“It’s only taxing wages, that means people that are working every single day and trying to make a living, they’re the ones that are going to be pinned. When you look at what’s exempted: capital gains, dividends, basically for wealthier people, and I think that that’s an unfair tax system. I can’t wait to see the debate because I don’t think that’s going anywhere.”
– Former Sen. Mark Begich, panning Gov. Walker’s income tax proposal and seeming to argue in favor of an even more sweeping tax, while speaking at the Bartlett Club in Anchorage on Thursday in his strongest indication yet that he plans to challenge Gov. Bill Walker.
That’s the name of a series of 10 metal sculptures that now grace the Juneau waterfront as they are installed this week. Some like the concept, while many think it’s garish, oversized, and a distraction from the natural beauty of the surrounding area. And still more complain about the choosing of a California artist rather than a homegrown Alaskan sculptor.
Others say birds have found a new repository for poop. In fact, “aquiline” comes from the Latin word for eagle, and is sometimes used to describe a nose that resembles a beak, with a downward curve.
The 10 stainless steel sculptures are part of the City and Borough of Juneau’s cruise ship berths project, and are funded through a “1 percent for the arts” program. That rule requires construction projects dedicate one percent to an artistic installation of some sort.
Artist Cliff Garten of California won the art bid in 2015 after a panel reviewed 28 concepts. The sculptures are being bolted to bollards along the waterfront that were formerly used to tie up cruise ships, and will stretch from Marine Park to the Mount Robert’s Tramway building. The installation is due to complete this week.
Garten said the origins of the sculptures are found in archetypes of the Alaskan landscape: “The form is a combination of two iconic ecological Alaskan shapes – a whale fluke and an eagle’s wings in flight. Set against the landscape of mountains and ocean, the sculptures will create a recognizable character for the waterfront and bring a contemporary aesthetic to the social and economic life of Juneau.”
They will also likely be noisy whenever the wind blows along the waterfront, and might be especially loud during gale-force southeasterlies or Taku winds. As wind howls through power lines, Juneau can expect some eerie sounds to be heard from the 10 unintended wind harps. Dogs may find the noise unbearable at certain harmonics.
The sculptor wrote: “The sculptures are made of ¼” laser-cut stainless steel plates which shape the 3/8” stainless steel rods that twist and turn to create the form. The sculptures reflect and refract sunlight during the day and are illuminated with a program of color changing LED light at night.”
Juneauites will attest that the sculptures may not refract all that much sunlight in the rain forest, where direct sunlight is infrequent, but that description can be chalked up to aesthetic hopefulness.
When coated with freezing rain and snow, they’ll transform in ways even the artist probably cannot imagine. And when illuminated by LED lights during the winter, they’ll probably find greater acceptance with the public than they’re currently experiencing.
Artist’s rendering of what the sculptures “Aquileans” may look like along the waterfront.
Critics have been quick to judge. Even though the sculptures are not fully installed, an overwhelming number of the comments on Facebook have been negative:
“Vegas garishness on Juneau’s natural beauty of a waterfront. Someone dropped the ball,” commented one person on the Juneau Community Collective Facebook page.
“The 1% for art program should absolutely be restricted to Alaskan artists. So much ugly nonsense like this comes to Juneau from out-of-state for no reason. Alaska has one of the most unique and vibrant art communities in the nation. We hear that we are broke and struggling, that our PFD needs to be confiscated, then we see crap like this paid for with large sums of Alaskan money that was mailed out of state to someone far far away. Disgusting and unacceptable,” wrote another.
“Nimbus for the 21st Century,” commented one critic, referring to the most controversial sculpture in Alaska, which has been, at times, homeless due to its color choice and general unattractiveness. Nimbus, also conceived by an Outside artist, never really grew on the public, and for a while was parked in a Department of Transportation maintenance yard, before being revived this year for installation near the State Museum building.
“Why spend Alaska money on a Californian artist? It would make good sense to hire an Alaskan artist,” asked one Juneauite, in a sentiment echoed by several who said they’d rather see totems.
In Juneau, stirring up artistic controversy is a time-honored form of entertainment. This year, howling of the poop-covered Aquileans sculptures will only be matched by the howling of the general public, and possibly the howling of downtown dogs.
As for Must Read Alaska, these stainless steel looms look ripe for another type of artistic installation if the wind-harp effect becomes a problem: guerilla yarn bombing.
COMMENTARY / ANDREW JENSEN ALASKA JOURNAL OF COMMERCE
Gov. Bill Walker appears to have not learned his lesson when calling a special session.
After the Legislature went all 121 days it was allowed this year without producing a budget or a way to pay for it, Walker called a special session with a loaded agenda that proved a recipe for disaster as the divided House and Senate exerted their respective leverage over the various pieces and it ended after 30 days at the same stalemate.
Now with a government shutdown looming, Walker called another special session with one agenda item: the operating budget. With no leverage over each other and an understanding of the consequences of not passing a budget by June 30, the House and Senate were finally able to agree on something and accomplished their one constitutionally-mandated task.
