The Daily Alaska Empire

BETTER STATEHOOD
BILL WILL PASS THIS
SESSION: SUNDBORG

An improved statehood bill will steamroll into the Senate this session and be passed, according to George Sundborg, consultant for the Alaska Development Board.

Sundborg returned from Washington this weekend after testifying in behalf of statehood before the Senate committee. After hearings were concluded, proposed amendments to H.R. 331, the bill which passed the House last month, were brought up by several Senators.

Opinion of those with whom Sundborg talked was that there was time for the bill to be amplified and the kinks taken out, and still get through the upper house and go back to the House of Representatives.

He said that W. C. Arnold, head of the Alaska Salmon Industries, Inc., who spearheaded the attack on H.R. 331, gave an excellent presentation of his company's viewpoint, and that he (Arnold) wished William Baker, Ketchikan publisher, would be called to testify a second time on behalf of statehood.

Committee members cringed Sundborg said, when Baker brought up "vote trading" which Alaskan Senators could indulge in if they were in the nation's capital.

"If he'd only be called back," Sundborg quoted Arnold as saying, "we'd beat this statehood bill for certain."

The board consultant said he was surprised that no Alaskans who oppose statehood showed up to testify. Only ones present were from outside, he said.

He said that proponents of the measure got into the record that the salmon industries were "against statehood"-not simply H.R. 331, about which they are on record in the 19th session of the Alaska Legislature.