Ballot Measure 2 asks Alaskans to approve a cruise ship passenger tax. Alaska's citizens placed over 25,000 of their signatures on a petition to bring this question to a vote in the Aug. 22 primary election.

The response from the Miami-based cruise ship industry was swift but predictable. As expected, they hired attorneys and sued the state in hopes of disqualifying the signatures of Alaskans who simply wanted to be allowed to vote on this issue.

After losing in court they hired Pac/West, an expensive public relations firm from Oregon, to convince Alaskans that a tax on cruise ship passengers would be bad for business. This Oregon firm is carpet-bombing Alaskans with e-mails, mailers, television ads and newspaper ads and has spent more than $1 million so far to flood us with sometimes false information. They claim that a head tax would cause cruise ship passengers to avoid Alaska and travel elsewhere.

Cruise ship passengers pay port fees and port taxes the world over but not to the State of Alaska. Several million cruise passengers are taxed whenever they cruise foreign ports, including the Caribbean, Mexico, Bermuda, the Mediterranean and so on. These destinations place a head tax and also charge port fees on cruise visitors, yet the very same visitors cruising to Alaska pay nothing to the state even though it costs Alaskans considerable amounts of money to host these large ships.

The cruise ship owners say cruise ships visiting Alaska waters cost the state only about $1 million per year. The Alaska Department of Revenue reported that serving the cruise industry cost the state more than $100 million in fiscal year 2004. The real number is probably in between. Either way, we in Alaska subsidize these ships with state money that could be used for other things. Ballot Measure 2 asks the cruise ship companies to pay their way in Alaska.

In legislative committee testimony last year, at least one cruise line official said rather than risk driving away tourists with a passenger tax, Alaska should tax all economic activity with a state sales tax or income tax.

Ballot Measure 2 also requires that an observer be on board to monitor cruise ship waste discharge. In previous years, some cruise ships have dumped sewage and oil sludge in Alaska waters and then tried to hide it. They stated that ship valves were faulty or damaged or their engineer opened them by mistake. During one investigation, it was discovered the company "cooked the books." The courts sentenced the company on a felony conviction. That's serious.

Alaskans agree that toxic metal and bacterial waste discharged over our halibut breeding beds is appalling, so the initiative proposes there be an onboard observer. One person to monitor a vessel with 4,000 crew and passengers is minimal.

Finally, cruise passengers ride on cruise-owned buses, cruise-owned trains, sleep in cruise-owned hotels and are steered to cruise-owned shops and take cruise-owned tours. I stopped in a jewelry shop in Juneau and discovered every single employee came from Utah. Next door, half the employees lived in Colorado. All worked for cruise owners in cruise-owned shops.

Before docking, cruise operators recommend only very specific land activities for their passengers. The recommended tours often rebate 20 to 40 percent as a commission back to the cruise ship owners. Interestingly, since many land operations are actually owned and operated by cruise owners, all the money goes right back to cruise company headquarters. Local tours owned by Alaskans often are easily left out.

In short, most of the money they say they claim to invest in Alaska goes straight to corporate headquarters. I believe a cruise ship head tax makes sense. Tourism is Alaska's best sustainable natural resource. The Alaska Constitution requires that we manage our natural resources for the maximum benefit of all Alaskans. Asking cruise ship companies to pay their own way is a start.

I ask that you join me in voting yes on Ballot Measure 2. Vote for Alaska, not Miami.

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