‘THE BINDING DEAL’ MAY HAVE OBLIGATED THE STATE FOR BILLIONS
Gov. Bill Walker has been courting China for the past year. Through the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, he is preparing to sign loan agreements with the Bank of China to finance a $40-60 billion gasline project.
In November, he signed a joint development agreement between AGDC, Sinopec, CIC Capital, and Bank of China, and large LNG buyers in China, Korea, and Japan.
He only needs a few things in place, such as the Legislature’s approval of AGDC’s authority to borrow $1 billion of “stay afloat” money. Senate Republicans have balked, while House Democrats have given their blessing.
Walker also was told by Goldman Sachs and the Bank of China, the global capital coordinators for the project, that he needed to have some gas to sell. He didn’t own the gas. This was going to make it hard to sell the project to investors.
It was time for a good-news press release.
WALKER SIGNS TO BUY GAS AT A PRICE
Today, Walker says he has a binding agreement with BP to buy their share of North Slope and Pt. Thomson gas. The press release issued by his office says AGDC and BP Alaska have agreed to the “key terms” as they relate to price and volume in a gas sales agreement.
The volume is unknown. No one even knows how much BP has in gas in Pt. Thomson.
The price? Also unknown. No one has revealed the price AGDC President Keith Meyer has agreed to pay for that gas, and what the variables might be for cost overruns, or the multitude of risk escalators. Part of this is because there are two other producers who must sign off on any agreement — ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil. Along with BP, they have complicated gas balancing agreements between them that must be factored in.
The timing of the news release, 10 days before the end of the legislative session, shows both a political purpose and a commercial one, because if AGDC and BP were close to an actual gas sales agreement, they would have said so. That agreement will be truly binding, whereas this “precedent agreement” is “binding lite.”
The carefully worded “precedent agreement” is a bit of progress, and Walker needed to get it out there to keep the project alive.
STILL A FRAGILE PROJECT
Not even the appropriating body, the Alaska Legislature, knows today what the agreed price is or the terms that surround it; legislators will have lots of questions in coming days. The Senate has yet to sign off on AGDC’s ability to borrow $1 billion from China to continue.
Governor Walker made an announcement in March of 2016 that things were not going that well on the gasline. The partners stood by stoically as he said he would take it over from the producers.
Alaskans recall that in 2016, Walker made it impossible for ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips to remain as the lead partners in the project, which was advancing slowly due to an unfavorable market, one flooded in natural gas. They were shown the door by the Walker Administration, which chose to go it alone.
But BP remained as a technical adviser to the project, and continues in that role today, which makes it no surprise that the company would also be the one to step forward first and say: “Give it your best shot, Gov. Walker, and we’ll sell you gas.”
With Walker’s campaign season in full swing, AGDC has been in the field polling Alaskans about what it would take for them to get back on board with the gasline. The agency has sifted through polling data and come up with ways to court public opinion. Alaskans told AGDC that they hope the project pennies out, but they have their doubts as to whether it’s viable.
Because Gov. Walker needs some good news to get the wind in the sail of his re-election campaign, now was as good a time as any to announce an agreement to keep working toward an agreement.
A MOVE TO ALLOW FELONY DUI CONVICTIONS TO NOT MATTER AFTER 10 YEARS
Monday is Day 112 in the Alaska Legislature; the constitutional deadline for sine die is next Wednesday. Not much of interest is on the calendar today, as most negotiations are going on in fits and starts behind the scenes.
But one item caught the attention of Must Read Alaska. It’s the “LeDoux Hour of Power,” House Rules Committee on Monday at 9:30 am.
The bill comes from the governor and makes some changes to background checks for the Department of Health and Social Services. It’s a normal cleanup bill, with this title:
An Act relating to criminal and civil history record checks and requirements; relating to licenses, certifications, appeals, and authorizations by the Department of Health and Social Services; relating to child protection information; and providing for an effective date
But now it’s in LeDoux’s hands. Rather than add her amendments in the Judiciary Committee, where the changes are supposed to take place and be debated under Chairman Matt Claman, LeDoux has saved her changes for her own committee, the last stop before the House floor.
