Gov. Mike Dunleavy expedited the release of the remaining $20 million in federal CARES Act funding for the Municipality of Anchorage.
The intent is to have the funds distributed to Anchorage-based businesses during the Acting Mayor of Anchorage’s Emergency Order 16 that goes into effect Dec. 1.
“Anchorage businesses, particularly the hospitality industry, are about to enter an exceptionally difficult time that will trigger an overwhelming need for financial relief to meet payroll and keep the doors open during the holiday season,” Dunleavy said.
“I respectfully encourage the members of the Anchorage Assembly and Acting Mayor Quinn-Davidson to take this opportunity to use the CARES Act funds for their highest and best purpose,” he said.
Guidance from the Unites States Department of Treasury states that CARES Act funds must be expended or encumbered before Dec. 30, 2020.
The Governor’s action is predicated on the understanding that Alaska’s largest community is positioned to expend the funds already allocated to it for emergency use prior to the federal deadline.
“With the release of this third payment, Anchorage will have received a total of $156 million of Alaska’s CARES Act funds, said DCCED Commissioner Julie Anderson.
“I commend Gov. Dunleavy’s decision to waive the 80th percentile spending requirement for Anchorage and believe the third payment of $20 million can provide significant relief to the businesses that have been shut down as a result of Emergency Order 16 in Anchorage.
A final determination on how the funds are distributed will be made by the Anchorage Assembly and the mayor’s office.
Past CARES Act funds have gone to a variety of things, including building trail building, the Anchorage Parks Foundation, and to purchase buildings for vagrant services.
I would not have begged anything I would have told the assembly this is what you are going to use this money for and if you deviate in any way we shut you down.
1. He is silent and impotent in his leadership across the board.
2. Anchorage obviously is facing a Constitutional crisis because of a Leftist Assembly and Acting Mayor’s unlawful and highly destructive acts.
3. Said Leftists still have not met the 80% spend amount to qualify for the last pay out.
4. Said Leftists have not spent near enough money and hold tens of millions of dollars while shuttering businesses and instituting socialist voucher programs.
5. Yet, the Governor WAIVES the 80% limit and gives them even more millions of dollars.
Is anyone else coming to the conclusion the Governor is actually complicit in all of this?
Is it time for the State Legislature to look into their Constitutional powers to rectify the elections, intervene in Anchorage, and at the least do a vote of “No Confidence” in the Governor?
I am ready now to sign the recall of Dunleavy petition…where do I sign.
Well but sadly said, Johnny.
I think that like many Republicans and non-leftists in general nowadays, Governor Dunleavy allows himself to be cowed and intimidated by the arrogant self-righteous demands, threats, and false claims to the moral high ground of the reactionary radical left. He is indeed a sorry excuse for a governor. For all his narcissism and crudeness, I will at least give Trump credit for standing up and not knuckling under to the self-righteous pontifications of those on the radical left.
The Leftists of the Anchorage Assembly will skim off a significant chunk of this money for government, their preferred non-profits and other cronies. This is all about power and control.
This is and will be a case study in the “you get what you vote for” quote. The people of Los Anchorage have voted for a group of people who don’t think highly of private industry. The Governor is releasing funds early, even though these elected representatives have already proven they do not understand how to spend it, in the hopes that they will do what is right. The clock is ticking, they have 30 days. Sadly Los Anchorage voters will probably vote these same people in next time, even after they squander this money and will likely actively ensure a large part of it will not go towards those who need it most, the businesses they are impacting.
It’s not just Anchorage, not at all. The Alaska Left believes that all prosperity and economy is derived from government. They repeat that continually, and at some point we must conclude that they believe it. It’s not just the Anchorage Assembly, it’s the wide community surrounding UAF, the entire community of Juneau, majorities in Ketchikan and Sitka, and the political arm of the Alaska bush. Their efforts are financially supported by public employee unions, municipal governments and their lobbyists, nonprofits that depend upon government funding, and much of the Alaska media. These people believe any profit is dishonest, and they express that in a wide variety of ways and venues, including the floors of the Alaska House and Senate, and in media news reports. They have been teaching Alaska children for a generation. They never saw a tax or a tax increase they did not like. They cannot see any reason to mine or drill for oil, and most of them don’t even like cruise ship tourism – calling it industrial tourism. They abhor resource development on public land. They see the demise of the Alaska forest products industry as an achievement. They like commercial fishing so long as it’s done from small boats, especially if a woman is the skipper and permit holder. Tensions within this huge interest group are rarely revealed (in no small part because of media duplicity and dishonesty) but there are examples such as AFN not knowing whether to support the Green New Deal or North Slope Borough oil interests, and environmentalists not supporting state and municipal capital construction but not being allowed to create a rift between trade unions and public employee unions. Right now these people are licking their wounds after defeats with the oil tax measure and the Alaska Congressional races. They are working with their legislators and with municipal leaders to make sure they bring enactment of a state income tax. And they await the Dunleavy 2022 budget.
