A nice haul of Alaska salmon as recorded by former Alaska commercial fishing permit holder Brooklyn Maw on her public Facebook page
Somehow unnoticed, Roland Maw – the former Alaska Board of Fisheries member facing charges of Permanent Fund dividend fraud after being convicted of claiming to be a resident of both Alaska and Montana – appears to have gone back into business as a commercial fisherman in Cook Inlet.
Video posted yesterday on the public Facebook page of his granddaughter Brooklyn Maw, a Nevada beauty queen, appears to show the Maw family hitting the jackpot while drift netting in the Inlet. Upper Inlet net fisheries were open for 12 hours Monday during which about 63,000 sockeye were caught along with 33,000 coho (or silver) salmon.
The Maws could not be immediately reached from comment.
The Inlet harvest comes with Kenai River sockeye returns about half the average for the date, and some people starting to worry about a weak run of the fish to the state’s most popular salmon stream. Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists, however, have reason to believe the salmon are simply late as they were last year.
Brooklyn’s post, headlined simply “Commercial fishing,” does illustrate there is still an abundance of sockeye in the Inlet, or at least there was. In the video showing a gillnet hanging heavy with fish being brought to the boat, she says “Oh my gosh,” before chuckling a couple of times and squealing “Look at all them. So many!”
Brooklyn is a former Cook Inlet driftnet permit holder. Her 74-year-old grandfather transferred his permit to her in 2014 after he claimed to have retired from commercial fishing.
At the time, CFEC paperwork listed Brooklyn as an Alaska resident with the same post-office box address Roland has used in the Kenai Peninsula community of Kasilof. Gov. Bill Walker, a friend of Roland’s, was elected to office in November of 2014, and after getting rid of his fishing permit, Roland applied to be Alaska’s new Commissioner of Fish and Game.
The executive director of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association (UCIDA), the most powerful commercial fishing organization in the region, Roland didn’t even get an interview for the job. His application was rejected without comment by the Joint Board of Fish and Game, which is legally required to recommend to the governor a list of candidates for Commissioner of Fish and Game.
The Board recommended another former commercial fishermen, one-time state legislator Sam Cotten, to the governor. It was a radical shift of direction for an organization that had traditionally been headed by a fish or wildife professional.
Still, the Board’s decision to pass on Roland without discussion drew the ire of the state’s new executive. Walker almost immediately announced he was not going to submit the name of Board Chairman Karl Johnstone, a retired judge, to the Alaska Legislature for reappointment.
Roland attended his first Board meeting in Sitka not long after, but he was gone from the Board within a month. The Anchorage Daily News had by then discovered he was claiming to be a resident of both Montana and Alaska in order to get cheaper resident hunting and fishing licenses. It is illegal in both states to claim dual residency.
Aware that Roland was already under investigation in Montana, however, and facing potential problems with the Permanent Fund, Walker had asked for the Montanan’s resignation.
With Roland already under investigation by wildlife authorities in Montana, Alaska began an investigation into potential PFD fraud in Alaska. The investigation took almost two years, but eventually resulted in Roland being accused not only of illegally claiming residency in Montana, but of spending so little time in the 49th state that he failed to qualify as a resident on those grounds, too.
Since the charges were filed, an attorney for Roland has successfully battled the case with a claim the state can’t prove the PFD’s filed electronically were actually submitted by Roland. The tactic has been wildly successful and hugely unproductive.
A judge has twice thrown out indictments against Roland, but the state – which does a huge amount of business online – has had little choice to but to re-indict him every time for fear of establishing a precedent for anyone looking for a way to avoid legal problems when dealing with the state online.
Roland is now set to go to trial in Juneau in November, and a new judge has been named to replace the son of a commercial fishermen who had been presiding over the case.
The issues in Montana were settled much more rapidly. Roland and son, Robert – Brooklyn’s father and also a commercial fisherman in the Inlet in the summer – ended up charged with illegal hunting shortly after the Montana investigation began.
