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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.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski defied expectations and surprised critics today by giving her full-throated support of the drone strike ordered by President Trump that killed Iranian Gen. Soleimani.
Murkowski, who at key times has stood in opposition to Trump, issued a statement of support and agreed to cosponsor a resolution to back the president:
“I am pleased to support Senator Cruz’s resolution commending the President and the men and women of the United States Armed Forces and intelligence community for the successful operation against Qasem Soleimani. It has long been known that General Soleimani and the Iranian Quds Force are dangerous and destructive members of one of the largest terrorist groups in the world. For decades the U.S. attempted to dissuade Soleimani and the Quds Force from continued aggression against the U.S. and our allies. They are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American servicemembers and repeated attacks on American facilities, including the horrible and unacceptable attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that recently took place.
The actions taken by the U.S. military and intelligence community at the charge of the President were significant, decisive, and eliminated one of the greatest threats to peace in the region. The precision and professionalism of our men and women in uniform and throughout the intelligence services demonstrates why we are all grateful for their service. – Sen. Lisa Murkowski
“Through collaboration and continued briefings with my colleagues, the administration, and members of the military community, I hope to find a path forward to de-escalation,” Murkowski wrote.
Democrats in Congress have been critical of the killing of Soleimani. Sen. Chuck Schumer said, ‘We do not need this president either bumbling or impulsively getting us into a major war.”
The House of Representatives, on a party-line vote, adopted a war powers resolution to try to limit the ability of the president to take further military action against Iran. It passed 224-194, with Congressman Don Young voting against it.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “Last week, in our view, the administration conducted a provocative disproportionate airstrike against Iran which endangered Americans, and did so without consulting Congress,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference.
Murkowski didn’t issue an immediate statement, but rather she waited because she knew Sen. Cruz was working on a resolution that she wanted to cosponsor.
The resolution is similar to that which passed after Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid by Seal Team Six, at the direction of then-President Barack Obama. That resolution, offered in 2011, passed unanimously in the Senate with all 100 senators voting in favor of it.
Senator Cruz’ resolution has 43 cosponsors, including Sen. Murkowski, and Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska. The others include:
Sen. Cruz was joined by 43 original cosponsors: Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Congressman Don Young issued a statement in support of the president:
“Qasem Soleimani was a terrorist who committed heinous atrocities and facilitated human rights abuses against the oppressed people of Iran. Freedom-loving people everywhere shed no tears for his loss, and our world is a safer place without him. America’s military is strong and stands ready to defend our citizens, allies, and way of life against further aggression by the Iranian regime. I am grateful for President Trump’s strong leadership as the world comes together in support of the Iranian peoples’ pursuit of liberty.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan, interviewed on Fox, also voiced his strong support of the president’s decision:
CHIEF OF STAFF SCOTT KENDALL USED SEAL ON NGO TALKING POINTS
CNN and Alaska blogger Dermot Cole are breathlessly pounding their chests because the Pebble Partnership gave the Dunleavy Administration suggested talking points about the history of the project — talking points that were then used to help inform the White House about progress made in the permitting process, and the steps yet to be taken.
“Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office was given detailed talking points, ghostwritten letters and advice on lobbying strategies by Pebble Limited Partnership executives, emails show. Dunleavy and his office then used that material, sometimes adopting the company’s language word for word, in an effort that culminated in President Donald Trump promising favorable action on the mine, according to emails…” wrote CNN.
The headline said the collaboration was “secret.”
Except it wasn’t — the public records made by environmental groups and delivered to CNN reporters gave reporters all they felt they needed to know, because it was not secret to begin with. It was not redacted or withheld, but delivered upon request.
Why? Because Gov. Dunleavy has not been secret about his intent to stand up to the EPA about its unfair process under policy set by the Obama White House and the governorship of Bill Walker, who slow-rolled every state decision on Pebble.
If you read the mainstream media or D. Cole, a “resist” activist who writes regularly for the Fairbanks News Miner and other mainstream publications, you’d get the impression that using white-paper talking points is somehow a bad thing.
