By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO
Alaska stands at a crossroads. Decades of bureaucratic expansion, fiscal mismanagement, and policy drift have left the state with underperforming institutions, rising costs, and a growing disconnect between the people and their government. While Alaska is blessed with immense natural wealth and a resilient population, it suffers from structural inefficiencies that hinder its progress and undermine public trust.
In response, a new conservative leadership—anchored in constitutional values, community self-determination, and fiscal responsibility—proposes a comprehensive realignment of four critical systems: Education, Health and Welfare, Energy, and the Permanent Fund Dividend.
Each of these reforms is justified not by ideology, but by necessity.
1. Education: Restoring Local Control and Breaking Bureaucratic Dependency
For decades, Alaska’s education system has been dominated by a centralized bureaucracy that is unresponsive to local needs and fiscally unsustainable. The Department of Education and Early Development (DEED), along with layers of school boards and administrative mandates, has created a system where spending has increased while student performance remains stagnant, particularly in rural and Indigenous communities.
Justification for Reform:
- Alaska ranks among the highest in per-pupil spending but among the lowest in academic performance and graduation outcomes.
- Local communities lack meaningful control over curriculum, personnel, or funding priorities.
- Statewide mandates stifle innovation, burden educators, and alienate parents.
Solution: Dismantle the Department of Education and Early Development, abolish all local school boards, and empower parents and communities through direct education savings accounts, community learning co-ops, and curriculum freedom. Restore education as a right rooted in community, not a privilege dispensed by bureaucracy.
2. Health and Welfare: Ending Federal Dependency and Streamlining State Systems
Alaska’s health and welfare system has become a fiscal albatross. Medicaid expansion in 2015 shifted immense financial risk to the state without improving access or outcomes. Meanwhile, state agencies such as the Department of Health and the Office of Children’s Services have grown bloated, slow, and opaque, often harming the very populations they are meant to serve.
Justification for Reform:
- Medicaid now consumes the largest share of Alaska’s operating budget and continues to grow without measurable improvements in care.
- The assumption of federal trust responsibilities (e.g., under Public Law 280) has left the state vulnerable to liability and inefficiency.
- Critical services are buried beneath regulatory overreach, workforce licensing delays, and fraud-prone contracting.
Solution: Reverse Medicaid expansion, return federal responsibilities to the federal government, and dismantle or restructure failing bureaucracies. Prioritize community-based service delivery, fraud reduction, and private-sector health partnerships that deliver results over rhetoric.
3. Energy: Unleashing Resource Development and Achieving Hydroelectric Dominance
Despite possessing vast energy resources, Alaskans face some of the highest energy costs in the nation. The Alaska Energy Authority and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority have failed to deliver on their mandates, instead favoring insider deals and politically engineered projects over real development.
Justification for Reform:
- Southcentral Alaska faces a natural gas shortfall due to regulatory inaction and infrastructure neglect.
- Federal-style permitting and anti-development rules have paralyzed progress in oil, gas, and mineral extraction.
- Energy monopolies and state-funded intermediaries distort markets and limit rural access to affordable power.
Solution: Dismantle AEA and AIDEA, repeal all laws that impede energy development, and fast-track hydroelectric infrastructure. Encourage open-market energy access and return control of Alaska’s energy future to its people—not its middlemen.
4. The PFD: Restoring the People’s Share and Rebuilding Trust
The Permanent Fund dividend was created to ensure that all Alaskans benefit from their state’s natural resource wealth. Since 2016, legislative appropriations have diverted billions away from dividend payments, breaking public trust and disproportionately harming low-income Alaskans.
Justification for Reform:
- The statutory PFD formula has been violated multiple times through legislative appropriation.
- More than $13 billion in PFD earnings have been diverted to government spending without voter consent.
- The erosion of the PFD undermines economic justice and fuels public distrust in state institutions.
Solution: Restore the statutory PFD formula, repay withheld dividends to all eligible Alaskans, and enshrine PFD protections in the state constitution. The PFD is not a government program. It is the people’s rightful share, and it must be safeguarded accordingly.
Conclusion: A Conservative Restoration of Alaska’s Future
These four pillars of reform, education, health and welfare, energy, and the PFD, are not isolated initiatives. Together, they represent a blueprint for restoring sovereignty, self-governance, and sustainability in Alaska’s public institutions. By dismantling failing systems and rebuilding from the ground up with a focus on efficiency, equity, and accountability, Alaska can secure a stronger, freer future for all its residents.
This is not merely reform. It is restoration.
Michael Tavoliero writes for Must Read Alaska.
Question is how? Voters are not placing politicians in place who think this way. Beaurocrats in place today don’t support and will subvert movement in this direction. So it will take a governor who is not politicing for thier next term but one who is willing to dismantle and rebuild which will be painful. I am not hopeful this will ever happen.
