GOV, YOU’VE BEEN DEMBOSKIED – Gov. Bill Walker attended the Anchorage Assembly meeting on Tuesday and spoke to the municipal body for a several minutes, making his case for an income tax before taking questions from the Assembly.
“You can’t run from it. It’s not going to go away,” he said. “It’s time we have to look at the other side of the equation. We have to look on the revenue side. We can’t fix the budget by cuts alone. We just can’t do it.”
“We need a compromise. I need to compromise. Not everyone’s going to get everything they want when they want it,” Walker said.
Assembly Member Amy Demboski took the governor to task on his income tax proposal: “Some will tell you that in fact we have a revenue problem. That’s what I hear you say. I hear others say we have a spending problem. Governor Walker, I think we have a leadership problem.”
She continued: “Alaskans are really tired of hearing we cut 44 percent when you and I both know it’s a numbers game.”
Assembly members were given three minutes to address the governor. Listen to what Demboski does with her three minutes:
Walker said he wouldn’t address her comments then, but would be glad to meet with her to discuss her points of view and invited her to discuss her concerns with his Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
SENATE PAYS TAX CREDITS – The Alaska Senate voted Thursday to make good on promises to oil and gas explorers who are owed tax credits. Those payments are, in some cases, overdue by nearly two years.
By a vote of 13-7, the Senate decided to use $288 million from a state savings account to pay the credits.
Several explorers have been waiting for their tax credits since Gov. Walker took office in 2014. He began canceling payments in 2015.
Earlier this week in Juneau, Revenue Commissioner Randy Hoffbeck said some oil and gas companies are on the verge of foreclosure. Hoffbeck, along with Rep. Justin Parish, was talking to a group of Juneau residents at a town hall:
“We know we’re going to lose a couple of companies through foreclosure. We’ve been hearing from their banks … if we cannot pay the oil tax credits. We need a broad-based tax to pay those credits. If we lost those companies, we will probably lose that oil production [forever].”
Hoffbeck went on to say that without a broad-based tax, two companies will go into foreclosure.
But on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, Sen. Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat, railed against paying the tax credits: “In what world is that OK? Explain to the people of Alaska. I hope they’re watching. I hope the people of Alaska are watching this vote right now…Do you stand for the people of Alaska?”
The tax credit vote was part of the $1.4 billion capital budget, which passed 13-5.
The Alaska Senate just found $50 million to help defray the state’s fiscal gap, at least this year. It’s at AGDC, the gasline agency.
While passing a capital budget that is $35 million smaller than Gov. Bill Walker’s proposal, the Senate stripped money out of the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, leaving the agency with just enough money to get through the end of this calendar year on fumes — at the current burn rate.
Meanwhile, AGDC President Keith Meyer is in China trying to line up customers and investors for the project.
Sen. Mike Dunleavy
Sen. Mike Dunleavy offered the amendment to remove $50 million from the Alaska Gasline Development Agency’s LNG fund and appropriate it to a variety of State program needs:
$5 million to the Department of Law for prosecuting attorneys
$10 million to Department of Transportation for road maintenance and plowing
$10 million to the Department of Public Safety for hiring more troopers, and
$24 million to the public school trust fund.
Dunleavy’s amendment passed without objection.
“What this means is that 100 percent of the senators felt that there are more important needs right now than the AGDC’s LNG funds,” said a source in the Capitol who watched the proceedings. “And it means the governor doesn’t have a friend in the Senate who will stand up for him and his gasline.”
In 2016, Dunleavy went on the record with his doubts about the gasline: “I have yet to be convinced that the overall project is economically viable. There are a lot of moving parts in this project, and with the world currently drowning in oil and gas I question the economics. In order for me to be supportive of the project I will need to be convinced by the administration that we have more than a reasonable prospect that the project will return above and beyond the amount of money the state will need to invest. With a price tag of $45-$65 billion dollars, this project needs to be scrutinized thoroughly.”
AGDC LNG fund had about $100 million in two funds before today’s cut. It’s not known how much is already obligated but $30 million had been set aside for work by various state agencies, such as Natural Resources, and $40 million had been appropriated for “cash calls” for the AK-LNG work plan and budget, things that are not likely to be needed soon.