And yet, it’s quite common. Talking points are given to governors all the time from subject experts. It’s called information sharing. Gov. Walker used talking points provided to his office by Criminal Justice reform advocates when he signed SB 91 into law, for instance.
And that brings us back to Gov. Walker. What is uncommon is for a Governor’s Office to put a State Seal on a white paper written by environmental groups.
This is exactly what happened under the Walker Administration, yet the mainstream media — CNN, Dermot Cole, etc. — was dead silent.
The document that the former governor put the State Seal on? It was titled “Alaskans Celebrate: EPA Right to Keep Bristol Bay Protections in Place,” and was a clear message to the public that the State of Alaska had taken a position against the Pebble Mine and against allowing the company to apply for a permit.
It was not written by the Governor’s Office, but was provided to the Governor’s Office. And it was jointly issued with the State Seal affixed:
This use of the State Seal on an anti-Pebble Mine talking-point paper occurred under the guidance of former Chief of Staff Scott Kendall, who is now the lead attorney for Recall Dunleavy Committee, the group trying to get Gov. Mike Dunleavy recalled. Kendall will appear in court tomorrow in Anchorage to try to advance his group’s recall petition to a special election.
Kendall, who once again represents anti-Pebble organizations, had previously done extensive legal work for groups fighting the Pebble Project and had never recused himself in any decision making when he became chief of staff to the governor.
In the Walker-Obama era, this was standard operating procedure. It was acceptable for environmental groups to collude behind the scenes with the EPA to disenfranchise the Pebble Partnership from being allowed to participate in the fair permitting process under the Clean Water Act. The EPA simply told Pebble that it could not even apply for a permit. It, alone among any projects in America, would not be allowed to approach the imperial throne.
Now, the Dunleavy Administration is simply requesting is that the EPA does what it says it would do under the Trump Administration, which is to remove the pre-emptive vetoes that circumvent the public process. Let the project advance or be denied on its merits.
What the public isn’t being told by CNN is that the news organization received this story, practically turnkey, from the National Resources Defense Council and that it has no intention of being fair in its reporting on Pebble, on the Trump Administration, or on America. CNN has revealed itself once again to be wedded to the Left and beholden to its talking points.
Kris Warren announced today he is running for the position of Alaska Republican Party national committeeman. The election for the national committeeman and committeewoman will take place during the party’s State Convention in Juneau, April 2-4.
The national committeeman is one of three Alaska seats on the National Republican Committee, which is the political committee that leads the Republican Party.
The position is held by former Alaska GOP Chairman Peter Goldberg, who recently announced that he will not seek another term.
Kris is chairman of District 23, Anchorage, of the Alaska Republican Party.
Kris and his wife, Dawn Linton-Warren, have remained active in party activities for several years, hosting and organizing a number of fundraisers for the party, individual candidates and incumbents. He is a gold member of the Alaska Republican Party’s Freedom Club, and attended the 2016 National Convention in Cleveland. The Warrens have attended two RNC quarterly meetings at the national level and will attend the next meeting in Miami later this month.
Kris said his goal is to primarily assist ARP Chairman Glenn Clary and National Committeewoman Cynthia Henry in raising funds for the party as well as local and national candidates and to help get Republicans elected.
Mike Tauriainen, chairman for GOP District 29 Kenai, longtime activist, and a 2016 a delegate to the Republican National Convention, said he is considering running for the national committeeman post and that he and his wife, Kay, are still discussing it.
Cynthia Henry, national committeewoman, announced she would be running for reelection for that post. She has served in the role since 2016.
Alaska, finally emerging from a recession that took place during a national economic boom, has lost population over the past three years, which accounts for some of the state’s stabilizing unemployment rates — many workers have simply left for better opportunities.
The state also faces a flat or growing state budget, but not enough revenue to serve this ever shrinking population, many of whom are not in the workforce: Oil now accounts for about half of the state’s revenue, state investments’ earnings account for most of the rest.
