[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 24 (Wednesday, February 7, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S701-S702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    REMEMBERING WILLIAM J. VAN NESS

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to pay tribute 
to William J. Van Ness, an individual who was instrumental in the 
maturation and development of Alaska as a State and who passed away 
last November.
  Bill's contributions to Alaska began in 1966 when he joined the staff 
of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, the 
predecessor to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, under the 
chairmanship of Senator Henry ``Scoop'' Jackson.
  As special counsel and later chief counsel for the committee, Bill 
was one of the architects of the settlement of the aboriginal land 
claims of Alaska Natives, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 
1971, as well as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Act of 1973. The enactment 
of these foundational laws has enabled Alaska to achieve many of the 
promises of our statehood.
  As an Alaskan, a Senator representing Alaska, and the current 
chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, I was 
saddened to learn of Bill's passing, but am proud to help recognize his 
contributions to our state.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an essay made 
possible by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, which Bill served as 
president of from 1988 until 2008. The essay, which appeared on 
HistoryLink.org, highlights many of Bill's accomplishments.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       HistoryLink: Van Ness, William J. ``Bill'' Jr. (1938-2017)

       Seattle attorney William J. ``Bill'' Van Ness Jr. worked 
     under U.S. Senator Henry ``Scoop'' Jackson (1912-1983) from 
     1966 to 1977 on the U.S. Senate Committee on Interior and 
     Insular Affairs. He served first as special counsel and then, 
     beginning in 1970, as chief counsel. During his tenure he 
     drafted several pieces of key environmental legislation that 
     became law, including the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act 
     (ANCSA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).


                              Early Years

       Bill Van Ness Jr. was born on January 20, 1938, in Wolf 
     Point, Montana, the son of William J. Van Ness and Mary 
     Armyda Thomas. About 1942 the family moved to Port Orchard 
     (Kitsap County), where his father took a job at the Bremerton 
     Naval Yard. They stayed for three years in Port Orchard, then 
     moved to Chimacum, Washington, (Jefferson County), a small, 
     unincorporated community located about eight miles south of 
     Port Townsend. Van Ness attended his early years of grade 
     school in Port Townsend, and graduated from Chimacum High 
     School in 1956.
       He worked full time for a couple of years to pay for 
     college, and graduated from Bellingham's Western Washington 
     State College (now [2011] Western Washington University) in 
     1962 with a double major in English and Philosophy. After 
     graduation Van Ness worked for a year, then went to law 
     school at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he 
     served as articles editor on the UW Law Review in his final 
     year. In 1966 he graduated near the top of his class, and 
     attracted the notice of some of his law professors, who ended 
     up steering his career in a different direction than he was 
     planning.


                         A Different Direction

       Van Ness had a Sterling fellowship to go to Yale Law 
     School, and his goal was to get a J.S.D. in Law and become a 
     law professor. But he first needed to get a job to pay his 
     college bills. He was thinking of staying in Seattle, but 
     soon got a phone call that changed it all. Evidently one or 
     more of his law professors had spotted the young graduate's 
     potential and passed this information on to U.S. Senator 
     Henry ``Scoop'' Jackson. Jackson had become chairman of the 
     Senate's Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs (now the 
     Committee on Energy and Natural Resources) in 1963, and now 
     invited Van Ness to interview for a position as special 
     counsel on the committee.
       Van Ness wasn't a particular fan of politics and wasn't 
     particularly interested in moving to Washington, D.C., 
     either, but he needed a job, so he took the interview. He 
     liked what he saw in Jackson, and described his first 
     impressions in a June 2011 interview: ``He was a hell of a 
     nice man, with an open mind, and full of common sense'' (Phil 
     Dougherty interview). Jackson was likewise impressed, and 
     offered Van Ness the job. He accepted and moved with his 
     family to the other Washington in August 1966.
       He found the issues and opportunities presented in his new 
     position invigorating and challenging.


                       Alaska Native Land Claims

       One of Van Ness's first assignments involved structuring a 
     settlement of the longstanding Alaska Native land claims. He 
     began his research in the autumn of 1966 and soon found that 
     there was virtually no information on who the Alaska Natives 
     were, what their claims were, or even how many Alaska Natives 
     there were. Realizing that far more in-depth research was 
     necessary, he got authority to commission the Federal Field 
     Committee for Development Planning to do a study. This 
     committee, which had been formed to deal with reconstruction 
     in southern Alaska after the great Alaska earthquake of 1964, 
     prepared a comprehensive 565-page report in 1968 titled 
     ``Alaska Natives and the Land,'' which addressed virtually 
     all factual questions which could be asked about the Alaska 
     Native issue.
       That same year oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, 
     which made settling Alaska Native land claims more urgent. 
     Thus the timing of the committee's report, completed late in 
     1968, couldn't have been better. It became the basis for 
     hearings and eventually shaped legislation (which Van Ness 
     drafted and Jackson introduced into the Senate) that became 
     known as the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). 
     Congress passed the act and it was signed by President 
     Richard Nixon (1913-1994) in December 1971.
       ANCSA was a wide-ranging act that paid $962 million to 
     Alaska Natives in exchange for their claims to many of their 
     native lands. The act also transferred approximately 45 
     million acres of federal land to 12 regional and some 200 
     village corporations in the state (a 13th regional 
     corporation was later set up in Seattle to handle claims of 
     Alaska Natives no longer living in Alaska). These 
     corporations were formed under the act to manage the lands 
     and to create for-profit business ventures. Since 1971 the 
     Alaska Native corporations have become an important part of 
     Alaska's economy and provide thousands of jobs to Alaskans as 
     well as millions of dollars for scholarships and cultural 
     programs. In 2009 total revenues for the dozen regional 
     corporations in Alaska were more than $7.2 billion.