The agency has a $102 million spending plan for Alaska’s gasline project, which was expected to drain the two gasline funds it holds over an 18-month period.
AGDC has three offices to support — one in Anchorage, one in Houston, and one in Tokyo. And it will need major funding to complete its work for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission application it filed last month.
AGDC formally launched its application for federal permits to build what is expected to be the largest project ever reviewed by FERC, a proposed integrated gas infrastructure project in three segments: A gas treatment plant at Prudhoe Bay, an 800-mile pipeline to Nikiski, five offtakes for Alaska communities, and a natural gas liquefaction plant at Nikiski to produce LNG for export to Asia.
Now, with barely enough funds to make it until the end of 2017, those gasline plans and the agency advancing them could be in peril.
It’s among a series of setbacks for Walker’s gasline. The gasline project in March lost a potential new partner, REI of Japan, which said the timing is just not right.
Less than a year ago, the major partners, BP, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips pulled out of the project, saying the economics were just not right. Knowledgeable sources inside the joint working group go a bit further. They say not only are the economics not right, but Gov. Walker’s confrontational and erratic approach with them did not justify continued investments, even at a much smaller level.
The capital budget now goes to the House of Representatives, where it remains to be seen if the Democrat majority will try to restore the money for the governor’s gasline by taking from public safety, roads, and schools.
Rep. David Eastman, District 10, raised the issue of Medicaid abuse and has been censured by the Alaska House of Representatives.
TRIGGER WARNING: THIS MAY HURT FEELINGS
The writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall in Friends of Voltaire wrote, ” I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The Alaska House of Representatives didn’t get the Hall memo.
Rep. David Eastman was today censured by the House for his remarks in an official capacity about the abuse of Medicaid and abortion by some women in Alaska.
He endured more than an hour of being called racist and sexist by Democrats on the House floor. And when the vote came down, it was 25 to 14 telling him just how hateful his colleagues think he is.
A handful of Republicans voted to censure Eastman, along with all of the Democrats and both of the Indie-Democrats.
Times have changed since Hall wrote the defense of speech in 1903. Feelings are now easily hurt. Political speech is no longer protected in Alaska’s Capitol unless it’s “correct” speech.
Freedom of conscience, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, and the freedom to represent your constituency — these are things legislators now may be scolded for on the floor of the House of Representatives.
No Republican will be able to raise the issue of Medicaid abuse under this regime, or even ask for hearings on the topic. The topic of medical tourism on the public dime has been made toxic.
Freshman Rep. Ivy Spohnholz of Anchorage labeled David Eastman’s remarks as “hate speech,” and his actions as part of a “hate agenda.”
The term “hate agenda” has been widely used by the Left to describe the presidency of Donald Trump.
Rep. Ivy Spohnholz told the House that Rep. David Eastman had not been contrite enough about his remarks.
Spohnholz, an East Anchorage Democrat, lashed out at Eastman on the House floor, saying he had not apologized enough for his remarks about the abuse of Medicaid payments for travel by rural Alaskan women. He had not atoned for how much he had hurt people’s feelings, she said.
“A leader takes responsibility and ownership for those mistakes,” Spohnholz said. “They acknowledge the impact they’ve had on somebody else’s life, their feelings, their thoughts. They own them, and then they make amends. How do you make amends? You don’t say, ‘I’m really sorry that that made you feel bad.’ That is not making amends. Making amends needs to go a little bit further. You don’t say ‘You’re welcome to come to my office, and share your concerns and your perspective with me.’ That is not making amends.”
She went on: “When you make amends, you are internalizing the hurt that you inflicted on someone else. You have to go to the people that you’ve hurt and you have to try to understand their perspective and make it right. It means to mend, to put things back together again.”
In other words, legislators must give up their points of view in order to satisfy Spohnholz. She will be the one to determine what constitutes an apology.
Rep. Geran Tarr, another Anchorage Democrat, stated that Eastman not only said the wrong things, but he also voted the wrong way, and this showed pattern of bad belief and bad behavior. Eastman had voted against a resolution recognizing African-American contributions to the construction of the Alaska Highway, and against special license plates for Hmong veterans. The Hmong license plate bill was sponsored by Tarr.