In 2016, the state population peaked at over 739,649, while today, we’re a state of 731,007.
Between 2018 and 2019, Alaska’s population fell by 3,048, according to the most recent data released by the Alaska Department of Labor.
In Alaska’s largest city, schools reflect the shrinking enrollment: In 2009, the Anchorage School District served 49,492 students, but in 2019 has just 46,794, more than a 5.5 percent drop in a decade. In Juneau, there were 5,237 students enrolled in 2006, but that number is now down to 4,648, an 11 percent drop.
More startling is the crash in kindergarten enrollment: In just five years, the number of kindergarteners coming into the Anchorage School District has dropped 11.5 percent.
Where did everyone go? More than 8,000 people have left the state in the past year, a number that is somewhat offset by newborns. Birth rates are down, however, as evidenced by the shrinking school enrollment, and the population is aging in Alaska: While the group from ages 0-64 declined by 1 percent, the over-65 crowd has grown by nearly 5 percent.
When Alaskans move, they tend to move to jurisdictions without an income tax — Washington, Arizona, Florida, Texas. They also move to Colorado and California, both of which are taxing states; Colorado has a 4 percent across-the-board tax on income, while California has a progressive tax of between 1-12 percent.
INCOME TAXES ON THOSE WHO REMAIN?
How to pay for Alaska state services is the search for the Holy Grail in Alaska politics. Income taxes are being discussed in the caucuses in both the House and Senate as a way to pay for a government that exceeds the revenues now available from oil proceeds and the Permanent Fund Percent of Market Value (POMV). Those are the two current pots of money the bureaucracy feeds on. (The Constitutional Budget Reserve, which is a lending bank to the Legislature, is nearly dry, with just $2 billion available to patch the budget.)
Alaska House Democrat-led Majority meets in advance of the Jan. 21 convening of the Alaska Legislature.
Alaska’s workforce, which would pay taxes under the whispered-about income tax scenario, is shrinking as well.
In November, 348,015 were part of the Alaska workforce, the smallest the state has seen since 2005. The annual wages they bring in are roughly $18 billion a year.
For lawmakers and budget appropriators, these are all significant numbers. Taxing those wages could help fund the services the state is required to provide, and those the state chooses to provide. Fewer workers mean fewer paychecks to tax, and more needy people to serve.
Those who are retiring, if taxed on their retirement income, would be more likely to move to no-tax states.
Even in the Lower 48, where the economy has been on fire over the past three years, populations shift to lower-taxing states.
TAXES DRIVE DEMOGRAPHICS, DECISIONS
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has come out against an income tax, but the Legislature may have other ideas about how to balance the budget.
Must Read Alaska asked former Alaska OMB Director Donna Arduin for help understanding the impact of taxation on population migration between states. Arduin said several Alaskans have reached out to her with the same question, and she pointed to a paper produced by Arthur Laffer, her business partner in Arduin, Laffer and Moore.
Laffer and the American Legislative Exchange Council produce an annual publication, “Rich States, Poor States.” The 10th annual edition lays out the detrimental economic impacts that income taxes have on states’ economies, as they compete with each other for workers and private investment capital.
According to Laffer, income taxes are especially important factors in shaping where people choose to live, work, and invest.
“If A and B are two locations, and if taxes are raised in B and lowered in A, producers and manufacturers will have a greater incentive to move from B to A,” Laffer wrote.
Between 2002 and 2016, more than 20 million people moved from one state to another, often for better economic prospects, Laffer wrote.
“Americans in search of better opportunity often turn to states that are economically attractive. This is a boon for states whose fiscal house is in order and outlook is bright, but a substantial growth deterrent to states whose outlook is already dire,” Laffer wrote. “Generally speaking, taxpayers moved away from states with high personal and corporate income taxes to states with lower or—as is more often the case— no income taxes.”
Alaska is an outlier because it has had no state income tax, little manufacturing, and, in fact, gives each qualified resident a dividend from oil royalties out of the North Slope. That annual incentive may tend to slow the out-migration of those looking for better opportunities.
