Recall supporters stand for a group picture at the end of a long day of sign-waving in Homer, Alaska.
It’s all over but the counting. The polls have closed in Homer, Alaska, and it looks like one city council member may not make it through the recall election, but it all depends on the early votes, which won’t be counted until Friday.
Some 1,041 votes were cast today. Today’s results are:
Donna Aderhold – Recall 493, Don’t recall 572, or 46-54 percent
David Lewis – Recall 499, Don’t recall 563, or 47-53 percent
Supporters of the recall, Heartbeat of Homer, believe there are 820 early votes cast and as many as 200 absentee votes still uncounted.
“If our base went out and voted early, and I believe they did, it won’t take much to flip it the other way,” said Larry Zuccaro, one of the recall organizers.
Voting at City Hall was steady throughout the day.
Sign-wavers from both side stood on corners within sight of each other for 12 hours waving signs and flags. It was the culmination of four months of citizen activism that was ignited when the three city council members colluded via email to establish Homer as a sanctuary city, where illegal immigrants could be shielded from federal authorities.
At a time of state budget crunches and a hiring freeze ordered by the governor, Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth has brought in an assistant attorney general for tribal matters and LGBTQ issues. And the Department of Health and Social Services has hired away the governor’s press secretary as its communications director.
Between the two, they account for more than $250,000 a year in additional costs to state government. They represent the tip of the iceberg of state hiring that is in violation of the governor’s hiring freeze.
Attorney Alex Cleghorn began work this month for Attorney General Lindemuth. He was general counsel for Koniag, Inc.
According to the Department of Law’s public directory, Cleghorn is a member of the Opinions, Ethics, and Appeals section, but he works on a different floor and has very little interaction with that section, we’re told. Cleghorn began working as Lindemuth’s special assistant on May 15.
Following graduation from law school in 2003, Cleghorn practiced law in California for several years, primarily focusing on Native American and LGBTQ rights. His LinkedIn social media site says he was a staff attorney for California Indian Legal Services and later served as a tribal judge for the Northern California Intertribal Court System.
Cleghorn served as chair of the Transgender Law Center and worked as an ACLU staff attorney in Northern California, where he says he successfully advocated for the right of gay and lesbian partners of prison inmates to enjoy overnight conjugal visits.
The Campaign for Children and Families objected to conjugal visits for both gay and straight inmates, arguing that private, unsupervised visits provided a mechanism for smuggling contraband.
In 2015, Cleghorn returned to Alaska. His new position in the Department of Law is his ninth job since leaving law school.
With the governor announcing a hiring freeze in 2016, hiring for empty state jobs was barred except for those directly impacting Alaskans’ life and safety. He also put in place travel restrictions, which have been all but ignored.
The governor’s hiring freeze exempted Alaska state troopers, corrections and probation officers, and certain health care workers. Any other exemptions were to be cleared with the governor’s office and must be “mission critical,” not able to be done by other state workers.
Now, an attorney who has been admitted to the Alaska bar for less than one year and who is an expert in LGBT and tribal law is the definition of Governor Walker’s “mission critical.”
Attorneys at the department say that there are many state legal jobs that are actually related to life and safety that are unfilled — positions that protect children from abuse, and prosecute heinous crimes against the vulnerable.
Meanwhile, over in the Governor’s Office, press secretary Katie Marquette has left the hot seat to become the communication director for the Department of Health and Social Services, according to her LinkedIn page.
The position in the state directory, however, lists her job as project analyst.
That leaves Grace Jang, communications director, and Jonathon Taylor, deputy press secretary, and an unfilled press secretary position for the governor’s office, which is likely to be back-filled before long.
These two hires are part of a parade of new nonessential workers allowed to join the Walker Administration. John-Henry Heckendorn, a 26-year-old campaign manager from the Ship Creek Group, was hired by the governor as a special assistant earlier this year.
The Boston-bred political consultant with five years of campaign experience has been spotted with the governor continuously since his hire, and it’s well understood he is advising the governor on his 2018 run, along with new chief of staff Scott Kendall, himself a veteran campaign operative.
Heckendorn describes his role as “Primary staffer to the Governor in meetings and travel, coordinating internal communications and action item follow up, assisting Chief of Staff with special projects.” He’s the governor’s “body man,” and so much more.
Apparently, “mission critical” in the Walker Administration has come to mean getting the boss re-elected.
As unlikely as it is that Gov. Bill Walker allows state government to shut down in two weeks, if Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature cannot unlock horns on the budget, what would happen at certain Alaska airports?
Some might have to close down jet service. Enormous volumes of people, cargo, and fish would be stranded.
All runways with a “Part 139” designation, where planes carrying more than 30 passengers land, are required to have fire suppression available on the ground during landing and take off.
These are FAA-set, unmovable regulations. With no fire suppression, only small air carriers such as Raven and Penn Air can use these runways.