Excellent.
well said!
Don’t lump all of us into this Cabal Assembly, I live in Chugiak and did not elect any of these ID10T’s. Hopefully this will speed up the EaglExit
The Governor is BEGGING.
AQD (mayor with zero votes) and Forrest Dunbar, Felix Rivera, and Chris Constant will now have $20,000,000 more dollars to encourage alcoholic drug addicts to move to Anchorage, and to expand the Homeless Industrial Complex.
I doubt that their first choice will be to spend the money on businesses and people about to become unemployed.
What a boon for our Assembly. Another $20,000,000 to flagrantly misspend on their fiscally irresponsible pet projects.
Our Assembly has made clear the disdain and contempt with which they hold the hard-working people of Anchorage. They’ll blow Dunleavy’s compassionate largesse (paid for by you and I via our federal tax payer dollars) on another asinine feel-good project that does nothing to help people thrown out of work by their fear mongering policies.
What a waste.
I cannot agree with you more, Jen!
Indeed, it is to their everlasting shame, and a demonstration of the profound disregard that our Los Anchorage overlords have for their peon subjects, that tens of millions of dollars of CARES Act funds have not long ago ALREADY been disbursed to struggling small businesses and select individuals, as was the original intent of the CARES Act in the first place. But no, they have so far released only a paltry $6 million to those most in need of it, the intended recipients of those funds, preferring to fund a veritable wish-list of unassociated and frivolous pet projects instead. Every member of the municipal assembly who voted to spend the CARES Act funds in this reckless and feckless manner should have already been recalled for their gross violation of the public trust.
So the alleged leader of Alaska, “big Mike” Dunleavy is basically pleading with the Muni Assembly to do their job. It’s amazing how much smaller this makes him.
Pathetic. Across the board.
I regret voting for this man. It’s a mistake I won’t make twice
Maybe the money would actually get to the business people if Dunleavy was to skip the middle man, aka the irresponsible Mayor and Assembly. What will these buffoons buy next with the given money? $20 million in ice sculptures?
Agreed, send direct payments directly to
small buisnesses that apply for it..
I voted for Mike, and I have to say, he is a big disappointment.
He was supposed to be “Conservative Big Mike, coming in to kick ass and take names, and put the house in order”….and he has caved at every turn.
We thought he was going to be a breath of fresh air after the fiascos of Palin and Walker.
You may be a nice guy, Mike, but you’re a big wimp.
.
Now you’re reduced to respectively begging the likes of an unelected, little totalitarian wanna-be, AQD????
Seriously?
Take that money out of the Assembly hands, period. Further take the Assembly member salaries and add to the 20M bucks for businesses.
Finally, track down the assets of Berkowitz and liquidate those funds into the 20M buck pot for Anchorage businesses.
There are many stalwart, principled citizens in the community who could ‘oversee’ this endevour responsibly.
I’m still scratching my head and trying to figure out how and why Anchorage has seemed to suddenly become such a radically leftist place, with a municipal assembly of which almost every member is to the left of Joseph Stalin. Is there something being put into the water in recent years?
Raising communists starts off at a young age. Look no further than the schools, the teachers and the districts.
Most of them aren’t from here, and oh by the way: they hate you.
That is why they do what they do. Any other reasoning someone gives you is just semantics colored in a pleasant way. They literally hate you, and the city you had in the state you had, before they came along. They want to remake it. They need to tear it down to do so.
When they passed the Vote By Mail scheme without Public Voting.
Steven, I think you have nailed it!
I stopped voting in any municipal elections once they passed that stupid and corrupt voting-by-mail measure. Not because of the inevitable manipulation and corruption inherent in it (because those on the left will ALWAYS justify ANYTHING that increases their hold on power), but because it automatically violates the FORMER universally-held principle of the sanctity of the privacy of one’s vote.
I still vote because if I don’t then I cannot complain about anything that is done. I know that most of the time my vote is in vain. My Assembly person Jamie Allard is proposing a ballot measure to let the citizens vote on the Mail In Ballot monstrosity. I for one will help her out to obtain the required signatures to put this on the ballot and have offered my services to her in this endeavor.
Small businesses will be lucky to see 10% of this additional money from the State. More of the same from the assembly and “temporary” mayor.
