The Alaska Department of Revenue, which has $7.7 billion in public fund investments, sold off some of its key holdings at the end of 2019, including shares in Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Verizon, and Broadcom, according to Barron’s, a financial publication..
“The Alaska Department of Revenue, which collects and invests public funds, cut back on holdings in some of America’s largest companies. It sold class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway (ticker: BRKb), Apple (AAPL), Verizon Communications (VZ), and Broadcom (AVGO) in the fourth quarter. Notably, three are lagging behind the 1.1% gain in the S&P 500 so far in January through Friday’s close. The department disclosed the changes in a form it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Barron’s reported.
SUPREME COURT DECISION NOTWITHSTANDING, IT’S FULL-STEAM AHEAD FOR BOTH SIDES
About 200 people came through the fundraiser for Gov. Mike Dunleavy in Anchorage on Friday evening, Jan. 10. More than $60,000 was raised; the suggested donation was $250 to the Stand Tall With Mike account.
The event in the Megan Room at Davis Constructors took place just hours after a court decision that allowed the Recall Dunleavy Committee to proceed with signature gathering on the next petition it must file to get the matter onto a statewide ballot.
The fact that the fundraiser was scheduled for the same day as the court hearing indicates the Stand Tall With Mike group had a good idea the judge’s ruling would not be favorable to the governor, and was proceeding with the raising money for what will be a battle to fend off a gloves-off, anything-goes attack on him this year, much like his opponents went after him during the 2018 election cycle.
The campaign to unseat Dunleavy has had a year’s head start. Documents filed in court show that the website name “RecallDunleavy.com” was purchased on Feb. 18, 2019 — just five days after the governor’s amended budget was sent to the Legislature. It’s clear that the governor’s attorneys were correct when they said this is a policy battle in search of grounds for recall:
A year’s head start on fundraising and publicity has given the Recall Dunleavy group a cash advantage — it has raised far more than $60,000. The exact amount is unknown, but it raised $40,000 at a Sitka fundraiser alone. The group has paid staff and the names, addresses and email addresses of 50,000 Alaskans who signed the initial application for the recall petition. Major funders of the recall campaign include Ed and Cathy Rasmuson, parents of Sen. Natasha Von Imhof, and principals of the Rasmuson Foundation.
Recall Dunleavy Committee needs those 50,000 people to sign the next petition, and will need to get another 30,000 signatures from around the state, just to make sure it has enough to meet the 71,252 threshold. The committee is hoping to do this and force a special election, when the more motivated voters — largely Democrats and angry liberals — would be likely to make time to go to the polls. The group seeks to avoid the November General Election ballot, when Trump voters are likely to come out.
The Stand Tall With Mike group has been slow in forming because it was unclear for months whether the attempt to recall the governor had a sound legal basis.
Judge Eric Aarseth’s ruling on Friday made it clear that anything goes in politics. His ruling is not likely to be overturned by the Alaska Supreme Court. Therefore, those supporting the governor will now need to raise millions of dollars to defend against what will become a vicious attack on his official conduct and his character.
The $60,000 raised to defend the governor is a drop in the bucket. Stand Tall With Mike will likely require over $1 million to essentially run another campaign in 2020, two years after he was elected by a wide margin.
Everything that Dunleavy does between now and that to-be-calendared special election will be scrutinized, and will be fodder for his opponents to use against him as further evidence of the need to recall him.
The Supreme Court hearing, whenever that occurs, is just a speed bump to what is going to be a savage political year in Alaska.
Once again I was up at oh-dark-thirty on a cold morning and someplace I didn’t really want to be.
I was representing MRAK and covering the hearing on the summary judgments in the Dunleavy recall matter.
Art Chance
It’s been awhile since I’ve been in a hearing room, but at least these days I can show up without a suit and a tie tied with fearful symmetry. Instead of the front table, I now get to sit as inconspicuously as possible in the back of the room and diligently take notes, then try to explain what happened.
First, this was not any sort of trial as most people understand that word; there was no factual evidence presented nor witness testimony, and there was no jury, and no verdict determining whether or not the Governor was recalled.