                National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

       In 1967 Van Ness took on another project which eventually 
     became the National Environmental Policy Act, more commonly 
     known by its acronym NEPA. Environmental issues were coming 
     to the forefront in 1960s America, but they were dealt with 
     by multiple agencies with different priorities and approaches 
     that often arrived at conflicting positions. Van Ness 
     realized that there needed to be a process to identify all of 
     the positions and then pinpoint the common goals to provide a 
     basis for a better plan of action and better federal policy 
     and decision-making.
       Jackson, along with Representative John Dingell (b. 1926) 
     of Michigan and others, had introduced legislation in 
     Congress in 1966 to establish an environmental policy 
     council. Van Ness took it a step further. In 1967 he prepared 
     a memo to Jackson that argued the need for a comprehensive 
     national environmental policy, pointing out that there might 
     be one in the future in any event. He drafted legislation 
     that eventually became Senate Bill (S.) 1075, the template 
     for NEPA, and added that his draft was vetted by fellow 
     committee member Daniel Dreyfus: ``He had experience that I 
     didn't have, and kept me grounded in reality. And he was a 
     great critic'' (Dougherty interview). In 1968 Van Ness helped 
     draft an additional report that outlined the need for a 
     uniform approach to national environmental policy. With this 
     background in place, Jackson introduced S. 1075 in the Senate 
     in February 1969.
       The concept of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), 
     now a key component of NEPA, was introduced in April 1969 
     during Senate hearings on the bill. The purpose of the EIS is 
     to require federal agencies to provide analytic review of 
     proposed major federal actions that would have a significant 
     impact on the surrounding environment. The EIS must identify 
     and address the environmental impact (particularly adverse 
     environmental effects) of the proposed action and examine 
     alternatives to it. Van Ness, assisted by Dreyfus, drafted 
     the EIS requirement, which ultimately became Section 102 of 
     NEPA. ``Nobody seemed to pay much attention to it'' [at the 
     time], remarked Van Ness. ``I wanted the EIS to be short 
     enough to be easily read and understood by cabinet officers 
     and other federal decision makers'' (Dougherty interview).
       The Senate passed S. 1075 in July and referred the bill to 
     the House, which had conducted hearings earlier in the year 
     on a similar bill introduced by Dingell. The House passed 
     Dingell's bill (H.R. 12549) in September, after which the two 
     bills went to a joint Senate-House committee to hammer out 
     their differences. This was accomplished in December 1969, 
     and the House and Senate both passed the final version of the 
     act the week before Christmas. President Richard Nixon signed 
     NEPA into law on January 1, 1970.
       Today NEPA is regarded as a milestone in environmental 
     legislation. It provides transparency and discipline for 
     decision-making in a process that is open to the public. NEPA 
     legislation has since been adopted by many states (including 
     Washington state) as well as by other nations.


              The Alaska Pipeline and Energy Conservation

       Van Ness took the lead in drafting two other significant 
     acts that were enacted in

[[Page S702]]

     the 1970s: the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act and 
     the Energy Policy Conservation Act. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline 
     Authorization Act resulted from the discovery of oil at 
     Prudhoe Bay in 1968. There was plenty of oil but no reliable 
     way to get it to the lower 48 states. Oil companies 
     determined that the cheapest way would be to build a pipeline 
     through Alaska from the Arctic Ocean to Valdez, where the oil 
     could then be shipped south.
       Environmentalists fiercely resisted construction of a 
     pipeline through Alaska. It took the 1973 Arab oil embargo 
     and resulting gas shortages to tip the scales in favor of 
     legislation authorizing construction. ``It's doubtful it 
     would've passed if people weren't forced to sit in long gas 
     lines,'' Van Ness observed (Dougherty interview). Even then 
     the Senate deadlocked when the act came up for a vote, and it 
     took a tie-breaker vote by Vice President Spiro Agnew (1918-
     1996) to break the deadlock. President Nixon signed the act 
     in November 1973.
       The Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), introduced 
     by Senator Jackson in February 1975, was probably the least 
     controversial of the four acts discussed in this essay, and 
     ``fairly straightforward,'' commented Van Ness (Dougherty 
     interview). It passed the Senate in April, the House in 
     September, and President Gerald Ford (1913-2006) signed it in 
     December 1975. EPCA created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, 
     mandated automobile fuel economy standards, and extended oil 
     price controls until 1979.