Among airports affected are Ted Stevens International in Anchorage, as well as Kodiak, Kenai, Fairbanks, Barrow, Bethel, Cordova, Deadhorse, Nome, Kotzebue, Dillingham, Petersburg, Sitka, Wrangell, and Gustavus.
Not only would passengers be stuck, but the salmon, mail, and even groceries and medicine will be grounded. At this time of year, fish are flown out of places like Dillingham by the ton.
The potential impact of the entire economy shutting down has not been mentioned in the governor’s 15 press releases from his departments, which list impacts of a government shutdown.
Gov. Walker can make the argument that protecting life and safety requires firefighters to be available for planes, but the fire suppression workers at rural airports such as Dillingham are staffed by Department of Transportation workers, whose main jobs involves roads, bridges and buildings. They’re only assigned to stand by the fire truck when jets come in and take off.
This duty-sharing work flow is an efficiency that works in rural areas in normal times. But this year’s battle, with the governor and Democrats driving state government to the brink of a shutdown in order to get an income tax, is anything but normal times.
Residents of Homer, Alaska wave signs on a street corner as a reporter from This American Life in New York interviews one of them. The recall election for three council members is Tuesday.
HOMER, Alaska – A small group of Homer residents held signs and waved flags at passersby today, as this seaside community gears up for a recall election that has already attracted hundreds of early and absentee voters.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive, with more honks and waves from drivers than thumbs down. Organizers of the recall, which seeks to remove three city council members, say they are encouraged going into the home stretch of a drama that has played out for several months.
Tomorrow is decision day for Donna Aderhold, David Lewis, and Catriona Reynolds, who worked together somewhat surreptitiously to try to make Homer a sanctuary city, where illegal immigrants could find safe haven from federal authorities. It was an act of defiance against the Trump presidency.
FLYERS, SIGNS, FLAGS, AND BARBECUES: Late last week, Homer voters may have seen a reminder flyer in their mailboxes, which was printed and mailed by Heartbeat of Homer, the group that formed to oppose the council members and their efforts.
The flyer contained photos of a few of the actual emails between the council members, which showed their original intent. That intent was later watered down into a resolution that failed to gain the support of most of the council.
About 150 Homerites came through the Heartbeat of Homer fellowship barbecue on Saturday, a strong turnout for a community that is at the height of its tourist and fishing season. Recall organizers say they are tired, but feel good about their efforts and the response of the community.
To summarize: Three council members face recall after having exchanged emails that showed they were trying to establish Homer as a sanctuary city, where illegal immigrants could find safe haven. They worked with far-left groups outside the state to get the wording right.
Some citizens got ahold of the emails via a public records request earlier this spring, filed a recall petition, and the town has been torn apart ever since over whether those council members were acting properly and in the best interests of the city.
Some citizens feel they’ve been tricked by the three, who subsequently changed their story about their actual intent. Their original language had been crafted by a retired reporter, Hal Spence.
The council members didn’t like facing recall, so they sued to quash the election. They hired the ACLU in Anchorage to defend them, lost in court, and are now asking the city of Homer to pay the legal costs they owe Heartbeat of Homer because Heartbeat had to hire a lawyer to fight for the recall election. The losing side of that case is required to cover at least some of the legal fees of the winner.
The three council members had offered to not take the case to a higher court if the recall proponents agreed to waive the legal fee reimbursements. That didn’t fly with Heartbeat of Homer.
The drama-filled situation has drawn the interest of a reporter from the radio show This American Life, which runs weekly on NPR. The reporter landed in Homer this weekend and is staying through the voting festivities. Brian Reed, senior producer of the show, was spotted at the Heartbeat of Homer picnic on Saturday and will be developing some kind of long-form radio piece in the classic public broadcasting style, which will come out long after the election dust has settled and everyone has gone fishing. Care to guess how he’ll be portraying the recall proponents?
Gov. Bill Egan speaks at a the Governor’s Picnic in Anchorage in 1966. (Alaska State Museum Collection, UAA-hmc-0370-series15a-4-205.)
OUR SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR LOOKS FOR SPINE IN POLITICIANS
By ART CHANCE
Hat tip to Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Let’s go back to the 1970s. Before the Prudhoe Bay lease sale, the State budget was around $250 Million. That won’t operate a single major department of State government today, even adjusted for inflation.
The State population in the 1970 Census was a little over 300,000, about the population of metro Anchorage today. Then, Anchorage had about 125, 000 people and Eagle River and Wasilla were a long drive on a bad two lane road.
Then the $968 Million for the Prudhoe Bay leases came, and then the “Oil Rush” began. People looking for jobs and opportunity flocked to Alaska.
Readers of the right age might remember that the Lower 48 pretty much sucked in the mid-’70s — the oil embargo, spiraling crime. “Dirty Harry” didn’t come from nowhere, and President Jimmy Carter’s “National Malaise” comments were plenty enough to get many people looking for somewhere, anywhere, else to be. I was among them.