This was really just boring legal stuff and the outcome was totally predictable.
In a summary judgment proceeding, the parties have to agree that there are no disputes of fact and that the court has unchallenged jurisdiction. In a matter such as this, the allegations made by the plaintiff, the complaining party, are presumed to be true.
The only questions are questions of law as to whether the complaint is sufficient in facts and law to move to the next step, in this case an appeal to the Supreme Court or absent an appeal, to move into the recall process.
Alaska’s recall law limits the complaint and response to two hundred words; I’d have trouble ordering lunch in 200 words, and I’m a pretty good technical and legal writer.
The Recall Dunleavy mob just plays emotion on allegations of incompetence and unfitness; they don’t define them, and they don’t really provide any objective examples.
In one attempt, Allegation 3(B) they tried to pose an example, and the judge threw it out as legally insufficient, and he’s right. This whole thing is a sham.
When I did this sort of stuff for a living, I always advised my principals that if they started a beef that was going to court and involved major interests, especially Democrat interests, they could expect to lose any motions to dismiss, any motions for injunctions, and almost always to lose in the trial court; in the State’s cases, the Superior Court.
I did this stuff for about 25 years and I can count on my fingers the times the State won a motion to dismiss, or won on a temporary restraining order or an injunction.
I can count on my fingers the times in my area that we ever won at the Superior Court level. Yet, I can also count on my fingers the times we lost at the Supreme Court level.
There a several reasons for this; the most charitable is that the judges generally believe that the State can afford the time and money and can fix anything with money, so they’ll let a matter proceed until somebody decides it isn’t worth it to appeal again.
Second, in high profile cases, Superior Court judges would just as soon let the Supreme Court decide rather than take the heat themselves.
And the worst case, and there are some, is the judge who thinks that if he just does the Democrats a “great service” s/he’ll get the next appointment by a Democrat governor to the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court. There is not a lot of majesty in the Law.
I’ll not join some of my conservative/Republican friends in criticizing Judge Aarseth; the Alaska Bar and Bench is generally liberal and was designed by the Founders to be that way. If you don’t like it, amend the Constitution.
Until then, if you’re a conservative learn to live with it and win; they’re liberal, but they’re not stupid, so you have to take a position that would embarrass them if they ruled against you.
Aarseth’s decision to deny summary judgment is actually a conservative decision. The only surprise for me is that he did throw out one of the plaintiffs’ allegations, but even that was a decision based on Alaska Courts’ decisional precedence.
Really, a lower court judge never goes far wrong by just sticking to what judges before him/her have decided on the issue; let the big guys sort it out or pitch it to the Legislature.
Aarseth basically did that: He laid this on the Legislature. There’ve been some pretty controversial recall cases and the Legislature has on several occasions considered the recall law in Title 15; they’ve never seen fit to change the cause standards for recall.
As Judge Aarseth opined; recall is fundamentally a political rather than legal process, and he chose not to have the Judiciary intercede in that process. If we wanted to have a really wonky and legalistic discussion, I could quarrel with his decision, but I understand why he did it and don’t think it was fundamentally wrong.
What is important about this for conservative/Republican activists is that this was a blatant exercise in “lawfare.”
This is an utterly BS complaint; it is utter leftist craziness. The communists, excuse me, Democrats set up their recall project before the Governor even took office; this was a recall looking for a reason, the same thing we’re dealing with in the sham impeachment of President Trump.
We really need to look at our recall laws, but we don’t control the House, the Senate is practically a Quisling Majority, so that look at the law isn’t likely.
Right now, “We don’t like it” is a legal basis to recall a rightfully elected governor. So, I think we need to stand behind Governor Dunleavy to actually stand up to the lawfare campaign; we’ll be there.
It’s time to go win an election rejecting recall.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
Backers of a proposed ballot initiative aimed at massively changing elections in Alaska have turned in more than 41,000 signatures in a bid to qualify the measure for this year’s ballot. It needed only 28,000 signatures.
It is discomfiting so many people were duped.