During the discussion on those votes, Eastman said he is fundamentally opposed to race-based legislation. It is a matter of principle for him.
This afternoon Eastman was circumspect about his political learning curve: “I’ve never judged someone by the color of their skin. I wasn’t brought up that way,” he said. “Race politics is not a pleasant learning subject.”
On the floor as part of her closing remarks, Spohnholz said it was not about free speech. She called him racist and sexist, and said he had not taken responsibility for his behavior.
“Some people said, there was not bad behavior,” Spohnholz argued. “I’m going to disagree.” She went on to say that Eastman had made statements not only to a reporter, but then “…Our colleague doubled down on it and called for hearings. He brought that behavior into this hall.”
It’s the first time in Alaska state history that a House member has been censured, which is a nonbinding vote that indicates disapproval.
LEDOUX, RULES CHAIR, REMAINS SILENT
Earlier this year, Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, House Rules chair, advised members they may not use the terms “bureaucrat” or “slush fund.” Those terms were derogatory, she said.
She has made a habit of calling for points of order and preventing Republicans from speaking on the House floor, citing various infractions.
But today, LeDoux did not intervene while House members repeatedly impugned the motives of one of their colleagues.
The vote to censure has a chilling effect on free speech when a public body acts to curtail the speech of one of its members, said Tuckerman Babcock, chairman of the Alaska Republican Party. It is a governing body sending a stern warning shot over the bow of a fellow legislator, with an inference that other penalties could follow if the lawmaker does not toe the line.
“This is a bizarre step to try to repress someone’s freedom of speech, of thought, and even how they vote,” said Babcock.
“This is about public process,” said Eastman in an interview with Must Read Alaska. “I thought we were all Alaskans. I now know that some people believe that race separates us.”
House Republicans had already condemned the comments made by Eastman to a media outlet last week, with a brief statement that said his remarks on Medicaid and women seeking abortions had no factual basis and targeted women from rural parts of the state.
Today, the Republican minority issued a statement that said it still doesn’t like what he said, but members defended his right to speak out on issues that concern him:
“Never in the history of the Alaska House of Representatives has there been censure of a member. Censure is reserved for conduct that is damaging and disruptive to the legislative process or implicates a criminal act or ethical violation. Reprimanding a legislator for words spoken sets a dangerous precedent and infringes on freedom of speech.
“House Republicans continue to stand firmly opposed to the comments and sentiments expressed by Representative Eastman. Discrimination will not be tolerated by House Republicans. We will continue to embrace the diversity and spirit that makes our state stronger.”
Rep. Neal Foster and Bernadette Wilson at the Derby party on Saturday.
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE ON SB 26 CAN WAIT: The talk of the town last weekend was the annual Kentucky Derby Party in Anchorage at Simon and Seaforts on Saturday, but the talk of Juneau was “where’s Rep. Neal Foster, who is on the SB 26 Conference Committee?”
Well, we found him in Anchorage, at a Derby Party, with a derby in one hand and Bernadette Wilson in the other. And Alaskans wonder why the Legislature will likely need to go into special session. SB 26 is the restructuring of the Alaska Permanent Fund that would eliminate the need for income taxes.
Miss Alaska USA Alyssa London
FIRST TLINGIT TO COMPETE FOR MISS USA – Alyssa London, the first Tlingit to wear the Miss Alaska USA crown, will compete for Miss USA 2017 on Sunday, May 14. London’s Tlingit name is Yáx Ádi Yádi (meaning most precious child) and is Eagle of the Killerwhale clan. She attended Stanford University.
The pageant was owned by President Donald Trump between 1996 and 2015, when it was purchased by William Morris Endeavor (WME/IMG).
SEALASKA HERITAGE LECTURES REP. EASTMAN: Rosita Worl, of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, lambasted Rep. David Eastman in a letter to the editor for his statements regarding Medicaid and abortion. She said his statements are reprehensible and that he should apologize.