And yet, according to Laffer, it’s no surprise that all nine states with no personal income tax experienced a net increase from domestic migration during the period studied. States like New York and Illinois languished at the bottom.
The states that lost both the most residents are the usual suspects—New York, Illinois, and California, he wrote. On the other hand, states that have been most successful in attracting residents are Florida, Texas, and Arizona. New York and California have personal income taxes far greater than 5 percent, whereas Texas and Florida do not have an income tax, Laffer noted.
Launching an income tax in Alaska could increase outmigration, if the experiences of other states are any indication.
The U.S. Census official count of Alaskans begins on Jan. 21 in Toksook Bay. The federal count will also provide data to federal agencies and a lower number of Alaskans will generally mean fewer federal dollars coming back to the state.
Mayor Ethan Berkowitz has an idea for how to pay for the largest budget in Anchorage history: Now that there’s little to spare with “community assistance” from the State of Alaska, it’s time to get the State to pay communities a dividend from the Alaska Permanent Fund.
This is a plan that plenty of local mayors and assemblies, now controlled by taxing liberals, will likely embrace as they converge on Juneau with their legislative agendas.
It’s really community revenue sharing by another name. The sharing just comes from Alaskans’ Permanent Fund dividends.
Berkowitz noted in an interview with KTVA that Anchorage and the State of Alaska have many of the same services for the same populations.
“What the state hasn’t done with its fiscal planning is to integrate the local governments in terms of what it’s going to look like because we both provide services to the same constituencies,” Berkowitz said. “A community dividend, in essence, would mean you would divide the dividend payout between state government, the dividend itself and local government.”
With the Berkowitz community Permanent Fund dividend, Alaskans would receive even less of their statutorily determined dividend, although the amount to be skimmed by local governments is unclear. Berkowitz also didn’t explain how unorganized parts of the state would receive a community dividend, since the Legislature serves as the borough government for unorganized areas.
The second of three town hall meetings on the Anchorage legislative agenda takes place from 6-7:30 pm at Chugiak High School’s auditorium on Wednesday, Jan. 8. On Jan 9, the Mayor and the Anchorage Assembly will head to Girdwood’s Community Room for another town hall, from 6:30-8 pm.
Among other items to be discussed are the three new sales taxes proposed for Anchorage residents, which will also be the subject of a separate public hearing on Jan. 14, as the Assembly seeks to move one or all of them to the March-April municipal election:
While state funding to the municipality of Anchorage has dropped by $100 million since 2005, the city’s budget has continued to explode, and now must be fed by taxes. The municipal budget is nearly 15 percent higher now than when Berkowitz took office and every year the Berkowitz Administration has set a new record for the size of the municipal budget. Meanwhile, the population of the city has dropped, and the number of new homes built in Anchorage during his administration was the lowest in decades. Only 219 residences were built in 2019.
The global oil markets reacted ever-so-slightly to the military tensions in the Middle East.
After Iran and the United States shared their thoughts with each other through missiles in recent days, the threat of major conflict boosted prices to over $70 a barrel.
Even the “World War III” scenario painted by MSNBC, CNN, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi only pumped the price up by a smidgen.
Brent oil contracts, the global benchmark reached $70.74. Alaska North Slope crude will likely trade in the mid-70s today. The ANS price on Monday was $70.51; (Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s prices are not yet available, check back, this will be updated.)
Higher energy prices, now that the United States is an net exporter of petroleum products, may serve to stimulate the overall national economy, although it will also lead to higher heating oil and transportation costs in Alaska.
TRUMP TALKS TOUGH
Today, President Donald Trump reiterated the importance of the U.S. having not only a strong military, but a strong economy. In a speech at the White House, he said that for too many years the world has tolerated Iran, which he called the largest exporter of terrorism in the world.
In May of 2018, Trump announced that the U.S. would pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump called the nuclear “a horrible one-sided deal” that should have never been made and said the U.S. would not be held hostage to “nuclear blackmail.”