Since then, Roland has reportedly put his Dillon, Mont. home up for sale and is back in Alaska where he is once more active in fishery politics or “fishtics” as some in the state call it. He was a member of a UCIDA group that met with Walker shortly before the governor announced creation of a special state task force to resolve long-running and ongoing disputes over how catches of Cook Inlet salmon are allocated between commercial, dipnet, sport and subsistence fishermen.
The task force promptly ran into opposition from groups representing personal-use dipnetters and anglers suspicious of Walkers’ close ties to Roland and commercial fishing interests. Shortly thereafter, the governor’s office announced the discovery that fishermen are busy fishing in the Alaska summer, and the meetings of the task force were postponed until fall.
Categories: News
Did Maw vote for Walker in the last election why claiming residency in two states?
How many other of Walker’s “Net Men” have questionable AK residency while casting their votes for him?
The division of elections needs to “get on their game” for the up and coming election this year.
Both Democrats and Republicans should be looking to audit the commercial fishing industry for their residency…
Especially when we are seeing the “industry” has over $156 million in state subsidized low interest loans….do all of these recipients still meet our requirements for residency?
I am certain Maw is not the only one who is pushing the limits with his residency in AK.
Boooooooooooooooooo Walker
I’m going to make me up some signs that say “Anyone but”,
then I’m going to drive up and down the road placing my signs on top of all the annoying Walker signs out here..
Great coverage. Speaking of ADN, I haven’t seen any coverage for quite sometime but was told there’s been activity in the bankruptcy proceedings…
Wash, rinse, then repeat. The medred formula. Jesus man is there ANYTHING else that interests you?
Roland Maw is a piece of work and his antics certainly interest me. I don’t see where you are forced to read any of this.
Well said bill !
Maw is a member of the corrupt and clueless mafia (Walker, Roglof,…) that got a good journalist fired for doing his job well. Can’t blame Craig for axe grinding.
James: i have no ax to grind. Roland likes publicity, and in this case he deserves it. plus the whole thing makes for one hell of a story. how often do we get an honest-to-God beauty queen involved in an Alaska commercial fishery, and Cook Inlet commercial fishermen embracing a guy accused of PFD theft? can you imagine the reaction from them if Bob Penney were facing similar accusations?
Same comment, different post. Have anything else to contribute?
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
As a former commercial fisherman, I know there are unsavory commercial fisherman. There HAS to be a better representative for commercial fishery interests in Cook Inlet than Maw.
Bill walkers crony’s the Maw family. Criminals who take advantage of Alaska . Birds of a feather.
I swear, you guys ought to have a reality TV show about the politics that go on up there. Or at the very least someone ought to write a daytime TV drama based on Alaska politics. I lived there for six and a half years. I’d love to go back but unfortunately, there’s not much Aerospace design work up there.
John Blair, you did very good work with SEAGO. Wish you could return and get back to doing good work.
Interesting thoughts
Try living in a Blue state if you want politics. Where you can only have 10rd mags, you can only carry a gun in your car from place of purchase or to tue range and back, the ammo has to be locked in the glovebox with the gun in the truck or visa-versa, where the criminals are the victims, and the victims are the criminals. Where your pellet or wood burning stove is outlawed because it is responsible for “Global Warming”. Alaska may have politics but, you certainly do not want to elect “Blue” Dogs.
Bryan,
You may want to check the official votes while Mark Begich was our U.S. Senator…That “Blue Dog” voted more than once to stand up for the Second Amendment and rights for gun owners throughout this country…you cannot generalize throughout the parties these days…look what Trump’s tariffs are doing to our farmers in America…will bankruptcy make America great again?
https://www.adn.com/politics/article/begichs-opposition-bill-expanding-gun-background-check-ignites-controversy/2013/04/19/
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/24/trump-admin-announces-emergency-farmer-aid-plan-mitigate-tariff-effects/
Breitbart? Really? Short term welfare is not a fix for bad policy: http://www.ksfy.com/content/news/Sen-John-Thune-Farm-tariff-relief-plan-merely-a-Band-Aid-489045641.html
Steve, I think it is fair to generalize, especially the Democrat Party and RINOs these days. So predictable it is boring.