SENATE SAVES JUNEAU ACCESS PROJECT – The Alaska Senate today voted on the capital budget, and they disallowed the governor from moving Juneau Access money into other projects. That means the road to Juneau is not dead, even though the governor has tried to kill it and the jobs and economic strength the road would bring to both Juneau and Haines. The total reduction in the governor’s capital budget is $35.5 million. It advanced to third reading.
INCOME TAX BILL TO GET SCHEDULED FOR SENATE VOTE – Today on the Senate floor, HB 115, the income tax bill offered by Governor Bill Walker through his surrogate Rep. Paul Seaton, was waved through two committees and will go directly to the Senate floor so everyone can get on the record as voting for or against a state income tax that would be similar to the federal IRS tax structure, but with no deductions.
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE ON HB 57, THE OPERATING BUDGET – The Alaska Senate voted to not back down from its amendments and then named its members to the budget conference committee for HB 57. Sens. Lyman Hoffman, Anna MacKinnon, and Donny Olson will negotiate with counterparts from the House: Reps. Neal Foster, Paul Seaton, and Lance Pruitt.
GARA OFFERS ANOTHER TAX, AND TOLL ROAD – Rep. Les Gara, who puts the D in Democrat, has filed another piece of tax legislation. HB 242 would establish landing tax for the Deadhorse Airport, and would create a toll road for three miles of the Dalton Highway. A tipster in Juneau said there may be an amendment to the bill creating a toll road through Gara’s district, up L Street-Minnesota Drive Expressway, from Snow City Cafe all the way to the turnoff for Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’s house. It could generate far more money than his proposal for the Dalton.
GOVERNOR MAKING CAMPAIGN QUERIES – Scott Kendall, the governor’s chief of staff, is said to be quietly meeting with some of the big donors around Anchorage to line up support for the governor’s 2018 re-run. No word as to whether Bill Walker will run as a Democrat or a nonpartisan. But we’ll be looking for those leave slips from Chief Kendall, Communication Director Grace Jang, and Walker’s campaign-manager-on-the-public-dime John-Henry Heckendorn.
LINNELL IS ON RECORD FOR SHARED MANAGEMENT OF GAME: The Alaska Outdoor Council is opposing Gov. Bill Walker’s appointment to the Board of Game. She showed her hand, and she was playing the Native preference card.
Karen Linnell, a life-long resident of the Copper River Basin, and an Alaska Native, was appointed by Walker in 2016. She is a subsistence hunter and fisher, and is a board member of Ahtna, Incorporated. She is also the Executive Director of the Copper River-Ahtna Inter-Tribal Resource Conservation District, and Chair of the Wrangell-St. Elias Subsistence Resource Commission. She has served on the Copper River Basin Fish and Game Advisory Committee for over eight years.
But it’s what she did immediately after her appointment that just didn’t cut it for the Alaska Outdoor Council, says Executive Director Rod Arno.
Three weeks after the announcement about her addition to the Board of Game, Linnell signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Interior to form a partnership between DOI and the Ahtna Intertribal Resource Commission providing a quota of moose for Alaska Native villages in the Ahtna region.
By signing the agreement with the Interior Department, Linnell established a conflict of interest — she is now a signatory to an agreement that allocates a public resource to a specific racial group. At the same time, as a board appointee, she is bound by the Alaska State Constitution to allocate game equally to all Alaskans. (Article VIII Section 3, Common Use).
The Outdoor Council says that on Jan. 13, Linnell, in her role as executive director of the Intertribal Resource Council, stated to the Federal Subsistence Board something that struck fear into the hearts of sportsmen:
“So why we’re here today is to talk a little bit about this MOA and what it can do. And this is going to — could lead to a unified tribal, State, and Federal co-management structure.”
That’s a disqualifier, the Outdoor Council says. State management of the public resources is the Alaska Constitution’s stated value. Co-management is not compatible and Linnell is now on the record in favor of giving up state authority.
This is the same problem that is tripping up Gov. Walker’s choice for Attorney General — an unwillingness to fight for Alaska state sovereignty, but instead to negotiate it away in an out-of-court, behind the scenes settlement with tribes, where the public has no visibility and no input.