                     Moving On to Private Practice

       By 1977, Van Ness had decided it was time for a change. He 
     had actually considered leaving sooner: ``I tried to leave 
     numerous times to go practice law, but Scoop was very 
     persuasive. He was a fun guy to work with--great instincts 
     and a great mind. Every time I tried to leave he always 
     persuaded me to stay two more years. The last time I sent him 
     a memo and was pretty firm that it was time for me to move 
     on'' (Dougherty interview).
       Van Ness established the firm of Van Ness, Feldman, Curtis 
     and Sutcliffe in 1977, partnering with three other attorneys 
     who had also worked as counsel or chief counsel to various 
     committees in both the House and Senate. The firm specialized 
     in handling energy, environmental, and transportation issues; 
     one of its first clients was the Arctic Slope Regional 
     Corporation. He also registered as a lobbyist, but this was 
     not the central focus of the firm's work. ``None of us [at 
     the firm] wanted to be known as a lobbyist,'' he explained. 
     ``We wanted to be known as legislative craftsmen who know the 
     process in the House and Senate and can achieve substantive 
     results'' (Dougherty interview). Curtis and Sutcliffe 
     eventually moved on, but Howard Feldman remained with the 
     firm, which became known as Van Ness Feldman.
       In 1988 Van Ness returned to Seattle, opening an office of 
     the firm in the Emerald City the following year. Also in 1988 
     he became president of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, a 
     position he held until 2008. The foundation, formed in 1983 
     after Jackson's sudden death, makes grants and develops 
     initiatives in four areas reflecting issues that Jackson was 
     involved in during his years in Congress: international 
     affairs education, environmental and natural resource 
     management, human rights, and public service. Since it was 
     established, the foundation has committed more than $22 
     million to nonprofit organizations and educational 
     institutions in both the United States and Russia.
       Van Ness also served on the Board of Directors for the 
     University of Washington Medical School for nine years, 
     during a time that the U.S. Department of Justice brought 
     litigation against the UW, alleging massive billing fraud in 
     overbilling government insurance programs such as Medicare 
     and Medicaid. In 2004 the UW and the Department of Justice 
     agreed to a $35 million settlement, but the story remained 
     hot in the press. Later that year the UW Medicine Board named 
     Van Ness head of a committee to review the weaknesses that 
     led to the billing problems and to make recommendations to 
     prevent a recurrence. ``The committee's review was thorough, 
     frank and, in some instances, scathing,'' reported The 
     Seattle Times when the report came out in 2005. ``But it put 
     the issue to bed,'' concluded Van Ness (Dougherty interview).
       Van Ness married Patricia ``Pat'' O'Meara (b. 1940) in 1959 
     and they had four children: Tamara, Keith, Douglas, and 
     Justin. Into his seventies Van Ness went into his law office 
     several days a week and worked from home as needed. When not 
     working he enjoyed spending time at his beach cabin on 
     Marrowstone Island in Jefferson County with his 
     grandchildren, gardening, wood-carving, and fishing in 
     Alaska. Bill Van Ness died on November 22, 2017, at age 79.

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I join my colleague from Alaska today in 
honoring Bill Van Ness. Chairman Murkowski has identified some of the 
significant contributions that Bill made to Alaska and Alaskans. I 
would like to focus specifically on one of those contributions, the 
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act or ANCSA, and the role that law has 
played in improving the lives of Alaska's Native people. Through ANCSA, 
the State of Alaska, the Federal Government, and the Alaska Native 
community reached a settlement regarding aboriginal claims to lands and 
resources throughout the State. Alaska Natives set aside those claims 
in exchange for nearly $1 billion and the right to select approximately 
45 million acres of land.
  Bill's creativity is evident in the manner in which ANCSA addressed 
the fundamental question of how to ensure that the thousands of 
individual Alaska Natives received their fair share of the settlement 
funds and lands. To answer that question, ANCSA authorized the creation 
of corporations, in which Alaska Natives are the sole shareholders, to 
receive the funds and hold title to the selected lands. For the most 
part, this corporate structure has proved to be very beneficial to the 
Alaska Native shareholders and to the State of Alaska.
  In this regard, I point to the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, 
ASRC, which is owned by Alaska Native people who have inhabited the 
North Slope of Alaska for thousands of years. With strong leadership 
from its shareholders, officers, and board members, ASRC has grown into 
a multibillion dollar enterprise that is Alaska's largest domestic 
company and that provides dividends to its nearly 13,000 Alaska Native 
shareholder, as well as many jobs to shareholders and other Alaskans. 
Bill Van Ness's contributions as an author of ANCSA and later as a 
private attorney representing ASRC were keys to ASRC's success story.

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