The People of Alaska vs. The Legislature
Part VII: The People’s Constitutional Covenant and the Quieting of Title
By Michael Tavoliero
The Alaska Constitution begins with a simple but foundational truth: all political power is inherent in the people. Government exists only because the people consent to it, and it remains legitimate only so long as it protects the rights that precede it. These rights, the ability to think, choose, act, work, and build a life, come not from the State, but are God-given. The Constitution does not grant them; it recognizes them.
From this foundational principle flows Alaska’s unique system of natural resource ownership. Article VIII establishes that Alaska’s land, waters, and resource wealth are held in public trust. The State is the trustee; the people are the beneficiaries. The Permanent Fund, and the earnings it generates, are therefore not state property in the private sense; they are public inheritance, held and managed for the maximum benefit of the people.
The Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) arose as the practical means by which the trust obligation is fulfilled. When the state created the PFD in 1980 and began distribution in 1982, it did so on the clear understanding that the people were not passive recipients, but beneficial owners entitled to share directly in their commonwealth. For more than forty years, the State has repeated that recognition annually, publicly, and without interruption. Through this long practice, the people’s relationship to the PFD has taken on the character of possessory right. It is a right confirmed by participation, continuity, and reliance.
A Covenant Formed Through Practice and Trust
A covenant is more than a promise. It is a mutual obligation that gains strength through continuity and trust. The PFD has become exactly that. Four decades of open and repeated practice have woven the dividend into the fabric of civic life. The PFD is a component of family budgets, local economies, school clothing and heating oil, savings and debt payments, investments and stability. The people built their expectations not on speculation, but on the State’s own unwavering conduct.
In Alaska law, this matters. Courts recognize that when people rely on consistent and affirmative government action, the State cannot reverse its position without causing injustice. This principle is known as equitable estoppel. The Alaska Supreme Court has applied it to government conduct where:
- The government has made a clear and repeated representation,
- People have relied on it in good faith,
- That reliance was reasonable, and
- Harm would result if the government were allowed to repudiate it.
Every year since 1982, the State has affirmed the PFD. Every family, every household, every child who has grown up in Alaska has relied on it. To now treat the PFD as a mere fiscal option instead of a recognized civic share breaks the covenant the State, itself, established.
The shift to the Percent of Market Value (POMV) draw was not a reform of the Permanent Fund itself, nor was it a constitutional amendment. It was a budgetary device adopted by a legislature which allowed elected officials to relabel the people’s share as a revenue source for government, reframing a trust distribution as discretionary spending. In doing so, the State reversed its own decades-long acknowledgment that the people are beneficiaries, not dependents. The device did not change the nature of the right; it merely moved the line on paper while leaving the constitutional obligation unaltered.
To allow the POMV to justify withholding the dividend is to treat mismanagement as authority and to confuse temporary fiscal convenience with rightful ownership. The covenant has already been lived. The people’s share has already been possessed. The right stands whether the legislature balances its books or not.
Practice Matures into Right
Alaska’s legal history reinforces this idea: longstanding and unchallenged practice carries legal weight.
- In Ravin v. State (1975), the Alaska Supreme Court held that the right to privacy in the home was not given by government but recognized because Alaskans had long exercised it.
- In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the U.S. Supreme Court held that parental authority over education was a fundamental liberty because it had been continuously exercised and socially affirmed.
- In Sturgeon v. Frost (2016, 2019), the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed Alaska’s sovereign possession over its navigable waters because the State had openly and continuously exercised that authority.
These cases share one principle: rights openly lived and broadly recognized become rights the State must respect.
The PFD is no different. For more than forty years, Alaskans have received it openly, continuously, publicly, and with the State’s affirmation. This is the very pattern by which a civil right becomes established in constitutional practice.
Quantifying the Right: The Importance of the Formula
A right must have a boundary to be secure. For a possessory right, that boundary is the formula; the method that determines the amount of the dividend. The original PFD formula was not dependent on annual legislative discretion. It did not say, “if convenient.” It operated automatically once earnings were realized.
A right that can be withheld at will is not a right; it is a dependency. A share that can be diluted without consent is not ownership; it is allowance.
Thus, to preserve the people’s beneficial interest, the formula must be restored and protected. This is the constitutional equivalent of marking the boundary line around property already possessed. It is not to gain something new, but to secure what has long been held.
Quieting Title in the People’s Name
In property law, a quiet title action is used to formally confirm ownership after long, uncontested possession. It does not create the right; it recognizes and protects a right that already exists. The court declares:
This belongs to the one who has held it in fact.
The PFD has reached that stage. The people have held their share of the Permanent Fund’s earnings in fact, continuously, openly, and with the State’s acknowledgment, for over forty years. The right has matured. It has passed the threshold of mere policy and entered the realm of civic title.
To “quiet title” to the PFD is to recognize the people’s long-held beneficial ownership interest and protect it from future political erosion. It is not radical. It is restorative.
Conclusion: The Covenant Stands
The PFD was never meant to be a temporary program or a discretionary subsidy. It was designed, and practiced, as a continuing share in the commonwealth, rooted in the Constitution’s command that resources be managed for the maximum benefit of the people.
For over four decades, Alaskans have possessed that share in practice, in reliance, and in mutual trust. That possession has matured into a civic right, one confirmed by the State itself through its consistent conduct.
To secure that right, now, is not to invent or grant anything. It is simply to recognize and protect what already belongs to the people.
Check out previous articles in The Great Debate: The People of Alaska vs the Legislature:
Part I: Inflation-Proofing: Where’s the Problem?
Part III: The 49 Forward Plan Takes the Permanent Fund Backwards
Part IV: The PFD and the Search for Wisdom
Part V: Ghost Busting: Dispelling Anti-PFD Phantoms
Part VI: The People’s Possession: Alaska’s Ownership of the Permanent Fund Dividend