Gov. Mike Dunleavy has requested the Legislature appropriate $4 million in State funding, which would release receipt authority for $9 million in additional federal funding to deal with the expected eventual arrival in the state of the coronavirus called COVID-19.
In a press conference Monday morning, he said the money would be used to hire 10 temporary full-time positions, including five new public health nurses, three nurse epidemiologists, a microbiologist and an emergency manager to help with the Emergency Operations Center, should it need to be activated.
Alaska is better prepared to respond to the virus than just about any other state, he said, because officials here have been responding to the threat since the first plane landed from Wuhan, China, with nearly 200 people on board.
Not surprisingly, Juneau reported a robust turnout for the signature gathering on the Recall Dunleavy petition over the weekend. Both at Centennial Hall and at the Mendenhall Library, signature gatherers were reporting steady lines.
But statewide, the response was soft.
In Anchorage, hundreds of people were in midtown for the snowshoe softball game at the Mulcahy Park stadium and ball field, and the sled dog sprints associated with Fur Rondy. Both were close to the signature-gathering location at Sullivan Arena.
But several supporters of Gov. Mike Dunleavy went to the arena to check on progress at what was supposed to be a blow-out event, and came away describing it as a ghost town. There were few cars in the commanding parking lot beyond what belonged to volunteers inside the arena at the folding tables with their recall petitions.
Those arriving to sign were mostly male-female couples or middle-aged women who arrived and left alone.
In Fairbanks, observers reported a steady, but unremarkable trickle of visitors to the Carlson Center, the second largest venue in the state after the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage.
The Sullivan Arena was rented over three days, but it appeared that fewer than 3,000 signatures were gathered.
Recall Dunleavy had purchased the three large venues in Juneau, Anchorage, and Fairbanks to get a fast start on signatures, and they hope to have the booklets turned in with enough signatures before the case is heard in the Alaska Supreme Court.
The group needs 71,252 signatures to put the recall of the governor onto a ballot at a date yet to be determined, but the Supreme Court may still rule against the merits of the recall, which some say are frivolous accusations that don’t deserve the time and money that the effort will cost the State to conduct a do-over of the 2018 general election.
Today, Chief Justice Joel Bolger recused himself from the case to avoid any appearance of bias, after he had made several public statements that were critical of the governor.
In the Lower 48, signature gatherers were found in four states with booklets trying to get people to sign. The practice is illegal under Alaska Statute.
After two weeks of pressure, Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice Joel Bolger has recused himself from hearing the arguments on the merits of the recall of the governor.
Although Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, whose department is defending the Division of Elections, did not ask for recusal, others had, including the vice chair of the Alaska Republican Party, who penned an op-ed asking for Bolger to recuse.
Earlier, Bolger had refused to do remove himself from the case, and has ruled on decisions leading up to the March 25 oral arguments between the Division of Elections and Recall Dunleavy Committee.
In Alaska, “a judge has as great an obligation not to disqualify himself, when there is no occasion to do so, as he has to [disqualify himself] in the presence of valid reasons,” Bolger wrote.
“In the meantime, the State of Alaska has filed its excerpts of the lower court record. So I now have the opportunity to make a ruling on this potential disqualification with a better understanding of this record. It is clear to me that the issue raised in this case — the adequacy of the grounds for recall of a sitting governor — mandates serious consideration of any potential disqualifying circumstances to maintain the public’s faith and confidence in the justice system.
“As stated previously, I do not have any personal bias or prejudice concerning the parties or attorneys involved in this case,” he wrote.
“However, I have special public responsibilities as the administrative head of the Alaska Court System and as the chairman ex-officio of the Alaska Judicial Council.
“In those capacities, I have made public statements that could suggest a strong disagreement with the governor’s conduct on some very fundamental issues affecting the judicial branch, conduct that forms part of the basis for the recall petition under consideration.
“In other words, this is a case where a reasonable person might question whether my judgment is affected by my overriding public responsibilities to the justice system.
“I therefore RECUSE myself from further proceedings in this case. “
The practical result from his recusal is that a judge from the Superior Court will likely be asked to sit in on this case.
Another justice who has a likely conflict of interest is Justice Daniel Winfree, whose wife is highly paid University of Alaska employee. The university has seen its budget cut by $50 million over this and the previous fiscal year, cuts made by the Dunleavy Administration that could effect the Winfree household’s personal finances.
DOG-SHAPED VEGAN CHOCOLATES SENT TO AIRLINES AS THANKS
PETA protesters have pressured Alaska Airlines to discontinue its support of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, a sponsorship that has spanned 40 years.
The group has been staging protests at the company’s headquarters in SeaTac.
PETA heralded the decision and announced it has sent a box of vegan chocolates to the company as a thank you. It has already succeeded in getting several major companies to withdraw support, including Coca-Cola, Costco, Jack Daniel’s, Maxwell House, Nestlé, Panasonic, Pizza Hut, Rite Aid, Safeway, State Farm, and Wells Fargo.