What does she want to do to SB 81?
She wants to remove driving restrictions for people who have been convicted of multiple felony DUIs.
In her own words, “The House Rules Committee substitute (CS) for SB81 (version U) would affect persons who have had their driver’s license permanently revoked for a felony DUI conviction and who also had a post-revocation driving-related criminal offense. Under current law there is no pathway for anyone with this set of convictions to ever have their driver’s license restored unless they were to reoffend. The House Rules CS would allow for persons who did not kill or seriously injure another person in connection with the felony DUI conviction or in any subsequent driving-related criminal offense(s) to have their driver’s license restored if 10 years have elapsed since their last driving-related criminal offense.”
There appears to be something wrong with the committee substitute, however: “Under current law there is no pathway for anyone with this set of convictions to ever have their driver’s license restored unless they were to reoffend.” It does not make sense.
But more to the point, this amendment has nothing to do with the purpose and intent of the bill. Why LeDoux is making major, substantive changes in the last-stop committee, a place where she has been known to squelch other amendments or discussion, is curious.
Politicos have offered two theories:
1. She is doing a favor for a donor to her Gabby’s Tuesday PAC. A scan of her donors might reveal that information.
2. She is trying to kill the bill for some unknown reason, because even if it passes the House, when it gets back to the Senate, they’re likely to take a dim view of it due to the “single subject rule.”
It’s not the first time LeDoux has made bills into Franken-bills as they came through the Rules Committee. Last year, she bruised up a simple resolution for Sexual Abuse Awareness Month and provided drama for viewers on 360North.org.
THE PARTY SETS RULES, AND IT WANTS TO ENFORCE THEM
The chairman of the Alaska Republican Party has asked the Division of Elections to reconsider its stance on refusing to honor the party’s rules prohibiting Reps. Gabrielle LeDoux, Paul Seaton, and Louise Stutes from running as Republicans in the August primary.
Division of Elections Director Josie Bahnke last month responded to Tuckerman Babcock’s request to respect the party’s rules, and she said without a court order she would not agree.
The matter stems from a series of actions the party took after LeDoux, Seaton, and Stutes left the elected Republican majority in 2016 and formed a coalition with Democrats, giving them control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1993.
After Bahnke said she would not enforce the party’s rules, Babcock returned to the State Executive Committee for a decision, and the group wholeheartedly supported taking legal measures to protect the party from the three rogue Republicans.
“As you know, the controlling case in freedom of association and political parties is Tashijan.In that case the Republican Party of Connecticut desired to expand those eligible to vote in the Republican primary and the State of Connecticut refused. The freedom of association argument won. In Alaska, the Alaska Republican Party desired to restrict, not expand, those eligible to vote in the Republican primary — contrary to state law. The State of Alaska recognized the constitutional authority inherent in Tashijan and recognized the right of the party to restrict those who could participate in Republican primary,” Babcock wrote on Saturday in a letter to Bahnke.
Tuckerman Babcock
Babcock was referring to the Republicans’ closed ballot in the Alaska primary, where people who are undeclared with a party or nonpartisan may vote in it along with registered Republicans, but others — registered Democrats, for instance — may not vote the GOP primary ballot.
“Now we have the Superior and Supreme Courts in Alaska ruling in favor of the constitutional right of a political party to expandthe candidates eligible to run in the primary. Once again the constitutional principle is the freedom of association. Once again the courts acknowledge and recognize that right. The response from the Alaska Republican Party was to apply the constitutional principle identified by the courts to restrict known turncoats and frauds from the Republican primary,” he wrote.
“We are shocked that the Division of Elections flatly refuses to treat the right of association equally between the Democrat and the Republican Parties. Or to follow the precedent set subsequent to Tashijan,” Babcock wrote. “What is the constitutional principle relied upon by you to differentiate between the Democrat and Republican Party internal party rules? Is it the State’s position that every subsection and paragraph of state election law must be litigated before you will recognize when a clear constitutional right has been identified by the courts?”
Babcock asked Bahnke to reconsider her decision and honor the party’s rules.
