[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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