Opinion ID: 1200520
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Does AS 16.05.251(e) apply to the allocation of fish between two commercial fisheries?

Text: Alaska Statute 16.05.251(e) requires that the board establish criteria for the allocation of fishery resources among personal use, sport, and commercial fishing. The superior court concluded that this meant that criteria must be established for inter-group allocation (i.e. personal-sport, sport-commercial, commercial-personal), but not for intra-group allocation, such as between two or more commercial fisheries. We disagree. Statutory interpretation begins with an examination of the language of the statute construed in light of its purpose. J & L Diversified Enter. v. Municipality of Anchorage, 736 P.2d 349, 351 (Alaska 1987). The state argues that the language of the statute supports the superior court's conclusion that section 251(e) does not apply to the allocation of fish between two commercial fisheries. According to the state, there would have been no need to include the words among personal use, sport, and commercial fishing if the legislature intended the criteria to apply to every allocation decision. We are not persuaded by this reading. The phrase among personal use, sport, and commercial fishing does not on its face indicate any intent to exclude any subsets of the phrase, such as intra-commercial allocations. Nor are those words superfluous. The legislature specifically omitted subsistence use from the list because of the statutory priority given that use; the allocation criteria of section 251(e) would not apply to decisions involving subsistence uses. [10] A reading of the statute in light of its purpose confirms its plain meaning. The statute was designed in part to reaffirm the regulatory authority of the board, including its authority to allocate resources among all fisheries, and to provide criteria by which those allocative decisions were to be made. The criteria listed in section 251(e) are equally applicable to intra-group resource allocation as they are to inter-group allocation. There is no basis for distinguishing allocations among commercial fisheries from allocations between different types of fisheries. Commercial fishers in Fishery A would suffer the same loss if the board reallocated certain fish resources to commercial Fishery B that they would suffer if the board reallocated the fish to sport fishers in Fishery A. Indeed, this court has specifically rejected a distinction between commercial-sport and commercial-commercial allocations. Meier v. State, Board of Fisheries, 739 P.2d 172, 174 (Alaska 1987). In addition, the trial court's interpretation is internally inconsistent. Although AS 16.05.251(d) and (e) contain the same reference to allocations between uses, the court held that section 251(d) was applicable to intra-commercial allocations, following Meier, but that section 251(e) was not. Such a reading does not follow accepted practices of statutory construction. Each section of a statute should be read together with every other section so as to produce a harmonious whole. City of Anchorage v. Scavenius, 539 P.2d 1169, 1174 (Alaska 1975). The state contends that the statute's legislative history reveals the intent to limit its application to inter-group allocation decisions. The state cites comments of Senator Victor Fischer during debate in the Senate Resources Committee as support for its interpretation: SENATOR FISCHER went through the individual subsections of the amendment... . [S]ubsection (e) recognizes the three categories of personal use, sport, and commercial fishing with the board establishing criteria. The criteria in (e) don't necessarily apply to all decisions in any species of fish or fish stock in all places of Alaska but to particular kinds of allocation decisions. SENATOR FISCHER said the point in listing those criteria is that where there are allocation decisions to be made, such criteria will be taken into account. For example, the Copper River area has been heavily used for personal use as well as commercial purposes. These are objective criteria established before the use decisions are made. Minutes of Senate Resources Committee Meeting, February 26, 1986, at 23-24. It is the state's position that since no example of intra-group allocation was given in this excerpt from the discussion, the statute was not meant to cover such decisions. We have rejected a mechanical application of the plain meaning rule in favor of a sliding scale approach toward statutory interpretation. Alaska Pub. Employees Ass'n v. City of Fairbanks, 753 P.2d 725, 727 (Alaska 1988). Thus the plainer the language of the statute, the more convincing any contrary legislative history must be. State v. Alex, 646 P.2d 203, 208-09 n. 4 (Alaska 1982). Here the state's proffered legislative history is not sufficiently convincing to overcome the statute's plain meaning. Senator Fischer's limited comments lend support to the state's argument only to the extent that they themselves are ambiguous. They do not resolve any ambiguity in favor of the state. Indeed, arguably Senator Fischer was making the point that each of the specific criteria listed in section 251(e) need not be used in every allocation decision, a point that was being debated at the time. We can find no support for interpreting his comments as meaning that no criteria need be established by the board for decisions allocating resources between two commercial fisheries. A quote from the committee's section by section analysis of the bill is equally unhelpful to the state. Subsection (e) requires the board to establish criteria for the allocation of fishery resources among the various fisheries. The criteria shall be appropriate to the particular allocation decision, which might pertain to a particular geographic area (such as a stream or watershed) or to a particular stock. Senate Committee on Resources, Section by Section Analysis of Senate Committee Substitute for House Bill 288, March 12, 1986, at 2. We think the language among the various fisheries plainly includes allocation between two commercial fisheries. The plain language and legislative history of the statute are enough to support our conclusion, but it is also instructive that the board itself believed that the statute applied to the chum cap decision, as is evidenced by its discussion of some of the section 251(e) criteria during its debate on the cap. While this court exercises independent judgment on issues of statutory construction, the board's interpretation is entitled to some weight. State, Dep't of Revenue v. Alaska Pulp America, Inc., 674 P.2d 268, 274 (Alaska 1983). Here, the board's belief that it was supposed to apply the section 251(e) criteria supports the conclusion that section 251(e) was meant to apply to intra-group allocations.