As constitutionalists say, Walker is killing the Alaska Constitution with “death by a thousand cuts.”
It’s more like death by a thousand appointments, but the result is the same, said Arno.
Gov. Bill Walker makes the case for income taxes at the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce on Monday, while lawmakers debated his tax plan that is being advanced by his Democrat allies in the House.
The end-game is afoot in Juneau. Hang onto your wallet, as Gov. Bill Walker and the Democrats are gunning hard for an income tax with just one week to go.
The governor made a hard pitch for income taxes to the Anchorage School Board and the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce on Monday, while Democrats continued looking for tax weaklings to compromise in the Republican-led Senate.
Senate President Pete Kelly said last week, “The only thing standing between Alaskans and an income tax is the Senate majority.” So far, the caucus is holding.
But Democrats believed they had some brand new pixie dust to get an income tax out of the Senate Republican majority and started pushing what they are now calling a “school tax,” like the one offered by Rep. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage.
The School Taxis “An Act imposing a school tax on certain income of residents, part-year residents, and nonresidents; relating to a payment against the school tax from the permanent fund dividend disbursement; and providing for an effective date.”
Democrats were hoping that would sound more appealing than the governor’s widely mocked “Pomp Income Tax,” designed by Walker’s Connecticut consultant Richard Pomp.
But their hopes may have been dashed today when, in Senate majority caucus, Republicans weren’t fooled by the “school tax.” After all, the Democrats had tried to call HB 115 an education tax, when it was simply an income tax.
Today’s caucus came after the Senate and House majorities met yesterday to hammer out a way forward on paying for an enormous government.
Senate Finance began running various fiscal models to try to determine if there was any reasonable way to work with to the latest House income tax proposal. By running the models, rumors started swirling that the Senate was caving.
This is the fog of war, when rumors take the truth hostage.
Our sources tell Must Read Alaska that the Senate is holding firm: There will be no income tax, even it it’s called an education tax or a school tax. Or a spotted cat.
Senators Peter Micciche and Pete Kelly discuss the Democrats’ income tax proposal, which they say is not needed.
The Senate majority wants cuts to the budget and to use the power of the Permanent Fund restructuring plan they have advanced through SB 26.
That approach says taxes aren’t even needed. Those close to the Senate Finance Committee say that next year, they could be looking at a balanced budget, because the Governor has purposefully projected low oil production in order to make his case for income redistribution through taxes.
But SB 26 had a poison pill added to it by the House Democrats. The House version can’t pass unless the Democrats get their income tax and their higher oil taxes. That is the governor’s position as well: He must have all three — half of the Permanent Fund dividend, a massive income tax and higher oil taxes.
The Department of Law has not given a definitive answer on whether House Democrats can actually tie the passage of SB 26 to the passage of an income tax and a higher oil taxes. According to the department, there are conflicting legal opinions on the matter.
Ray Kreig, who is associated with the Alaska Policy Forum and the conservative group “Mission Critical,” said the peril for an income tax remains:
“This is inevitable because they went down the road with SB 26,” he said. “It was an accommodation that allowed taking half of the dividend and muddled the clear line that should not have been crossed. If you cross that line with sb 26, you have lost your leverage to fight off income tax and the real task, which is to bring this budget down.”
But Senate Finance Co-chair Peter Micciche said, “The Senate is standing tough on not imposing an income tax on Alaskans who are suffering through a receding economy and a retracting population. ”
The Senate majority published a calculator Alaskans can use to determine how much they will pay under the Governor and House earlier tax proposal. Give it a try.
OUR MOST CHARMING LABOR RELATIONS NEGOTIATOR RECALLS JUNEAU DAYS
By ART CHANCE
I lived in Juneau from 1984 until late 2010 and for most of that time was far enough up the government food chain that most people in government and politics knew me.
Since I’ve lived in both Juneau and the South, I can say without reservation that Juneau is as segregated as a small Southern town was in the Fifties.
Ds go to D places and do D things, and Rs go to R places and do R things. The only time they meet is when they’re being paid to do so or for some public events, and even then the Ds sit with the Ds, and the Rs with the Rs.