Today, he said that the “foolish” deal that President Barack Obama made, which sent $150 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Iran, resulted in Iran using those dollars to send missiles out against its regional enemies and the United States.
“They chanted death to America the day the agreement was signed,” Trump said today. He said that the retaliation of Iran against the United States appears to have ended with the missile attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq — attacks that killed no one.
OIL PRICES BASICALLY STABLE
Alaska now knows what the world looks like under the great “brink of war” scenario — which is a slight uptick in price. It’s not likely to see prices go as far as $100 a barrel.
The price bump of the past few days doesn’t necessarily help the Alaska budget situation unless two big fields come on line — Pikka Unit (Oil Search) and Willow (ConocoPhillips), both of which don’t yet have a final investment decision from their respective companies.
Alaska needs that production to bail its state budget out, if the government is unwilling to trim back its spending.
But production won’t increase if the Our Fair Share initiative passes with voters this year. In fact, without those two fields coming on line, production will suffer from the dwindles.
It’s a new era for Alaska, as it only provides a fraction of the oil that is being produced in the United States:
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
That makes is more evident than ever that price will not bail out Alaska’s state budget, which receives 90 percent of its revenue from petroleum.
What can Alaskans do to boost production? Industry leaders say voters will need to stand on the throat of the Our Fair Share initiative, and tell the oil producers that investing in Alaska is a good business decision.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy could be getting his “Trump moment” when it comes to shaping the Alaska Supreme Court.
Justice Craig Stowers, one of the court’s most conservative jurists, is retiring, opening up an opportunity for Gov. Mike Dunleavy to appoint a like-minded conservative to the court, one who could serve for many years into the future.
President Donald Trump had that moment not long after he took office. On Jan. 31, 2017, he nominated Neil Gorsuch to succeed the high court’s most strict constitutionalist, Antonin Scalia, who had died (somewhat mysteriously, with a pillow over his face).
But Dunleavy’s ability to appoint a conservative to replace a conservative may be stymied.
He must choose from nominees given to him by the Alaska Judicial Council, a decidedly liberal body that polls members of the Alaska Bar Association, who also lean liberal. Those members rate the candidates and the council forwards the names of finalists to the governor. By law, he must pick from that prescreened list.
This is known as the Missouri Plan, and it’s supposed to get partisan politics out of judicial selection. But critics say that it gives unelected, unaccountable trial lawyers way too much influence in the selection process.
Members of the Judicial Council include Chief Justice Joel Bolger, who has already sent a warning shot over the bow of the Dunleavy Administration, in his speeches and published writings.
Also on the Judicial Council is James E. Torgerson, husband of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Morgan Christen, who was appointed to the Ninth by President Barack Obama.
Only two members of the council were appointed by Dunleavy.
Justice Stowers was appointed by Gov. Sean Parnell in 2009 and has been the dissenting vote in two important abortion cases. The first was when he voted to uphold the parental notification law passed by the Legislature. That law was overturned by the rest of the court, which means in Alaska, a minor can get an abortion, but not a tattoo or piercing, without her parent’s knowledge. Stowers was again the dissenting voice on the court when it came to Medicaid funding for elective abortions. For now, the court is forcing Alaska to pay for these elective abortions, against the wishes of the Legislature and most Alaskans.
Alaskans will have only a glimpse of the judicial nomination process, which is somewhat secretive in its balloting, and those who apply for court vacancies are voted on by only those Alaska Bar members who choose to take the time to vote.
Applications for Stowers’ replacement will be taken by the council through Feb. 14, and interviews are held in the spring. Once the list of finalists is given to the governor, he has 45 days to pick from the list.
Last year, when Dunleavy delayed naming a judge past the 45-day limit, that action became one of the grounds that the Recall Dunleavy group used to say he is unfit for office, an allegation that will be argued in court on Friday, Jan. 10, as the State Department of Law tries to fend off the Recall Dunleavy movement in court.