The animal rights organization opposes “speciesism, which is a huma-supremacist worldview.”
This year’s Iditarod race begins with the ceremonial start in Anchorage on Saturday.
The M/V Tazlina docked at Auke Bay near Juneau on Sunday, where it’s tied up next to the broken down M/V Matanuska. It was brought north from the Ketchikan shipyards, where it’s been undergoing refitting so it can service more ports.
The ferry will start back into service on March 5, after it fuels up and gets its quarterly U.S. Coast Guard inspection. The crew also has to perform a number of safety and abandon-ship drills.
The ferry will begin servicing Northern Lynn Canal communities, including Angoon, Hoonah, Haines and Skagway.
Meanwhile, a vessel from Allen Marine in Sitka has been contracted by the State ferry system to provide service to some smaller communities. The M/V Melinda Leigh will next depart Tuesday for a run to Kake, Angoon, and Tenakee.
That run, on a vessel usually used in summers for tours, will cost the State $11,250 per trip. Passengers from Juneau to Tenakee will pay just $56 in fare for the 9-hour voyage to Tenakee. The Melinda Leigh does not carry vehicles.
The contract for the route from Juneau to Sitka will cost the State $10,900.
BUT GROUP’S FINANCIAL REPORTS SHOW MESSY MONEY TRAIL
The oil tax ballot initiative spearheaded by Robin Brena has exceeded the number of valid signatures it needs to get its question on the ballot — some ballot, at a time still to be determined.
As of Feb. 28, the Alaska Division of Elections posted that 32,378 signatures were validated out of the 36,252 signatures reviewed by the State.
Brena’s group had collected more than 44,000 signatures, turning them in on Jan. 17, 2020. It needed 28,501 of those signatures to be from registered voters from at least 30 of the state’s 40 House districts.
Brena, business partner to former Gov. Bill Walker and long-time oil tax proponent, wrote the “Fair Share” ballot initiative to recalculate taxes on oil companies and undo the reforms of Senate Bill 21, which passed the voters in 2014. Brena is the also primary funder of the initiative.
The Fair Share group used Texas Petition Strategies and paid $43,333 for professional services for the the signatures gathered in Alaska since taking possession of petition booklets in October.
Brena was the source of that $43,333, having contributed the identical amount to the Fair Share group.
The group also has transactions with another Texas company, Advanced Micro Targeting of Dallas, in the amount of $72,500 for signature gathering services.
Brena was also the source of that expenditure, donating that exact amount to his Fair Share group in a separate set of transactions.
Alaska law limits the amount that can be paid to signature gatherers to $1 per signature. With all funds expended to date, the group appears to have spent well over $5 per valid signature, although there’s no evidence the worker-bees with the clipboards were getting more than $1 per name.
‘FAIR SHARE’ APOC REPORT? WHAT A MESS
The campaign finance reporting for the Fair Share group is unclear as to what the group is spending its money on.
Among its several reports filed this year it shows money flowing back and forth between Brena, the Fair Share group, and the two Texas contractors who specialize in signature gathering. The reporting appears to have errors throughout.
More curious is this recent report from February. In it, the Fair Share group (19OGTX) admits it is coordinating signature gathering with the “move the legislature” ballot group (19MALA), as seen in these sample expenditure items.
The 19MALA “Equal Access” group shows no such coordination in its APOC reports, however.
The Fair Share group has filed four conflicting APOC reports in February, some of which make little sense to campaign experts that were asked to review them by Must Read Alaska.
“These people can’t even fill out a simple report telling who they paid what to, and for what purpose, but they want to be in charge of rewriting a tax code that has hundreds of millions of dollars of impact on our state,” commented one of the reviewers. “All of Alaska’s future budget depends on this group that cannot even file a proper financial statement for less than $350,000 in income?”
Overall, the Fair Share group has reported $340,293 in contributions, more than a third of it coming from Brena himself, with much smaller amounts from other oil tax proponents, such as David Gottstein, Robert Waldrop, Ken Alper, and retired Supreme Court Justice Walter Carpeneti.
WHEN WILL IT BE ON THE BALLOT?
While it has not yet been certified by the Division of Elections, the Fair Share measure could be put on a ballot as early as Aug. 18, 2020, the date of the Alaska Primary, although that depends on whether the Legislature gavels out in 90 days, which would trigger that ballot assignment. The 90-day session appears unlikely to many political observers.
The question could also be put on the “next statewide ballot,” which could be a special election for the Recall Dunleavy effort, led by former Gov. Bill Walker cabinet members that are struggling to collect over 71,200 signatures. Under some circumstances, both of these questions could be in the same “special election” either in July or in the fall.