Backed primarily by moneyed Outside interests, the initiative boasts 25 pages of legalese that would radically change Alaska election law. Pushed by Alaskans for Better Elections, it would, among other things, institute ranked-choice voting, open primaries and limit campaign contributions.
Make no mistake, ranked-choice voting is a terrible idea designed to favor independents and the Left. You could end up voting for somebody you would never vote for in any other circumstances. A Republican could end up with his or her vote going to a Democrat. A Democrat could end up supporting a Republican he or she detests.
The Heritage Foundation describes ranked-choice voting as “a scheme to disconnect elections from issues and allow candidates with marginal support from voters to win elections.”
By any standard, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is no right-wing crank. He vetoed ranked-choice voting for runoffs in his state, saying it “often led to voter confusion, and that the promise that ranked-choice voting leads to greater democracy is not necessarily fulfilled.”
As for opening primary elections? Why? Closed primaries replaced onerous behind-closed-doors candidate selection. Open primaries hamstring a party’s ability to choose its strongest candidates and field those who adhere to and support its platform. How does that strengthen the electoral process and offer the best candidates?
Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer moved to keep the question off the ballot, claiming the myriad extensive changes violate the state constitution’s single-subject requirement for initiatives.
Superior Court Judge Yvonne Lamoureux in October ruled against him and allowed the group to begin signature-gathering. The judge’s decision in under appeal.
If the question makes it onto the ballot, we can only cross our fingers and hope Alaskans finally see it for what it is – a way to dismantle our election system.
It was apparent throughout today’s hearing that no matter what charges a group might lodge — true, false, frivolous, or ridiculous — the voters should have the right to decide on the merits of whether a lawmaker should be recalled in Alaska. It doesn’t matter if the ballot describes falsehoods in its allegations. It will be up to Gov. Mike Dunleavy to essentially run again in a special recall election, and tell people that he did not commit those offenses that are being alleged.
Judge Eric Aarseth issued his ruling today after the Recall Dunleavy Committee and the Attorney General presented their opposing views in Superior Court.
Whatever the allegation are, they are is taken as true, the judge opined. It’s up to the voters to decide “if they are true or not true.” His ruling will be appealed by the governor’s supporters, Stand Tall With Mike to the Alaska Supreme Court.
It was expected that the lower court judge would rule in favor of the Recall committee.
One allegation, however, was struck as false. It said the Legislature was precluded from performing its responsibilities. He said the Legislature could override a veto. But the judge said the other allegations could be interpreted as true.
This court is of the opinion it doesn’t have the discretion to create more stringent definitions” than previous courts, he said.
This story will be updated.
The judge allowed the petitioners to get their next petition from the Division of Elections by no later than Feb. 10, when they can start collecting the 78,000 signatures they will need to place the item on the ballot. The Stand Tall With Mike group said they would ask the judge to stay that decision, although Aarseth had already indicated how he would rule.
Facing a changing media market and less interest in print newspapers by the public, the Juneau Empire has let go two key members of its editorial staff: The staff photographer and the local sports reporter.
Photographer Michael Penn has been with the newspaper since about 1995, and is the longest-serving staff person in the news department. In fact, it’s hard to imagine any editorial department staffer with a longer tenure than Penn in the history of the newspaper, which was founded in 1912 as The Alaska Daily Empire. Nolin Ainsworth has been the local sports and outdoors writer, and he’s now off the roster as well.
“The unfortunate reality, however, is that newspapers of our size can no longer support these dedicated positions,” wrote Robert Monteith, the general manager of the Empire in today’s Friday edition. He went on to acknowledge that the financial pressures would continue without the support of subscribers and advertisers.
In June, the newspaper ceased publishing its print edition on Mondays and rolled the weekly Capital City Weekly into its Thursday edition, basically shutting down the stand-alone publication.
For those who were raised with the Empire, it’s painful to see the capital city newspaper shrink yet again. The newsroom had a staff of 20 when the new millennium started, but is down to four now — an editor and three writers, all of whom are entitled to vacation, sick leave, and an 8-hour day.
Putting out a newspaper under those conditions is going to be a herculean task.