Early in my State career, a union representative and I could yell at each other all day in arbitration or across a negotiating table and get together for a drink afterwards and critique each other’s performance; the union guy was my adversary at work, but not my enemy and it was almost never personal.
That had all but ended by the mid-Nineties. There were a few of us old throwbacks who’d been in the labor relations trade for a long time and had worked both sides of the table at various times in our lives who could get along socially, but only a few — and fewer every year.
Juneau is a center-left town and more left than center, especially in downtown and Douglas.
State government grew exponentially under Govs. Bill Egan and Jay Hammond and the bureaucracy was thoroughly Democrat. Even though he was nominally a Republican, Hammond’s administration was predominantly Democrat and they set the culture of the government and its employees that largely remains today.
I was walking back from Gov. Walter Hickel’s swearing in with a group of people just below political level management. One of the group (the wife of a very nervous Gov. Steve Cowper appointee) remarked, “This is going to be like having to ask your father for the car keys again.”
But not much really changed inside the government or in the culture of the government. Some of the Hickel people tried, but it was like pushing a rope.
There was also one helluva lot of controversy. The unions had settled the disputes that came out of the oil price crash of the Eighties almost entirely through collective bargaining processes and the courts, and they had a union-backed governor in Bill Sheffield, who would give them what he could so long as he could get away with not reporting it to the now largely Republican-controlled Legislature.
Hickel was totally foreign; his brief first term wasn’t remembered by many because the government was so much smaller. Nobody in the government had ever really worked for a Republican administration before, and with a Republican Alaska Legislature to boot.
Then there was AFSCME/ASEA, which had taken over representation of the 8000+ member General Government Unit in 1988. This was Alaska’s first experience with the big national public employee unions; all of our unions had been either independent associations or affiliates of trade unions or NEA.
The Juneau chapter of the GGU was full of self-styled 1960’s radicals and self-anointed working class heroes and were the primary impetus of AFSCME coming to Alaska.
Since Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals meant more to AFSCME than dull old labor relations hornbooks, the stage was set for singing songs and carrying signs in the street and mau-mauing supervisors and managers. The employer was no longer just somebody with different interests; the employer was evil.
Like most Republicans they left a lot of holdovers in place and then wondered why they were leaked, thwarted, and sabotaged constantly.
Also like most Republicans they didn’t know how to push the rope of State government but were too suspicious of State employees to ask anyone. In truth, that suspicion was justified. I watched two holdover directors set up and take out two of Hickel’s commissioners. That was early on and the Hickel people hadn’t yet figured out that they were under attack and they had to protect their people no matter what.
ASEA carried the spear on mau-mauing a director in the Labor Department and getting her fired.
Then Nancy Usera became commissioner of Administration, and while Nancy didn’t know a lot about running the government yet, she had figured out that holdovers and unions were not the Hickel Administration’s friends. We were at war for the first three years of Hickel and when he announced he wasn’t seeking re-election it settled down to a sullen ceasefire as the political winds blew.
They bought a governor and then things really went to Hell. Unlike Republicans, Democrats don’t have the problems getting rid of holdovers; they just fired everybody who’d ever had a Republican thought even down into the merit system.
Our first Gov. Tony Knowles commissioner of Administration swaggered into our office and announced that he’d campaigned with the unions to get the job and that he’d promised them that he was going to replace us all with people acceptable to the unions, which really meant people acceptable to ASEA/AFSCME.
For a long time I had the tape of a call from an ASEA rep who was also a Knowles campaign official in which she jeered at me about the pool they had in the ASEA office about how many seconds Dianne Corso and I would be employed after Knowles took office.
We were apolitical merit-system technocrats who had just done what our bosses told us to do.
Commissioner Mark Boyer didn’t make good on his promise to fire us, but all the senior staff found places to be outside of State Labor Relations and just watched it go to Hell — except me; I went to work for the Legislature with Boyer’s misery as my mission and helped it go to Hell.
By the middle of Knowles’ first term, there were no “friends across the aisle” in Juneau or much of anywhere else in State government, and I damned well wasn’t an apolitical technocrat or a Democrat anymore.