Having both the recall of a governor and an oil tax hike on the same ballot would set up an epic campaign battle for various interests across the state, and would even pit Native corporations against each other. The scenario could have an impact on other political races by capturing all the attention and available funds for campaign efforts.
WHAT DOES THE BALLOT MEASURE PROMISE?
The Fair Share ballot measure would:
Tax more heavily the legacy North Slope fields that produce a minimum 40,000 barrels daily over the most recent calendar year and 400 million cumulatively;
Increase government take of oil profits by 62-72%;
Increase the gross minimum production tax for the larger fields from 4% to 10% and increase the 10% minimum by up to a maximum of 15% for every $5 increase in oil prices above $50 per barrel;
Eliminate an $8 per barrel tax credit starting at $50 per barrel;
Add another 15% tax on producers’ profits starting at $50 per barrel of profit.
Megan Youngren of Soldotna was among 450 women to compete in the U.S. Olympic marathon trial in Atlanta on Saturday.
As the first transgender athlete to participate in the marathon trials, h/she finished in 2:50:27, which was 230th place out of 390 women who finished.
Youngren, 28, started transitioning to living as a woman in 2011, first with hormone drugs, before going public to openly identify as a woman in 2012. H/She began running to control weight gain associated with hormone treatments and deal with a reoccurring case of shingles.
Youngren only learned last week that h/she had low enough hormone levels to qualify in the women’s division.
Other Alaska women racers in Atlanta included:
Keri McEntee of Fairbanks: Did not finish.
Anna Dalton of Anchorage: 2:49:24, finished 212nd out of 390.
Alaska men running in the Olympic marathon trial in Atlanta included:
Aaron Fletcher of Anchorage: Did not finish.
Anthony Tomsich of Fairbanks: 2:25:16, finished 102nd out of 174 men.
With 95 percent of the votes counted, Joe Biden had an overwhelming lead and will win the South Carolina Democrat primary handily.
Only Biden and Bernie Sanders will be awarded South Carolina delegates, with Biden getting 29 and Sanders getting 9 delegates (these numbers are subject to change). Candidates had to have reached a 15 percent threshold to be awarded delegates. 54 of the 63 delegates from South Carolina are awarded based on today’s primary vote.
Now comes Super Tuesday. In just three days, the largest block of votes will come in, as 14 states go to the polls: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia. Those states are worth 1,357 delegates.
American Samoa has a Democrat caucus that’s worth 11 delegates the same day.
Meanwhile, Tom Steyer, the billionaire from California, has exited the field after spending $24 million in South Carolina, only to come away with a third-place finish and no delegates. Overall, Steyer has spent more than $175 million and has not been able to earn a single delegate.
To win the nomination, a candidate will need 1,991 delegates. To date it’s Bernie Sanders-53, Joe Biden-42, Pete Buttigieg-26, Elizabeth Warren-8, and Amy Klobuchar-6.
Mike Bloomberg didn’t compete in the South Carolina Primary. He will appear in several Super Tuesday primaries.
As for the popular vote, Bernie Sanders is far ahead with 163,258 votes, Pete Buttigieg coming in second with 133,314, Amy Klobuchar with 87,270, Elizabeth Warren with 74,062, and Joe Biden trailing with 67,721.
None are as low as Bloomberg, who only has won 4,793 votes so far, in part because he entered the race late.
MEANWHILE, IN HOMER THEY TOOK OVER GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
The Recall Dunleavy Committee says it is asking the Division of Elections if it can continue to gather signatures from Alaskans out of state. Must Read Alaska has reported that four states are now sites for petition booklets to recall the governor, even though that practice is illegal.
A woman standing in the entry of the Homer Post Office on Saturday with a petition to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy was asked to move along by postal workers after a complaint was lodged against her for breaking a federal law prohibiting “collecting signatures on petitions, polls, or surveys.”
Recall Dunleavy has conducted extensive training for signature gatherers around the state in recent days, but may not have given its paid contractors guidance on federal property.
After resisting for a while, the woman moved off the property, but she had collected several signatures during the time she was there.
Around Alaska, reports of petitioners using government property to collect signatures is becoming widespread. In rural areas, post offices were abused during the initial application stage, but there was never any pushback. The pattern appears to be repeating for the group that is trying to gather over 71,200 signatures so they can put Gov. Dunleavy back on the ballot for an up-down vote.
During the middle of the day on Saturday, the Sullivan Arena kick-off signature gathering in Anchorage was sparsely attended, while nearby crowds gathered for Fur Rondy races and other related festivities.
The arena has been rented by the well-funded Recall Dunleavy Committee to make access easier for those in Anchorage to stop by and sign a petition. But over the course of ten minutes of observing, only two people went in the front door.
In Juneau, signature gathering was reportedly brisk at the Mendenhall Library, while downtown at the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council, a woman sawed a totem of Gov. Mike Dunleavy in half as”Cutting Him Down to Size” performance art.