“The State Executive Committee of the ARP has authorized me to pursue all legal means to enforce our Rules. However, a lawsuit, besides needless expense and a waste of court time, would leave the candidacies of LeDoux, Seaton and Stutes in limbo and their eligibility in question. There is no harm to the electorate at large, nor any harm to the three apostate incumbents, from enforcing our Rule insofar as those three individuals can still run for office as petition candidates in the general election or as candidates of another political party.”
Additional ballots cast in 2018 over ballots cast in 2015: 8,645
Additional cost to taxpayers: $589,300 Cost to taxpayers for votes exceeding the 70,650 cast in the 2015 election: $68 dollars per vote.
Bottom line: A massive increase in cost and a small increase in turnout coupled with a heightened risk of fraud? The municipality could have hired four more police officers instead.
The man who first ran for governor as a pro-life Republican, then switched to “undeclared” and ran with the full backing of the Alaska Democratic Party, has been fully transitioned.
Can an endorsement from Planned Parenthood be far behind?
Gov. Bill Walker, with his poll numbers in the tank, is trying to hang on for a second term by joining the Democrats’ primary ballot.
In what’s known as a Friday night news dump, Walker’s campaign made the announcement after the evening news cycle on Friday, a well-worn tactic for keeping stinky news out of the mainstream in the hopes that something else will capture the attention of reporters; the Anchorage Daily News does not publish on Saturday, so Friday night was the place to bury this particular news.
The move to join the Democrats appears to be one part strategy, but one large part desperation: Walker is afraid he can’t win in a three-way contest, which would happen if Mark Begich files. If this was news he was proud of, he would have announced it earlier in the day and taken advantage of earned media. No, this was not one of his prouder moments, and it left him wide open for criticism.
But Walker’s campaign manager, John-Henry Heckendorn, says this alliance with the Democrats, like last time, is without strings. After the primary, Walker will continue as an independent, he says.
Heckendorn, who founded the Ship Creek Group of Democrat campaign services, brought Alaska the likes of disgraced Reps. Zach Fansler and Dean Westlake, both of whom were forced to resign from office within a year.
That Heckendorn-Democrat effort allowed the Democrats to flip the House of Representatives to Democrat control with the help of three turncoat Republicans.
Gov. Bill Walker is still undeclared, but he’ll run on the Democrats’ primary ballot and, if he wins, have the full support of the Democrats, including funds from the Democratic Governors Association.
But winning the primary is a big “if.” There’s always the Mark Begich factor.
MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
Bill Walker was a Republican for most of his life, but failed in his attempt at winning the governorship in 2010. Back then, although spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on his campaign, he was unable to knock off the incumbent Sean Parnell. Walker finished second in the primary, with 34 percent of the vote, while Parnell won the nomination with 50 percent.
Walker’s next try was different. In 2013, he filed as a Republican, but then took the advice of former Gov. Wally Hickel and decided to skip the Republican primary and run as an undeclared, or independent as he calls it.
Bill Walker and Byron Mallott file for office on Aug. 21, 2017, as an undeclared and a Democrat.
DEMOCRATS PLAY MIX AND MATCH
But immediately following the primary election, the Democrats, with the prompting of public employees unions, kicked their own winner off the top of the ballot. After all, a three-way race gave the governorship back to Parnell.
On Sept. 2, 2014, the deal was sealed: There would be no Democrat running at the top of the ticket.
With Democrats pulling the strings, Byron Mallott would run instead as Walker’s running mate, and Walker’s running mate, Craig Fleener, would drop his candidacy and accept a job in the Walker Administration as an ambassador without portfolio.
At the same time, the Democrats kicked Hollis French from their ballot — he was the candidate who had won for lieutenant governor. He was promised a job, too. Eventually, they found a spot for him running the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
In 2014, with Democrats running the campaign operation, Walker and Mallott brought an unconventional ticket. The court upheld the hijinks and voters gave the new ticket a win, although the Walker-Mallott ticket only gained 48 percent of the general election vote. Libertarian and Constitution parties, which lean conservative, peeled off enough votes from Parnell to leave him with 46 percent.
