Court Opinion

ID: 9789016
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:24:35.07838+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:18.646883
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
dissenting in part.
The main question posed by this case is whether 5 AAC 92.070(b)(1), (2), and (3), which enumerate criteria for determining who qualifies for Tier II subsistence hunt permits, are valid. I conclude that none of the challenged criteria contribute to the statutorily required individualized determination of which applicants most need a subsistence permit to meet their food needs. The regulations are therefore inconsistent with the subsistence use statute and should be invalidated.
This appeal involves a challenge to regulations 5 AAC 92.070(b)(1), (2), and (3). Normally, when reviewing an administrative regulation, this court limits its examination to “(1) whether the regulation is reasonable and not arbitrary; and (2) whether the regulation is consistent with the statute and reasonably *1230necessary to its purposes.”1 While a rational basis standard would apply if the “issue involve[d] agency expertise or the determination of fundamental policy questions on subjects committed to an agency,” generally, as here, determining whether a regulation is consistent with a statute is a question “of statutory interpretation to which we should apply our independent judgment.”2 We reach constitutional issues only when a case “cannot be fairly decided on statutory or other grounds.”3 Since in my view none of the challenged regulations are consistent with the subsistence use statute, we need not reach the issue of whether or not the regulations are constitutional.
The subsistence use statute requires that when determining which subsistence uses to allow, the Board “distinguish among subsistence users”4 in part by making a determination about “the ability of the subsistence user to obtain food if subsistence use is restricted or eliminated.”5 As this language indicates, the statute requires the Board to make individualized, user-by-user determinations of who is best able to obtain food from non-subsistence sources.
None of the challenged regulations assist the Board in making the statutorily required individualized determinations. The “game ratio” in 5 AAC 92.070(b)(1) does not advance an individualized determination of who can best obtain alternate food in part because, as Judge Tan pointed out, it is not an accurate method of measuring access to other game.6 The other two challenged portions of the regulation, 5 AAC 92.070(b)(2) and (3), which award points that are capped according to the cost of food and gasoline in the community nearest the. applicant’s residence, presume that an individual’s ability to secure food is governed by community-based costs. While food and fuel costs undoubtedly have a slight impact on an applicant’s ability to obtain food, differentials in prices are much less determinative of a subsistence applicant’s ability to access other sources of food than are differentials in income.7
*1231In McDowell v. State, we acknowledged that the subsistence use statute then in effect had the important purpose of “ensuring] that those Alaskans who need to engage in subsistence hunting and fishing in order to provide for their basic necessities are able to do so.”8 We concluded that the urban/rural distinction drawn by the statute was an “extremely crude” means “to accomplish this purpose.”9 While the subsistence use statute has changed somewhat in the intervening years, its purpose of ensuring that Alaskans who need to are allowed to engage in subsistence activities remains the same. The food and gas criteria, just like the rural/urban criterion, are extremely crude means of determining who most needs to engage in subsistence activities. In my opinion they are of such slight relevance to the question of individual need as to be inconsistent with the purpose of the statute. Because the criteria fail to withstand the standard of review normally applied to regulations, they should be invalidated.
In order to advance the statute’s purpose of making an individualized determination of who among subsistence applicants is least able to access alternative sources of food, the Board needs to take into account applicants’ income. While it is the province of the Board to draft new regulations, one way for the Board to obtain income information would be to ask applicants to list their adjusted gross income as reported on their most recent tax return.10
The state and subsistence users have raised concerns about the fairness and feasibility of using income as a criterion for determining which applicants receive Tier II permits. An income-based criterion can be structured to address many of the concerns raised. For instance, since the cost of living does affect (although it does not determine) a person’s ability to obtain food, the Board could decide to adjust each applicant’s income to account for cost-of-living differentials. As for the point that members of wealthier rural households are often the primary subsistence hunters who then share with poorer members of the community, the Board can create regulations that take into account the income of those who rely upon the applicant for food. If the Board is worried about applicants manipulating the process by having poorer household members apply for permits, it can order occasional audits to make sure that those people doing the hunting are the ones in whose names the permits were issued.
Many of the objections made to an income criterion are also overstated. For instance, an income criterion is not uniquely manipulable. Under a portion of the subsistence regulations not challenged in this appeal, the Board already asks applicants to report how long they have hunted or eaten meat from a *1232specific game population. This presents a ready opportunity for the unscrupulous to stretch the truth. An income criterion would serve as an improvement, since applicants will be less able to mislead when their answers are easily verifiable by reference to their tax returns. When the Board considered an income criterion, it also expressed concerns that asking for income information would compromise the privacy interests of applicants. However, the Tier II Subsistence Hunting Permit Application already asks applicants to provide their social security numbers, which are also sensitive personal information. Presumably the Board has privacy safeguards in place that could be applied to income information.
Finally, the Board has objected to the administrative burden it believes an income criterion would create. In the words of one Department of Fish and Game analyst, “[w]e don’t want to be in the business of collecting income tax return forms for 20,000 Alaskans and — and process that every year.” However, an income criterion would not necessarily result in the Board being inundated by tax returns from all applicants. Having asked applicants both to include their adjusted gross income on the permit application form and to provide the Board with permission to obtain a copy of the applicant’s tax return, the Board could limit its acquisition of tax returns to those circumstances in which it wished to verify an applicant’s income response.
For the reasons stated, the challenged regulations are not consistent with the subsistence use statute. They therefore should be invalidated.