After the operating budget was agreed upon June 22, Walker added a second item to the session: ending the cashable credit program for North Slope explorers and small producers.
Again, with one item to consider and with both sides understanding the need to end a program with a $1 billion liability to the state budget, the House and Senate eventually agreed to kill the program retroactively to the start of the current fiscal year on July 1.
By this point the per diem counters were running and the public anger was growing over legislators collecting thousands of dollars per day while only a handful were actually involved in the heavy lifting of negotiation.
Acknowledging that anger, Walker declared he would not call a third special session until a capital budget bill was ready to pass. Like the limited call of the second session, with one thing to work on the House and Senate leaders finalized a deal and were able to come to order for a single day and pass it.
With the fourth special session of the year now set to begin Oct. 23, Walker has set himself up for another failure.
KETCHIKAN – During the previous presidential administration, former First Lady Michelle Obama championed school nutrition, and the Department of Agriculture complied, tying school lunch funding to specific nutrition guidelines through the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.
Michelle Obama became the patron saint of carrot sticks, and the bane of brownie bakers.
The rules implemented in school cafeterias in 2012 were supposed to improve nutrition and reduce obesity. They dictated everything from number of calories to grams of sugar and types of fat.
The 10 pages of federal guidelines, however, stepped on the toes of local control, and made it impossible, or at least impractical, to have bake sales on campus to support school activities.
The new policy became known as the “Obama war on cupcakes.”
This year, the Ketchikan Board of Education struck back. On Wednesday night, it cancelled the 10-page policy that had been given to the district by the feds in favor of a 2-paragraph set of guidelines that returned control of the food offerings to the superintendent and school principals.
Trevor Shaw, Ketchikan Board of Education president
“The role as a board is to set policy more on a broad level and incorporate into that policy a vision for the school district with regard to health and nutrition. It’s not our job to micromanage how that is done. There’s a difference between governance and management,” said Trevor Shaw, the 22-year-old president of the Ketchikan Board of Education.
Board member Glen Brown expressed the need for the board to stick a fork in the debate and vote: “I think we’ve absolutely murdered this issue. This has been the summer of Policy 50-40,” he said, referring to the months-long debate over the substitute school district health and wellness policy, which the body finally adopted 4-1, with two members absent.
The result of the Obama-era Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act was a lot of unhappy students across the country, who resisted the meager portions and flavorless offerings. The standards extended to vending machine snacks and baked items sold during fundraisers for teams and clubs.
The new two-paragraph policy is backed by 10 pages of locally written administrative directives to limit the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages, to support Alaska farm and fish on school menus when possible, and to encourage greater physical activity.
“We made the decision that just because the federal bureaucracy says this is what you need to do to get funds, we are going to do what we do locally that is best for our school district,” Shaw said.
With all the skirmishes over cupcakes and carrot cakes that have taken up the time of school boards across the country, Shaw said that Ketchikan’s patience in taking the long view in the fight for local control finally paid off.
Gov. Bill Walker is landing in Anchorage this week after a trip to China to peddle Alaska gas. At Commonwealth North on Friday, he and Revenue Commissioner Sheldon Fisher will once again make their case for income taxes on wage-earners.
And in just three weeks those proposed taxes will be heard and legislated on by 60 legislators who will convene in Juneau for an the ninth special session of Walker’s three years in office.
Senate Republicans will also try to convince the Democrats in the House to pass SB 54, a clean-up bill to correct problems with the crime reform package known as SB 91.
All that will happen Oct. 23 against the background of an increasingly discontent Southcentral Alaska voter. At a town hall meeting on Monday in South Anchorage, citizens were livid at the level of crime taking over the community.
After hearing their concerns at the meeting organized by Rep. Charisse Millett, Rep. Chris Birch wrote to Gov. Walker and said that constituents were loud and clear that they want the special session to be held in Anchorage so they can hold lawmakers’ feet to the fire about crime, punishment, and the proposed income tax.
“In addition to their understandable concerns, several expressed a strong desire that the Legislature should conduct its upcoming special session not in Juneau, but in Anchorage, to maximize public engagement in the process, and public access to legislative deliberation on the crime bill and the proposed income tax. The high cost of travel and lodging greatly limit direct in-person participation by most of our constituents in these hearings,” Birch wrote.
This is not about moving the capital, he told Must Read Alaska today. It’s about saving the state money in per diem and travel.
Many lawmakers, including those from rural parts of the state, will already be in Anchorage for the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention.
As of Thursday afternoon, Birch had not heard back from the governor, although he spoke with Walker’s Chief of Staff Scott Kendall.
“There’s a disconnect,” Birch said. “There are a lot of very concerned and even fearful people in Anchorage who want to have a voice in the deliberations revolving around the crime issue and remedies for the problem.”
Higher taxes, like those under debate in Alaska, would only add to the challenges the industry faces.
COMMENTARY / Dr. MARGARET THORNING ALASKA JOURNAL OF COMMERCE
This summer, observers across the nation watched as lawmakers in the state of Alaska pulled together a buzzer-beating compromise that prevented a potentially catastrophic budget shutdown and kept the government funded through the coming fiscal year.