Less than a year ago, Gov. Walker headlined a symposium sponsored by the Centrist Project, which promotes breaking up the political parties in favor of non-party candidacies. He touted the benefits of not being associated with a party and said at the time he’d remain a solo act.
Then, a few months later in 2017, the Alaska Democratic Party changed its rules to allow undeclared candidates to run under its banner.
The courts upheld the decision, and the Alaska Supreme Court’s concurrence with Judge Philip Pallenberg’s October decision was what Walker need not to go it alone through the summer. And the decision came just in time. Although he has released two questionable polls that show him in the lead, credible polls, such as Dittman Research and Morning Consult, show him deeply unpopular. Another national poll by Republican gives Walker just a 22 percent approval rating.
As an undeclared running in the Democrats’ primary, he now won’t have to collect signatures. If he finds himself unopposed in the primary, he will be able to utilize all the Democrats’ resources, including access to national funds that come through organizations like Act Blue, and the National Democratic Governors Association.
BEGICH FACTOR
But all that only works if Mark Begich stays out of the race. Begich, a Democrat and one-term U.S. senator with some of the best name recognition in the state, may challenge a weak Walker. If so, polling shows Begich would win, and he is in a stronger position to challenge the Republican nominee, whoever that is.
Walker and Begich are never seen together. While Begich went to China a few weeks ago, he didn’t sign onto the governor’s trade mission to China in May. He doesn’t show up at Walker fundraisers or on any of his donor lists. His name is not among the endorsements. And in September, he wrote to his supports and told them to “keep your powder dry.”
Begich has recently penned newspaper commentaries that say Alaska is on the wrong track. In other words, he has not lent one iota of support to the current governor.
WILD WILD WEST OF ELECTIONS – QUESTIONS
1. Will Begich jump into the primary on the last day of filing, June 1. In a head-to-head, Begich would win the primary, and many Democrat Walker supporters would switch allegiances. Smelling blood in the water, they’ll go with the perceived winner.
If so, then Walker’s administration would be effectively over on Aug. 21. Already, senior Walker officials are starting to peel away; look for at least one major departure in the next few days.
2. Has Begich already given Walker his blessing? One scenario says he stays out — that’s what his brother Tom Begich is peddling.
3. With so many Democrats in Alaska identifying as Bernie Sanders believers, another candidate could jump into the Democrats’ primary. Nonpartisan Tom Gordon has already announced. Bill Wielechowski is a known foe of Walker’s, and is circling. Can the Democrats keep Ray Metcalfe out?
4. In the Democratic primary, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott will have to run separately, and can pair with whomever emerges as the winner. There’s no provision to run a joint campaign for the primary, so this is a question for the Alaska Public Offices Commission and the Division of Elections to determine if and how a “ticket” can proceed in the primary.
5. Walker and Mallott have separate APOC accounts and have $280,000 and $162,000 respectively. But they started with $50,000 each saved from their November, 2014 victory. These are not large numbers for an incumbent ticket.
6. If Walker and Mallott win, they go forward to the general election as the candidates who won in the Democrat primary. It will be up to Division of Election Josie Bahnke to devise a label that does not confuse voters, according to the court’s decision. Will she do that so late in the cycle that Republicans cannot effectively sue her if she tries to disguise Walker’s Democratic ties? Since her boss is the lieutenant governor, how will the public be assured she is operating fairly?
7. If a registered undeclared wins as governor in the Democratic primary and a registered Democrat wins for lieutenant governor, how will Division of Elections label them as a ticket?
WALKER ANNOUNCES CAMPAIGN TEAM
Earlier in the day on Friday, the Walker-Mallott campaign released the names of people on their campaign staff. They include:
John-Henry Heckendorn, campaign manager, founder, Ship Creek Group
Paula DeLaiarro, treasurer and principal at Ship Creek Group
Lindsay Hobson, spokesperson and daughter of governor
Kevin McGowan, fundraising director
Joshua Corbett, creative director and principal at Ship Creek Group
U.S. unemployment dropped to 3.9 percent last month, well within the range considered to be full employment by federal agencies that monitor such data.
But the Alaska job market is still in the doldrums, with unemployment the highest in the nation at 7.3 percent, even while nearly 9,000 people left in the last year.