. Lauth v. State, 12 P.3d 181, 184 (Alaska 2000) (internal quotation marks omitted).

. O’Callaghan v. Rue, 996 P.2d 88, 94 (Alaska 2000).

. State, Dep't of Health & Soc. Servs. v. Valley Hosp. Ass'n Inc., 116 P.3d 580, 584 (Alaska 2005).

. AS 16.05.258(b)(4)(B).

. AS 16.05.258(b)(4)(B)(iii).

. 5 AAC 92.070(b)(1) also violates article VIII, section 3 of the Alaska Constitution. In State v. Kenaitze Indian Tribe, we explained that becaus.e-section 3 "reserves ‘to the people for common use’ wild fish and game ‘[w]herever occurring,' ” it is “particularly strong in requiring that proximity to the resource be a neutral factor." 894 P.2d 632, 638-39, n. 21 (Alaska 1995) (quoting Alaska Const, art. VIII, § 3). Based on section 3, we concluded in Kenaitze that "eligibility to participate in Tier II subsistence hunting and fishing cannot be based on how close one lives to a given fish or animal population.” Id. at 638. As currently written, 5 AAC 92.070(b)(1) provides a cap on the number of points an applicant for a Tier II permit can receive. The cap is determined in part by the amount of game hunters from the applicant’s community harvested from “all reasonably accessible game hunts,” with “reasonably accessible” defined as within 150 miles. It is true that the proximity factor employed by AS 16.05.258(b)(4)(B)(ii), which we invalidated in Kenaitze, and the factor used in 5 AAC 92.070(b)(1) are calculated differently: AS 16.05.258(b)(4)(B)(ii) denied applicants Tier II subsistence permits if they resided too far away from a specific fish or game population, whereas 5 AAC 92.070(b)(1) operates to deny applicants permits if they live too close to alternative fish or game populations frequently harvested by members of their community. Despite the differences in calculation, both the previously invalidated portion of the statute and the currently challenged regulation involve consideration of impermissible proximity factors and are, in my opinion, unconstitutional. The plurality opinion’s proposed alternative for 5 AAC 92.070(b)(1), namely "a community cap based directly on the availability of other big game hunts reasonably accessible to a given community,” (At 1224) operates to make the impermissible proximity calculation even more obvious and does nothing to correct the constitutional infirmity.

.This can be understood by thinking about two people, one living in Anchorage and one living in Dillingham, a community where food costs much more than it does in Anchorage. University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service, Cost of Food at Home for a Week in Alaska (June 1999), available at http://www.uaf.edu/coop-ext/ fcs/FCS_June_1999.htm (listing the cost to feed a family of four for a week as $100 in Anchorage as opposed to $174 in Dillingham, which amounts to $5,200 and $9,048 a year, respectively). If the person in Dillingham is a member of one of the community's 150 households with an *1231annual income of over $100,000, that person has a much better ability to obtain food, even with the difference in food prices, than does a member of one of the 11,822 households in Anchorage with an annual income of less than $20,000 a year. U.S. Census 2000 data about household income in 1999, available at http://factfinder. census.gov. Specifically, in these examples, the Dillingham resident must expend only about 9% of household income for food, whereas food expenses for the Anchorage resident amount to 28% or more of household income.
The same analysis applies if one compares Anchorage with communities in the Copper River Basin. People in both of these areas have easy access to the Nelchina caribou herd, the game population that has prompted the litigation in this and other cases. The difference in how much it costs to feed a family of four in Anchorage ($5,200 a year) and the Copper River Basin ($6,292 a year) is not as great as the difference between Anchorage and Dillingham, yet the same conclusion can be reached. Cost of Food at Home. If the person in the Copper River Basin is, for instance, a member of one of the 20 households in Glennallen with an income over $100,000, that person is much better able to obtain food than the person in Anchorage with an income of less than $20,000 a year. U.S. Census 2000 data about household income in 1999, available at http://factfinder.census.gov. The Glennallen resident would be spending around 6% of household income for food, as opposed to the 28% or more of household income devoted to food by the Anchorage resident.

. 785 P.2d 1,10 (Alaska 1989).

. Id.

. Applicants whose income is such that they do not need to file a tax return could so state on their application. Current thresholds generally are $8,200 for a single person and $16,400 for a married couple. Presumably applicants whose income is below these thresholds would meet any income-based eligibility criteria.