By early Gov. Murkowski, I was an appointee and my “bubble” was Murkowski’s elected and appointed officials and Republican legislators.
I don’t think I’ve had a conversation with a Democrat other than a few union officials that I go back a way with since the mid-Nineties unless I was being paid to have that conversation. I’ve only rarely even been in the same room with a Democrat unless I was being paid to be there except at big public events or casual encounters, and we sure as Hell don’t backslap and chat.
In my 30-odd years of dealing with unions and Democrats, 20-something of them in Juneau, I applied a simple rule taught to me long ago when I was on the union side by an old-fashioned trade unionist: I make sure that before they dare to do anything, they have to think about what I’ll do about it.
Senior Contributor 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. He only writes for Must Read Alaska when poked with a stick. Chance coined the phrase “hermaphrodite Administration” to describe a governor who is both a Republican and a Democrat, and strangely neither.
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60 YEARS AGO: OnMay 10, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated Mike Stepovich to be Alaska’s territorial governor. Stepovich served as the last federal governor before Alaska became a state.
SLOW-WALKERING THE LEGISLATURE? It’s been two weeks since the Senate Bill 26 conference committee was named, and the Legislature is waiting for the Walker Administration, for which SB 26 is its highest priority. Legislators have asked for models that show the difference in impacts between the House and Senate versions of the bill, which are substantial. But so far…crickets.
Today is day 112 of session. Next Tuesday, the 120th day, is the last day of session, per the Alaska Constitution. Eight days of session left and the Administration seems to be withholding critical information.
The modeling information is public data — paid for by public money, and it’s also needed so that lawmakers can have a well-informed debate on the most important fiscal policy decision since the creation of the Alaska Permanent Fund. SB 26 is, after all, the governor’s cornerstone fiscal policy legislation.
And, on top of that, the Department of Law has been reviewing for nearly a month the “poison pill” inserted by House Democrats (can’t pass without first passing an income tax), but Law still hasn’t provided lawmakers with an opinion about whether that pill is legal.
Why is Walker dragging his feet on getting SB 26 passed? Is he pushing for a government shutdown?
THIS WEEK IN JUNEAU
Tuesday
9 am – Senate Finance takes up HB 111, oil and gas taxes and credits.
Wednesday 9 am – Senate Finance, HB 111
1 pm – House Resources, presentation on Pebble Prospect by Commissioner Andy Mack
1:30 pm – House Finance, Overview of economy and fiscal policy
FERRY SYSTEM MANAGER RESIGNS:Capt. Mark Neussel’s last day running the Alaska Marine Highway System is May 12, after he submitted his resignation last week. He said he needs to care for family out of state. The ferry system is under pressure to restructure in lean budgetary times. No replacement has been named by Commissioner Marc Luiken.
PASS THE DRAMAMINE: The biggest question at the Alaska Republican Party’s State Central Committee meeting on Saturday was whether four legacy Republican women’s clubs, which had withdrawn from the National Federation of Republican Women, would be admitted to the ARP with voting rights on the central committee in their own right. Equal to the Alaska Federation of Republican Women in their representation.
The four — Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, and North Pole, are money-raising machines for the party and wanted to break away from a national organization they don’t feel any of their hard-earned money should go to. They want every cent being spent on candidates here in Alaska. And they have collectively raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years.
After much spirited discussion, they won admission to the ARP SCC.
Five clubs have remained with NFRW, and its Alaska branch, the AFRW: Kenai Peninsula Republican Women; First City (Ketchikan) Republican Women; Matanuska Susitna Republican Women; Valley Republican Women; and Midnight Sun Republican Women (Anchorage).
Another Anchorage club has been launched under the AFRW banner, making it the third Republican women’s club in the state’s largest city, which signals the party is growing, at least in women’s involvement. They’re working on a club name.
OBAMAS ARE MAKING BANK: Barack and Michelle Obama not only have a $65 million memoir book deal, but add another $400,000 for Barry’s speaking engagement to the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald in September. Under the protective watch of the Secret Service, of course. They are well on their way to joining the upper one-tenth-of-one-percenters that they criticized when they were in office. President Obama finds himself in the speech making business, full time. In other words, not much has changed.
