Opinion ID: 2599816
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The food and gas criteria

Text: Manning also challenges the food and gas criteria in 5 AAC 92.070(b)(2) and (3). Under the regulation, up to ten points each are awarded based on the cost of food and gasoline in the community where the applicant's household purchases most of its food and gas. [42] Both scores are capped based on the cost of food and gas in the applicant's community of residence. The cost of groceries is a reasonable way to determine the applicant's access to store-bought food if subsistence use is restricted, and the cost of gasoline is a reasonable way to measure the applicant's ability to access alternative game hunts through gasoline-powered vehicles such as cars and snowmachines. The residency caps are also reasonable. These caps are designed to measure the relative availability of alternative food; the fact that an individual applicant may purchase most of his food in a location that is more expensive than where he lives simply indicates that that applicant is not making the most cost-effective use of the alternative sources of food available to him. A community-wide cap makes sense because the cost of food and gas in that location is the same for all applicants. Manning argues that these criteria are not narrowly tailored because criteria based on income would be a more accurate measure of dependence on subsistence hunting. The Board rejected using income as a criterion after serious consideration. [43] The primary difficulty with an income classification is that there is evidence in the record that in rural areas members of wealthier households are often the primary subsistence hunters. They share their harvest with poorer members of the community who are unable to hunt for themselves but who depend on the game to meet their basic necessities of life. [44] Therefore, income criteria would not necessarily correspond to the neediness of the end-consumer of the meat, and income-based classifications would not necessarily be more narrowly tailored than the food and gas criteria for achieving the State's purposes. Moreover, income-based criteria would involve costly and time-consuming evaluation of individual financial data for thousands of Alaskans. [45] To most precisely measure an applicant's ability to pay for store-bought food, the Board would have to take into account not just the applicant's taxable income, but other measures of wealth and net worth in a complicated calculation similar to college financial aid determinations or individualized child support awards under Alaska Civil Rule 90.3. We conclude that the food and gas criteria in 5 AAC 92.070(b)(2) and (3) are narrowly tailored and designed for the least possible infringement on article VIII's open access values. [46] They therefore survive constitutional review even if subjected to demanding scrutiny.