By Edward Martin, Jr.
Alaska is once again being told that the solution to our fiscal problems is a new tax.
This time it comes wrapped in careful language: “stability,” “shared responsibility,” “rules-based budgeting,” and a promise that this plan will finally fix what years of uncertainty have broken. A seasonal statewide sales tax. A constitutional amendment. A 50/50 split. Sunset clauses. Spending caps.
On paper, it sounds responsible.
But paper plans do not govern Alaska— law does. And before we debate new revenue, we must confront the uncomfortable fact that Alaska’s current fiscal instability was not caused by a lack of taxation. It was caused by a failure to obey existing law.
For seven years, the statutory Permanent Fund Dividend formula was ignored. Earnings were diverted by discretion rather than rule. The Alaska Permanent Fund was treated not as a trust with defined beneficiaries, but as a flexible revenue source for government operations. The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, governed by appointed trustees, operated without full transparency and without the safeguards Alaskans were promised when the Fund was created.
That history matters because sequence matters in a constitutional republic.
Before Alaska imposes a single new tax, the State must confront a simple truth it has spent years avoiding: you cannot tax your way out of broken trust. The Permanent Fund was not mismanaged by accident; it was redefined by executive convenience, administered by appointed trustees insulated from accountability, and stripped of statutory safeguards without public consent. To now ask Alaskans — families, seniors, workers, and rural communities — to shoulder a statewide sales tax before restoring lawful governance of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation is not fiscal responsibility; it is upside-down government. In any private trust, a fiduciary who ignores governing law does not get more authority or new revenue. They get audited, bonded, corrected, or removed. Yet here, the State proposes the opposite: pay us first, trust us later. That is not shared responsibility. That is asking citizens to finance a system that refused to obey the rules that bound it in the first place.
Supporters of a sales tax argue that “everyone will pay,” including tourists and non-residents. That may be true, but it misses the point. Visitors did not forgo mineral rights at statehood. Visitors did not accept the Permanent Fund as a substitute asset held in trust for the people. Alaskans did. And when that trust is compromised, the remedy is not new taxation; it is restoration of lawful governance.
A constitutional amendment to lock in a new dividend structure does not restore the rule of law. It replaces it. Worse, it risks ratifying past misconduct by retroactively blessing years of statutory noncompliance. Amendments should correct constitutional defects, not sanitize political convenience.
Sales taxes are also regressive by nature. They fall hardest on working families, seniors on fixed incomes, and rural communities with higher costs of living. Asking those Alaskans to pay more before the State proves it can obey the laws it already has flips accountability on its head.
In a system of self-government, the State earns the right to tax by obeying the law first. Citizens do not owe financial obedience to a government that refuses legal obedience in return.
That is why this moment demands clarity, not slogans.
Every candidate for governor, regardless of party, should be asked this single, unavoidable question, publicly and on the record:
Will you commit to enforcing Alaska’s existing Permanent Fund statutes and restoring full fiduciary compliance at the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation — including bonding, bylaw enforcement, and trustee accountability — before proposing any new taxes or constitutional amendments that alter the dividend or earnings structure? Yes or no.
No hedging.
No task forces.
No future promises.
Because if a candidate cannot say yes to enforcing the law first, then every tax proposal, every “fiscal plan,” and every constitutional amendment that follows is not reform. It is ratification of past misconduct.
Alaska does not suffer from a lack of ideas. It suffers from a lack of enforcement. The path forward is not complicated: restore the law, repair the trust, enforce fiduciary duty— then talk about revenue. Anything else asks Alaskans to pay for a government that has not yet proven it deserves their consent.
Ed Martin, Jr. is a retired 50+ year IUOE, General Contractor and long-time Alaskan with a strong belief in the National and State Constitutions and the inherent rights of citizens. He devotes his retirement to investigating Constitutional violation(s) in hopes of protecting the eternal rights of liberty. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” — 2 Corinthians 3:17.