For countless Alaskans who simply wanted their government to continue to operate, the compromise is a win. The alternative — an unprecedented shutdown — would have been untenable, resulting in significant upheaval for Alaskans seeking to utilize programs ranging from fishery permitting to cruise ship oversight to early education and Head Start services.
For political and policy junkies, it was a budget showdown that checked nearly every box, complete with flaring tempers, bruised egos, high stakes, and the discussion of policy shifts that could send ripples through the economic landscape for years to come.
This is particularly true in the case of the oil and gas industry, a sector that is looking at increased taxes in the eye in Alaska while simultaneously facing extremely challenging market conditions across the nation and around the world.
On the heels of a massive surge in domestic production driven by advances in extraction technology and finds from the Bakken to the Marcellus, fortunes have changed somewhat for the American oil and gas sector.
Prices have fallen steadily in recent years, hovering around $47 per barrel, and analysts expect the price to remain in the $40 to $60 range for the next five years. The cost of producing a barrel of oil is also increasing alongside advances in extraction technology, with companies pursuing projects that are riskier, more difficult to access, and ultimately more expensive.
The oil and gas industry is strong, and no one will mistake it for a struggling mom-and-pop operation. But these are no longer the boom times of the early 2010s – margins are thinner, profits are lower, and the challenges on the horizon are greater than they have been in some time.
KETCHIKAN – It was a pavement striping job so crooked it made the New York Post. The new yellow double lines on Tongass Highway wiggled, went wide, and stayed wet too long.
The paint job made the news because the car belonging to Ketchikan Gateway Borough Mayor David Landis ended up with yellow paint splotches.
“You come to expect having highway striping like that to be straight and have orderly looking lines and be professionally applied,” Landis told a reporter. “Something was clearly wrong with the equipment or the operation of that equipment to have so many things wrong all at once.”
The Ketchikan Daily News said that the State Department of Transportation explained that due to humidity, the paint didn’t dry as quickly a it should. But the state isn’t planning to repaint the highway.
And on further inspection, it appears that drivers on Tongass Highway, the city’s main thoroughfare, were weaving onto the freshly painted yellow lines.
That said, locals wondered aloud why DOT didn’t use the last three weeks, Ketchikan’s version of an Indian summer, to get the striping cone.
According to the newspaper, DOT recommends people who have the telltale yellow spatters get their vehicles pressure washed. If that doesn’t work, use WD-40, and after soaking the yellow spatters, wash the car. And finally, if that doesn’t do the trick, use a “liberal coating of Vaseline,” and then pressure wash.
Moisten a small shop towel with lacquer-paint-thinning solvent. Wring out the towel to prevent dripping.
Apply solvent to the road-line paint, using the damp towel.
Wait 10 to 15 seconds for the lacquer solvent to loosen the paint
Wipe the road-line paint from your car, using a terry cloth. Massage the road paint in a circular motion until it comes loose.
Moisten a fresh towel with lacquer-paint-thinning solvent and wipe down any remaining road-line paint. Use the buffer, equipped with a wool pad, to clean off the remaining road paint.
United Way of Anchorage is sideways with the Department of Revenue. Enough so that the State department’s tax division suspended the charitable agency’s gaming permit, as listed on the Department’s online database:
The suspension appears to have come in the middle of United Way’s fall campaign, which kicked off Aug 30.
Must Read Alaska called United Way to find out why the suspension was made, but the individual responding to the call was unaware of the problem. This story will be updated if more information becomes available. The Department of Revenue could not be reached this evening for an explanation.
Update: Elizabeth Miller, Vice President for Resource Development said that due to a miscommunication that led to a mistake in the permit application, the United Way of Anchorage gaming license from the State of Alaska has been temporarily suspended. “We are currently working to rectify the situation as quickly as possible,” the organization wrote this morning.
Update II: Thursday afternoon the gaming permit was restored.
One could wonder, why would Dept. of Revenue not just reach out to UWA and resolve it rather than suspending the permit of one of Alaska’s largest charities?
“Not my job. I hear that a lot as our economy continues to struggle. We need fewer armchair quarterbacks and more players.”
– Rep. Ivy Spohnholz, dismissing citizen activist Brad Keithley for his critical analysis of the Alaska House Democrats’ tax-and-spend plan.
In other words, if your opinions differ from Rep. Spohnholz, she’s not listening.
On April 16, 2017, Spohnholz voted in favor of HB 115, which would have established an income tax in Alaska that would have generated between $600 million and $800 million in revenue for state government. Under the plan she voted for, a single person making $50,000 per year would pay nearly $1,000 in income taxes to the state, and receive a Permanent Fund dividend that was cut to $1,200 — from $2,000.
The result of the legislation, which failed in the Senate, would mean that by 2019 Alaskans making $50,000 would be paying to the State of Alaska about $2 for every $25 in income (we are designating the PFD cut as a defacto tax in that calculation).