You’re absolutely right. It feels like a moment for despair, but it’s actually a call to courage. The weight of entrenched bureaucracy, apathetic voters, and self-preserving politicians can make change feel impossible. But history tells us that systems only shift when ordinary people stop accepting the lie that they’re powerless. You’re also right that this won’t happen through the next smooth-talking careerist. It will take a governor and legislators with backbone. Not men and women managing poll numbers but those willing to break glass and reset the structure, knowing full well the blow back will be fierce. That kind of leadership won’t come from above. It has to be demanded from below, by voters who are awake, informed, and uncompromising. The question isn’t whether reform is hard. It’s whether the price of doing nothing has finally become too high. And in Alaska, it has. That’s not a reason to despair. That’s the reason to fight for freedom.
Remember the story of the Pied Piper who led the rats out out of Hamelin by playing his pipe?
This appears to be the aspiration but impotent dream of Piper Mike Tavoliero.
I see no proof that any force in Alaska is capable of galvanizing support for anything that will cause change. NONE. Just happytalk—as we have witnessed with the EaglExit effort to separate Eagle River/Chugiak from Mudflats Anchorage.
Tavoliero was the first chairman of EaglExit and we are constantly assured something is happening from money raised mostly at wine tastings among the swells.
Too bad the rats aren’t worried about somebody blowing smoke.
This story is from nearly 3 years ago.
‘https://donnliston.net/2022/07/eaglexit-draft-proposal-review/
Michael has been reading The Art of the Deal. Some are great ideas in the article, others such as “recapturing” the seed money from AIDEA are just ignorant. That seed money for Alaska’s development bank was federal money from the Denali Commission and came with strings – the State can’t just reappropriate it.
As for galvanizing support for change: Most of us have succumbed to enslavement through lifestyle – we don’t have time nor money to get seriously involved. We don’t trust government, and we’re appalled at the corruption endemic to our governments.
That’s an honest reflection, and one I deeply respect, because it captures the exhaustion and disillusionment many Alaskans feel. But if we acknowledge that we’ve “succumbed to enslavement through lifestyle,” then we also have to recognize that this is precisely the mindset the system relies on to stay unchallenged. If distrust and frustration don’t lead to action, they quietly become consent.
As for AIDEA, yes, certain funds may be restricted, but the broader point remains: institutions created to serve development have too often become vaults of untouchable capital and political insulation. Asking how we redirect or reform those mechanisms isn’t ignorance, it’s accountability.
No one is asking for blind rebellion. But we do need more than a roll-over-and-die attitude. Change doesn’t come from having the perfect leverage. It comes from refusing to keep playing by the rules that have failed us.
Critics often confuse strategic patience with inactivity, and grassroots effort with elitism, but the truth is, Eaglexit is neither a vanity project nor a wine-fueled dream. It is a legal, logistical, and economic undertaking of enormous scale, comparable to a billion-dollar divorce from a sprawling and increasingly dysfunctional government structure. The process of detaching Assembly District 2 from the Municipality of Anchorage is not something achieved in headlines or hashtags. It demands accounting, legal diligence, statutory compliance, and intergovernmental coordination, all of which require time…not bravado.
It’s not theater…it’s governance.
We are fortunate and blessed to have a growing coalition of professionals, legal advisors, municipal experts, and volunteers who passionately believe that freedom is not a gift from government, but a responsibility earned through action, sacrifice, and resolve. We are not people content to sit on the sidelines and complain. We are committed to building a better system in a state that, both politically and legally, discourages exceptionalism and genuine civic effort. While the challenges we face are deeply rooted in the complexities of Alaska’s statutes, we remain firmly committed to a process that is grounded in law and driven by a deep love for our community. That is the foundation upon which real, lasting reform must be built.
The magnitude of this opportunity cannot be overstated: a restructuring that will impact over 40% of Alaska’s population, restore local control to a community which has yearned for that since statehood, and reduce the bureaucratic waste that continues to smother innovation and accountability across the Anchorage Bowl.
“It is far easier to whisper advice from cover than to risk its merit at the point of attack.” And that’s precisely what Eaglexit has done. We risk the merit of bold reform in full view, while others watch safely from the sidelines. If you’re waiting for fireworks and viral moments, you’ll miss the real story: a lawful, citizen-led movement, rooted in statute and strengthened by conviction, that is laying the foundation for a new municipality. This is not out of bitterness, but out of belief in something better. The armchair quarterbacks yell penalties from the comfort of their “bovinity”, but the taxpayers, the real players, are paying attention.
Don, you and the entire community are welcome to attend our town hall on assets and liabilities this coming June 12, Thursday, at 7 pm, at the Chugiak Senior Center.
Perspicacious, incisive, comprehensive suggestions: Logical, fiscally responsible governance incentifying personal & Alaskan growth, yielding improved economy.
Well said !! We have a real problem with our legislators and at least 30% of them need to be replaced. They must be totally blind to not see what a mess they are creating ?
All “they” see is green – greed and power for more. They quickly lose sight of their constituency when all they hear is from lobbyists.
Well said. The problem is the legislature needs to be replaced by those committed to values in this article. Until Alaskans are willing to really clean house nothing can be done. It takes much more than a governor to make these changes. The public will need to be united and willing to keep the pressure on the legislature until the changes are made and cemented in.
Michael loses almost any credibility with his magical thinking. What magical thinking? That the Alaska Legislature has a big money tree, from which legislators can pluck billions and billions of dollars.