Must Read Alaska publisher Suzanne Downing was the editor of the Juneau Empire when it launched its digital presence on the World Wide Web in the late 1990s.
It will take more than a public corporation to save Alaska’s ferry system
The study commissioned by Gov. Dunleavy concerning future operations of the Alaska Marine Highway System’s (AMHS) is still being finalized for publication.
The delay in releasing the report has generated some angst among ferry critics and advocates alike. But it’s critical that the report is vetted closely, and factual errors and inconsistencies are eliminated before its release.
Win Gruening
The report, created under a $250,000 contract to the Anchorage-based firm, Northern Economics, is expected to identify potential reductions of the State’s financial obligation to AMHS but also include analysis of options available for reshaping the system, such as through a public/private partnership.
Many critical of ferry service cuts have characterized the idea of folding AMHS into a public corporation as the cure-all for what ails the ferry system.
But it’s wishful thinking to believe that a public corporation, by itself, can do this.
Without systemic changes in the state’s transportation plan, re-creating AMHS as a public corporation is akin to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
A Juneau-headquartered organization, Southeast Conference (SEC), has been the most ardent proponent of forming a “ferry authority” overseen by a professional board of directors. According to SEC Executive Director, Robert Venables, such a structure “would be better to control costs…and raise new revenue streams.”
Most recently, however, SEC seems more focused on protesting system cuts and promoting costly modifications to vessels. SEC’s advocacy of retrofitting AMHS’s newest vessels, “Alaska Class Ferries” (ACFs) designed as “dayboats”, with crew quarters would negate operational costs savings essential to the long-term survival of the system.
Ferry service frequency should improve when vessels now undergoing winter maintenance and retrofits come back online. But, blindly restoring service to previous levels without substantial reductions in costs is not a solution. Unless AMHS can continue to reduce its operational costs, adding service, especially on low volume runs, will only drive the subsidy back up.
BC Ferries, by comparison, subsidize their ferries at approximately 25%, half of AMHS’s subsidy after its budget reductions.
Ironically, it was a unanimously endorsed Southeast Conference regional plan in 1977 that proposed extending roads where possible, eliminating double crews on most vessels and operating primarily day-shuttle ferries. If that original plan had been fully implemented, it’s likely we wouldn’t be in the fix we are today.
What proponents of adding crew quarters won’t acknowledge is that dayboats with single crews can still be used on longer runs by overnighting vessels in a destination port similar to airline operations today.
Ferry advocates’ insistence that Alaska’s “roads don’t make a profit” and reducing ferry service would be like “shutting down the Parks Highway” is a faulty comparison. 99.5% of Alaska’s vehicular traffic occurs on roads and over 80% of the highway operations/maintenance budget is offset by users through gas taxes and other fees.
In contrast, ferries historically have moved less than 1% of vehicular traffic with only 30% of the operational costs paid by users and 70% subsidized by state general funds.
Roads will always be less expensive than ferries. Despite this, SEC has declined to support the Juneau Access Road Project in upper Lynn Canal that would minimize the need for ferries and allow the system to be downsized, thereby reducing costs.
This project, connecting Juneau with Haines and Skagway, remains the best way to accomplish this. And to lessen the burden on the State, why not consider making the proposed Lynn Canal Highway a toll road?
The 2018 Juneau Access EIS estimated potential daily road traffic averaging 810 cars (counting both directions). Annual highway maintenance was estimated at $2.4 million/yr. A toll of around $8 per vehicle would offset this cost and, when added to the Katzehin-Haines shuttle ferry fare, it’s still under $30 each way for vehicle and driver.
That’s the kind of public transportation improvement that can be realized with a day-shuttle ferry operation coupled with a road extension.
Whether a public corporation would be willing to support increased road access as well as raising selected fares, privatizing some services, and renegotiating labor contracts to help lower ferry subsidies remains to be seen.
Such a balanced approach could garner broad-based support from the Legislature, the Administration and the traveling public.
Win Gruening retired as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in 2012. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is active in community affairs as a 30-plus year member of Juneau Downtown Rotary Club and has been involved in various local and statewide organizations.
