Rep. Kevin McCabe said he wasn’t able to answer questions about compensation for local governments, impacts to local property taxes or how port user groups feel about it.
The Port of Anchorage in 2016. It was later renamed the Port of Alaska, and is now the Don Young Port of Alaska.
Republican Rep. Kevin McCabe’s vision has multiple unbuilt megaprojects in it, and he thinks a key piece of unlocking the funding to make those projects happen is for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and the city of Anchorage to hand their port facilities on opposite sides of Knik Arm over to a quasi-independent state port authority.
Under a port authority, McCabe said the ports would operate together in the entire state’s interest and for Alaskans broadly, rather than for the individual communities. He said that would make it easier for the ports and related transportation infrastructure to secure federal funding.