You want full dividends? Okay, great. Me too. But where does that money come from? The only place we have that much money is to pull it from the corpus of the Permanent Fund. Doing that is unconstitutional, and would also be a fiscal disaster, as we now use the PF to fund most of our budget. The more we reduce the corpus, the less money it will throw off to fund our budgets.
We had saved up over $20 billion under ACES (Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share) that was passed under Republican Sarah Palin. We also paid full dividends, because we got a fair share for our oil. After the outside corporate interests prevailed in ensuring Alaska gets the least for its oil as compared to any major oil field in the world, Alaska has been heading for disaster ever since. We’ve drained all the money we saved under ACES. We’ve stopped paying full dividends- at a cost now of well over $60,000 for a family of four. We no longer fund our capital budgets to the extent needed to maintain our roads and bridges.
Should we build hydro, like Susitna? Absolutely. We were building that project under ACES. When we lost significant oil revenue with SB-21 that project was shut down. Unless we get a fair return for our oil that project will never be built because we don’t have the money.
Does education need reform? 100 percent. That’s the one thing Michael gets right- but we need to be mindful of the Alaska Constitution which requires that the state fund it. We also need Republicans willing to push for reforms.
The bottom line, under Republican leadership Alaska is a failing state. We have the worst public education test scores in the nation. We don’t properly fund capital improvements (like Susistna). We have had 11 years of population decline. Our Permanent Fund is not being properly inflation proofed. If the corpus had been properly inflation proofed we’d have $100 billion due the Joe Biden’s 20 percent (cumulative) inflation. Instead we are only a bit over $80 billion and have been at that level for years.
Alaska is a fiscal disaster. Our state is way too big, and the population way too small, to make a go of it if we do not get a fair return for our resources. An income tax, or sales tax, are terrible ideas- and they would not bring in enough revenue to balance our budgets. Watch Dunleavy to see if he allows- or vetoes the “internet tax” just passed by the feckless legislature.
Let’s approach this with common sense. If Alaska “can’t afford” full dividends, then it’s time to ask why we continue to fund one of the largest per capita bureaucracy in the nation. This is a bureaucracy that consistently fails to deliver. The Department of Health fosters dependency more than wellness. The Department of Education doesn’t educate; it controls. And ACES, though dressed as conservative reform, was a state-run wealth grab. It was simply a redistribution scheme that collapsed once oil companies pulled back.
This pattern isn’t accidental. It’s rooted in Alaska’s FDR-era constitutional framework, where government was built to manage people rather than empower them. Article VII, Section 1 was meant to ensure education, not entrench a state monopoly that strips local control and shields failure. Calling dividend advocates “magical thinkers” is ironic, because the real fantasy is believing this system can keep growing while Alaskans keep accepting less.
This isn’t a money problem. It’s a mismanagement and misplaced priorities problem. If the state can’t fulfill its promises without seizing the people’s share, then it’s not the people who need to sacrifice. It’s the government that needs to shrink.
Well Michael, this is the part of the debate where people like you start to toss out vague generalities about “cut the budget”. Okay. Great, go ahead and list the cuts that you’d make. Please be specific, and itemize your cuts by a dollar amount.
Should we get rid of State Troopers?
How about we close the prisons and release all the criminals?
How about we shut down DOT, and the Marine Highway? Since we will not have any state maintained airports (once you shut down DOT) then the state begins to collapse as people and freight will no longer have a way to be transported.
Maybe we should stop funding the legislature, the AG, and the governor’s office, too?
To pay a full dividend this year from your magical thinking, all of the above cuts (and more) will be needed.
As far as getting a fair share for our oil, we OWN it. Its ours. Selling it for a fair return is not just common sense, but a constitutional obligation. But hey, if you like selling things for a song, how about you sell me your home for about 15% of its value? Nooo? Gosh, you don’t walk your talk.
Own it all you want. It’s not worth a dime until someone pumps it out of the ground. The question is, how much can you take before those doing the work back away?
Excellent essay, Mike.
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The “four corners” look like territory that has to be taken and held if Alaskan people are to win any sort of chance at a new lease on life.
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Question: How can “four corners” be won without first regaining control of Alaska’s corrupted grand-jury and election systems, possibly through federal intervention?
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Talk about David and Goliath, look at what they’ve arrayed against us. Are they not armed with all sorts of weaponry to assure Deplorables get nowhere near the Inner Sanctum …and the generational will to use said weaponry?
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Yes, generational. How many years has this been going on? What’ve they done to generations of Alaskan children who, if reared traditionally, could pose a threat to their empire?
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Yes generational. That’s an $80B Permanent Fund, too big to steal overnight, need a few more years to totally gift-wrap the steal in law, wait for the last of the traditional conservatives to check out, it’s a done deal …what grown Alaskan child will be ready, willing, and able to stop it?
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Question: Is “four corners” possible without the real threat of accountability imposed by restoring integrity to Alaska’s grand-jury and election systems?
Excellent article and responses to comments, however don’t you think Alaska’s Election System belongs in your list Mr. Tavoliero? So we don’t have people inserted into our state government rather than voted in.
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