The small business sector is getting a whole lot smaller, thanks to the fearmongering and lies of the corporate media, and to the spinelessness and sheepishness of the Branch Covidians who gullibly fall for all those lies and all that fearmongering without questioning any of it.
So many thoughts come to mind.
1. Throwing gasoline on a fire. Anchorage will simply burn through the new money with the same leftist uselessness as the previous millions.
2. If it’s not your money, you don’t care what it costs. For some reason we expect the “leadership” in Anchorage to realize there’s value in keeping business open until businesses can open?
3. If you spend the tuition and rent money on pizza and beer, and Dad just sends another check at the end of the month – why pay rent and tuition? You don’t have to change your ways if there are no consequences.
This will never end until we return to paper ballots counted by hand, more stringent ID requirements, no mail-in voting and diligent poll watchers on election day. Otherwise, every municipal and state election is a farce. None of these people running Anchorage now would remain in place if the process is corrected and only valid verified votes counted. Almost nobody wants these people running local government. Something us very wrong.
Yep! Hit the nail on the head
“Gov. Mike Dunleavy expedited the release of the remaining $20 million in federal CARES Act funding for the Municipality of Anchorage. The intent is to have the funds distributed to Anchorage-based businesses during the Acting Mayor of Anchorage’s Emergency Order 16 that goes into effect Dec. 1.”
Yeah, and the intent of the federal CARES Act was the same with the first tranche of $153 million granted to the municipality, yet our illustrious municipal assembly, led by our illustrious former Mayor Bonapartiwitz, couldn’t and still can’t see fit to disburse more than a shameful 3.8% of those original funds to struggling small businesses. Shouldn’t the feds have long ago rightfully cracked down on our rogue municipal overlords, er, assembly for gross violation of the CARES Act guidelines?
Fixable. The state cuts checks directly to anchorage small businesses for 20 million. In turn, the state cuts 20 million that was going to be allocated to anchorage. This will be a win-win. Small businesses get their money and the middle man was cut out of the deal. If anchorage lets the funds expire and they cry to the state, the state’s reply should be you caused this on your own. You figure out why your city government pissed away 20 million.
Fixable. The state cuts checks directly to Anchorage small businesses for 20 million. In turn, the state cuts 20 million that was going to be allocated to anchorage. This will be a win-win. Small businesses get their money and the middle man was cut out of the deal. If Anchorage lets the funds expire and they cry to the state, the state’s reply should be you caused this on your own. You figure out why your city government lost 20 million.
I wonder how much of the relief money could be traced back to cronies of those controlling the purse strings. COVID-19 quid pro quo’s in Anchorage?
A very good political smart move Dunleavy. If he done nothing, the whiny little buttheads will blame him for getting nothing. This way at the end the Anchorage acting mayor and assembly look like THE buttheads!
I for one think Anchorage, both democrats and Rhinos should just suffer and weather the consequences for blindly voting the little tyrants into office, because of lacking character discernment and literacy.
Run, Lora, run!
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We need a Governor with more common sense and and a stronger backbone than Mr. Dunleavy has demonstrated. He’s just not cut out for his current position.
The administration is camping on millions of dollars that could be given to the people they put on the street today. It should be obvious to all but even the most slow witted, that there is a path the administration and assembly are going down to move a huge piece of this pie into particular pockets.
If and when the funds get distributed what will be the process?
You have to prove you need it – required records of need, past records of income, must provide proper papers of who you are, what you do, how long you’ve been doing it…etc, etc, etc. Then call offices and wait on hold as you are #? in a long line of other callers.
When finally connected, suddenly mysterically disconnects.
rinse and repeat
When government is involved the process is slowed within the muck and mire of hoops to jump through.
Punch One: It took forever to find the path getting the proffered financial help for the month and a half my business was shut down last March. I almost gave up when I miraculously found the path through a back door process quite accidently.
Should have been obvious and easier.
Punch Two: Then…when I was allowed to open back up, I did so immediately. Even though many in my position didn’t because they were making more on the fund then when they were working.
This is ugly. No if’s, and’s and but’s.
BTW: people who have or will receive the ‘help’:
DON’T FORGET YOU MUST PAY TAXES ON THAT INCOME
More complications.
Nothin’s for free.
Get off the fence, Dunleavy! Your response to AQD’s tyranny is pathetic!
The AK Constitution gives you the power to step in and right the wrongs committed by the Anchorage Assembly by refusing to follow the Municipal Charter.
Austin Quinn-Davidson is an illegitimate Acting Mayor!
The residents of Anchorage deserve a special election!
Stop hedging your bets as a limp noodle and stand tall, like you promised!
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