10/state-overrules-wrangell-says-it-cant-add-its-own-covid-19-restrictions/

via @june_leffler

With the fishing season set to kick off in coastal Alaska, a number of major processing companies have agreed to share their plans voluntarily.

So has oil company ConocoPhillips, though it's the only one of Alaska's four largest to release its document. (end of thread)