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I can’t remember the last time I was up bright and early for a 7 am meeting, but there I was at the Alliance/Resource Development Council breakfast, listening to Senate President Cathy Giessel deliver a presentation on the upcoming legislative session that can best be described as the “same ole.’”
The room was full of movers and shakers, wannabes, politicians, and media. The crowd was polite, but no more, for Giessel, who is the political equivalent and has all the bedside manners of Nurse Ratched.
On the way out I asked a friend, “If she were a Democrat, what would she have said differently?” We agreed that had she been a Democrat she’d have probably railed a bit about increasing oil taxes but otherwise any Democrat would have made pretty much the same pitch.
Speaker Bryce Edgmon was supposed to attend with Giessel, as the two are inseparable these days. But he was a no-show, having begged off for illness. He didn’t need to be there anyway; Giessel did a good imitation of a Democrat.
She couldn’t tell us enough about the wonderful collaboration she has with Speaker Edgmon.
Senator Giessel didn’t give any details but hinted at proposed cooperative agreements with the village or regional corporations for “local control” of education in the rural areas.
For those who know anything about the Indian Self-determination Act, this looks a lot like the scheme in which the federal government gives federal money to tribes and other tribal/Native entities and the entity runs the programs.
Of course, that is precisely what the Regional Education Attendance Areas are supposed to do. Giessel tried to justify it by saying the locals would run it at least as well as the State.
But the State doesn’t “run” rural education; it sets some standards that it barely enforces and sends the money to the local district/REAA, which is exactly the way federal agencies manage Indian Self-determination Act grants and contracts.
My money-laundry detector is going off on this one; if they want to have even less control than the State already has, then they are aiming for no control at all.
Then there was talk of revenue and taxes, taxes, taxes and in this portion we got a cameo from Giessel’s sidekick, Sen. Finance Chair Natasha von Imhof. They were a tag team on the latest revenue fad — the magic $100 billion Permanent Fund.
Giessel says if we stop with that nasty Permanent Fund dividend, we can get the Fund to $100 billion in 14 years, while von Imhof says 18 years. I know people who think we could get most of the way to $100 billion in the corpus with a stoke of the governor’s pen ordering an honest accounting of the money currently in the State’s hands, and sweeping all of the appropriated but unexpended funds, sub-funds of the General Fund, and all the various other funds listed only in the small and obscure print in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, if listed at all.
I’ve been saying for years that the State was stuffing money in coffee cans and mattresses. When the Department of Revenue, the Division of Finance, and the Office of Management and Budget gives the Legislature and the plebes that “General Fund Revenue Available for Appropriation” figure, they’re telling you what they want you to know. In fact, there is a whole lot of money laying around out there in various hidey holes and slush funds.
$100 billion in the corpus is purported to be the level at which we can support recurring spending on Permanent Fund earnings alone, at least in good years, with no regard for revenue from other sources.
They whispered a few sweet nothings about that requiring spending limits, but you knew they really didn’t mean real limits.
I’m usually critical of binary propositions; few things are as simple as Door A or Door B, but this is truly a binary proposition: The Republican president of the Senate either thinks we are too ignorant to deal with State finances so she can’t tell us the truth, or legislators are themselves too ignorant and self-absorbed to understand State finances.
I worked for the Legislature awhile and dealt with them I lot; I well knew that if you couldn’t reduce it to three bullet points and give them a plausible deniability strategy if anything went wrong, you weren’t getting anywhere with the Legislature.
I didn’t hear a thing in the presentation that hasn’t been around for the 45 years I’ve been in Alaska. Back in the Gov. Jay Hammond era, the whole idea was to turn oil revenue into the revenue created by the oil revenue. We’ve been talking about who should run rural education since the Seventies. We’ve been talking about whether or not to have an income tax since the first barrel of oil flowed. We’ve been talking about general or special “temporary” sales taxes for just as long.
The people who “run” this State are like the elites in DC: They’re famous for being famous and powerful because they are powerful. And they are clueless.
If you did not catch the presentation, word is Giessel and Edgmon was the program for the Democrats’ Bartlett Club meeting at noon at the Anchorage Senior Center.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