FRENCH FAMILY ELECTIONEERING: Now that it’s President-elect Emmanuel “Landslide” Macron in France, we can marvel at France’s youngest president ever, age 39 who has a 64-year-old wife, (his high school drama teacher not all that long ago). Oooh la la.
Dazzle your coworkers with these random Macron facts: When Macron was born, eight tracks were all the rage. Kobe Bryant was born in ’78. The Bee Gees released “Stayin’ Alive.” (The movie The Graduate had been release about a decade prior.)
BREXIT: Across the channel in Great Britain, the end of Europeanism is at hand and it looks like Prime Minister Theresa May will continue untangling the country from the European Union. The mood in England is decidedly conservative.
Murray Gildersleeve led a storied life in Southeast Alaska.
Murray Eugene Gildersleeve, one of the founders of Gildersleeve Logging Company on Prince of Wales, died April 28, at his home on the island of Maui. He was 87.
Born in British Columbia on Sept. 19, 1929, he came to Alaska in 1953 with his brother, J.R. (Roger), and the two went into the logging business before Statehood.
They had one of the first contracts with Ketchikan Pulp Co. and operated several logging camps in Southeast. Many Alaskans remember attending the Gildersleeve floating school, which followed the floating logging community from cove to cove and was last in Port Protection. The school closed in 2016.
Juneauite Tom Boutin worked for Gildersleeve Logging for several years after he came to Alaska. Boutin wrote this about the Gildersleeve operation, in a 2000 edition of the Juneau Empire:
Gildersleeve Logging has always been known for giving everyone a chance and being generous to a fault. There were usually women equipment operators at their operations and I saw them nowhere else until after I had been in Alaska for 20 years. Families down on their luck could always depend on Gildersleeve for an advance and a plane ticket. Commercial fishing boats often tied up to the camps for a few weeks’ work in the woods or on company boats. Gildersleeve originated many of the safety ideas that are now commonplace in the industry. While the past two decades were a little less colorful, I think Gildersleeve has better responded to industry changes, rebuilding and recycling equipment and supplies, and leaving logging sites cleaner than they found them.
Alaska may not again see the likes of Gildersleeve Logging, although the timber remains and the markets continue. But when many start-up schemes now include demanding something from government, every Alaskan should lament the demise of a small business that created high wage jobs for hundreds of Alaskans for 50 years without ever receiving a single government grant or special tax break (or asking for them), and without ever missing a payment or payroll.
“My daddy was a great and generous man,” said Susie Gildersleeve, who lives in Maui and cared for her father while he was in failing health in recent years. “And that part about leaving things cleaner and better than when we got there — oh so true. When we went camping both my folks policed the camp, leaving everything neat and tidy, splitting wood and leaving things clean for the next camper. — often cleaning up a campsite before we used it as others weren’t so thoughtful. They left us a wonderful legacy.”
“He had a sense of humor until the end,” she added.
Murray and his wife Elaine moved to Maui in their later years and built a home, which became a bed-and-breakfast that they operated for several years. Murray was also a highly skilled bush pilot, boat captain, outdoorsman, engineer, craftsman, and carpenter. On Maui, he would tend to pineapples and other fruits and vegetables in his fields. “Sometimes dad worked harder here than he did in Alaska,” Susie said. He and Elaine cared for many children who were not blood relatives throughout their lives. Elaine died in February.
Survivors include children Barbara Bunch of Boise, Idaho, Susie Gildersleeve of Maui, Hawaii, and Richard Gildersleeve of Wrangell, Alaska. He is also survived by seven grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.
Murray had an abiding faith in God. Over his lifetime, he was involved with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and served in various capacities. A memorial service celebrating his life is planned for Sunday, May 14, at 11 am at Lahaina Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
GOOD MORNING from somewhere in Alaska … It’s Monday, May 8, 2017…France has elected her youngest president ever, age 39…The U.S. House is in recess this week…Obama has officially joined the “resist” movement by defending Obamacare, which is so bad for America that it’s one reason Trump was elected…But first…