A year ago in April, Alaska’s unemployment rate was 6.6 percent.
The national economy added 164,000 jobs in April, according to the Labor Department, on top of the 135,000 jobs added a month earlier, and private sector earnings in the country increased by 2.6 percent year over year.
Workers also took more home in their paychecks due to federal tax cuts passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump. For someone making $50,000 a year, they were able to keep an additional $1,440 per year, typically.
In Alaska, March was the 29th consecutive month of job losses recorded by the State Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Wages dropped 4.7 percent.
Some 26,400 Alaskans are considered to be unemployed in a civilian workforce that is estimated at 363,000 by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. One out of five jobs in Alaska is a government job, for a total of more than 81,000 Alaskans working for local, state, or federal agencies.
A bright spot for the employment scene is the marijuana industry, which grew its workforce to 536 by December of 2017. As Alaska heads into its growing season, it may continue to be the “growth” sector for the state’s economy. And it’s just in time for all those college students who are heading home and looking for that summer job.
Monthly jobs in the marijuana industry in Alaska (from the Department of Labor and Workforce Development.)
READERS WEIGH IN
After three years of persistent job losses in Alaska, what do you think Alaskans should do to take control of their economy and grow jobs again? Add your ideas — big and small — in the comment section.
“It was his most famous on-camera appearance, which kind of made him look like a jovial Santa Claus who fell out of a porta potty at an Iron Maiden concert.” – Anchorage writer John Aronno describing an Anchorage man who the Southern Poverty Law Center subscribes to neo-Nazism.
In a liberal-on-liberal attack, Aronno criticizes Alaska Public Media for not vetting the heavy metal rocker before completing an “Indie Alaska” documentary that featured him and other heavy metal enthusiasts.
Brett Manass is not the only metalhead to have an association with white supremacy. The music genre has nourished the sense of alienation of disaffected white youth since the 1970s emergence of punk aa a rejection of mainstream rock music in the United Kingdom and the U.S.
White power bands have been on the “naughty list” of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which began scrutinizing them in 2014.
In 2016, some 740 million pink salmon eggs were scooped from the bellies of fish, and raised in hatcheries in Prince William Sound.
The hatcheries subsequently released 643 million pink salmon fry into the ocean, adding to the approximately 10 billion hatchery fry that get launched into the North Pacific each year. More than a third of salmon caught in Alaska were started in hatcheries.
At the same time these voracious, fast-growing, low-value salmon are in the ocean making a living, king salmon are in rapid decline across Alaska.
Could these two population changes be related? Is it possible that pink and chum salmon fry are returning to Alaska waters and cannibalizing the out-migrating king salmon fry?
There’s enough evidence to support that theory, which has led nine Alaska outdoor sporting organizations to sign an emergency petition to the Alaska Board of Fisheries.
They want a delay on an April 19 decision by the Prince William Sound Regional Planning Team increases the number of pink salmon eggs taken by another 20 million.
The groups also state that release of hundreds of millions of hatchery-produced pink salmon fry into the marine waters of Prince William Sound threatens the biological integrity of wild stocks of pink salmon in Lower Cook Inlet, and adds to a critical ocean-rearing situation.
Too many pinks could be changing the traditional allocation of the salmon resource without lawful consultation with the Alaska Board of Fisheries.
The petition formally requests that the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game put the increased authorization for taking of pink salmon eggs on hold until more scientific information can be gathered.
The Alaska Board of Fisheries has limited authority over hatcheries, and only directs production by regulating the harvest of hatchery fish, hatchery brood stock, and cost-recovery harvests, and by amending those portions of hatchery permits relating to the source and number of salmon eggs, hatchery harvests, and the designation of special harvest areas through regulation.
Further, pink salmon that showed up in streams across Lower Cook Inlet in 2017 weren’t all local stocks, the groups say. In some areas, up to 70 percent originated from Prince William Sound hatcheries.
Prince William Sound hatchery-marked fish were present in every Lower Cook Inlet stream sampled. In Fritz Creek, 70 percent of the 96-fish sampled were from Prince William Sound hatcheries. In Beluga Slough, 56 percent of the 288-fish sampled were from Prince William Sound.
State law mandates that hatcheries operate without adversely affecting natural stocks of fish.
The groups signing the petition include Alaska Outdoor Council, Alaska Sportfishing Association, Chitina Dipnetters Association, Fairbanks Fish and Game A/C, Kenai River Professional Guide Association, Kenai River Sportfishing Association, Southcentral Alaska Dipnetters Association, Tsiu River Coalition, and Alaska Chapter Safari Club International.
Gubernatorial candidate Scott Hawkins is undergoing treatment for early stage pancreatic cancer, and calls his prospects for recovery good.
Hawkins, an Anchorage businessman who filed for office in September, said he was diagnosed several weeks ago and took quick and decisive action to arrest the tumor, which appears to not have spread.
He is being treated at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle and Alaska Oncology in Anchorage. He said he is maintaining his business obligations and campaign schedule, and monitoring results from a continuing regimen of drug therapy.
This weekend he will be in Kodiak to meet with community members and hear their concerns about state economic and social issues.
Hawkins issued a statement today:
“In recent months, I learned that I am confronted by a serious adversary — cancer. Through a dedicated treatment regimen and prayer, I plan to join the tens of thousands of Alaskans who now call themselves cancer survivors. The first round of treatment has provided a great deal of information, and because of my underlying good health, I’m very positive that I will defeat this disease. After consulting with my doctors, and based in large part on their prognosis, I will continue my campaign for Governor.”
Dr. Vincent Picozzi, an oncology physician and internationally recognized pancreatic cancer expert at Virginia Mason in Seattle, is leading Hawkins’ treatment team. He offered this assessment: “Scott presents with very good underlying health and an absence of other complications. His cancer is localized and has not spread to other organs. Given the advances in recent years in the treatment of pancreatic cancer, and the results we have been seeing here at Virginia Mason, I am treating him with full curative intent.”
Picozzi and his staff take in over 300 such cases each year and are considered a national center of excellence in the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Stephen Liu of Alaska Oncology, a member of Hawkins’ treatment team, said, “Scott’s tumor is still small. We will shrink it further with treatment, prior to surgery. That makes him an excellent candidate for a successful surgery. Scott has been tolerating the drug treatments remarkably well, which gives us more treatment options and adds further optimism to his prognosis.”
Regarding his decision to stay in the race, Hawkins said, “The bottom line is this: I care greatly about this state and am deeply committed to getting it back on track. This diagnosis only accentuates that commitment. Our state is at a crossroads and we need to change direction for the sake of future generations. The support and momentum from Alaska voters for my message of conservative change energizes me more every day.”
Hawkins is not the only candidate to face health issues. Gov. Bill Walker underwent treatment for prostate cancer in 2016, and Mike Dunleavy dropped out of the race last fall to address a heart condition, but re-entered the race at the end of December after apparently resolving the issue.
Legislative races have seen medical complications, too. Sara Rasmussen, running in the primary for House District 22 (now occupied by Jason Grenn), gave birth to a daughter this week — mother and daughter (and the rest of her family) are fine, although the infant was admitted to the intensive care unit for treatment of fluid in her lungs. Reps. Charisse Millett and Les Gara are both cancer survivors, and this year Rep. David Guttenberg was taken to the hospital for an undisclosed medical condition, while Rep. Ivy Spohnholz was medevaced to Anchorage during legislative session for treatment of a life-threatening pulmonary embolism — a blot clot in her lungs.
Hawkins said that facing cancer has a way of focusing one’s mind on what is most important. “In addition to family, in the arena of public policy I would like to focus on those things that will bring long-lasting benefit to Alaskans. A sustainable fiscal policy that avoids heavy new taxes on families and businesses, and access to affordable health care, are two top examples.”
He decided it was time to disclose his medical condition to Alaskan voters when he learned that the drug treatment regimen will last into the summer, the heart of the primary campaign season. “Alaska voters deserve to know the whole picture. Also, I will need the understanding of Alaskans should I lose hair or should my schedule need to be adjusted this summer due to medical treatments.”