In 1974 Atlanta I would have rather made the two-block walk from my business to the bank without my pants on than without my pistol, often more than one because one wasn’t enough.
I had enough money, so I sold my Mercedes and bought a Toyota Land Cruiser, put the Lower 48 in my rear view mirrors, and joined the ranks of the bearded, blue-jeaned guys looking to get by and get high in Alaska.
By 1980, Anchorage and Alaska’s population had almost doubled. Had someone been standing on a balcony at the Hotel Captain Cook threatening to jump, all anybody would have been interested in was knowing where he worked; people would be there at opening time with application in hand.
Only the very most politically aware and the old-timers, the self-anointed sourdoughs, had a clue who the political elite of Alaska were. And back then, a cheechako was the person behind you in line at the U.S.-Canada border.
Faces of workers who built the Trans Alaska Pipeline, which was completed June 20, 1977, three years and two months after construction began. University of Alaska archives
It was a time when somebody with a bit of drive and the ability to tell a good story could invent him/herself into pretty much whatever he or she chose to be. Many did invent themselves. The State government expanded exponentially, and the State wasn’t real scrupulous about backgrounds or qualifications as long as it could put a warm butt in a seat.
It was “The Alaska Method” — con your way into a job and see how long you could keep it.
In the 1970s, a little-known Republican state senator from Naknek (Jay Hammond) defeated a Democrat icon (Bill Egan) to become governor. Hammond had the backing of the Left side of the Alaska Democrat Party.
Alaska was created as a socialist state, but the Legislatures in the decade after 1974 made Alaska into a model of socialism that the Soviet Bloc could never have emulated, the Permanent Fund and the dividend being the capstone.
Among the radical ideas of the ’70s, the Permanent Fund was the most radical, and it was enacted with almost overwhelming electoral approval. Fast forward 40-odd years:
Alaska has three-quarters of a million people, about a third of whom actually work, which is pretty close to the number of people actually working in the Seventies.
None of our political systems can actually work; nobody has any airspeed, altitude, or ideas. We are imprisoned in stasis. We’re about to stumble into essentially dissolving the government of Alaska at 12:01 a.m. on July 1, 2017. Nobody can move, nobody can change.
Here’s why: Everybody in a position of power and influence in Alaska today got there by understanding the government as it is.
If anything happens to change the government as it is, those people with power and influence — our leaders — are at risk to lose that power and influence. We’re at the ultimate event horizon of socialism; the only option left is cutting the slices of the fixed pie ever thinner until the ever-thinner slices no longer satisfy the people and all Hell breaks out.
That’s where all the leaders have gone.
Right now, Alaska’s unionized public employees, or at least their leaders, have decided that the pie is theirs and they really don’t care whether the rest of Alaska gets any pie.
This will not end well. We need leaders.
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 he’s banned from posting on Facebook, which is often.
Here’s hoping House Speaker Bryce Edgmon hasn’t gotten too attached to his gavel.
The once high-riding Democrat-led Majority in the House had a stake driven through its heart on June 5 when it was abandoned by Gov. Bill Walker, its one-time ally on raising oil taxes and bringing back a state income tax.
Andrew Jensen, Alaska Journal of Commerce
By immediately rejecting Walker’s compromise package that did not include an income tax, increased oil taxes or their preferred amount for the Permanent Fund Dividend, the rookie leaders of the House have set themselves up as the fall guys if the government shuts down with no budget by July 1.
It may be just posturing, as Senate President Pete Kelly mused while his caucus took a more measured and conciliatory attitude toward Walker’s proposed compromise that came down heavily in favor of its position.
Are the House Democrats really so wedded to their demand for an income tax that they are willing to push the state to the brink of a shutdown?
So far, they sound like it.
Not that it was ever a great idea to hitch their policy wagon to raising taxes on an economy in recession, but House Democrats are quickly becoming Ahab to the white whale of taxes.
With the governor now essentially aligned with the Senate on the greatest issues facing the Legislature — including its plan to pay off nearly $300 million in old oil tax credits using the Statutory Budget Reserve — the House has set itself up as the odd man out.
No doubt it must be a bitter pill to swallow considering it was just seven months ago the new Majority held a celebratory press conference following the November election as Democrats took the reins of power in the House for the first time in more than a decade.
The Alaska Permanent Fund is about to make history again.
The international investment market is strong, the Fund’s portfolio is robust. On Monday, barring a weekend catastrophe, Alaska’s piggy bank will very likely top $60 billion.
For perspective, Bill Gates’ net worth is about $89 billion. We Alaskans have about 67 percent of the Gates fortune. We’ve never been richer.
Or broker, according to Gov. Bill Walker and the Democrats, who want to implement a tax up to $700 million on residents.
The Permanent Fund is making nearly 9 percent gains this year. Not bad for a little sovereign wealth fund that started with merely $734,000 in 1977.
The Earnings Reserve Account portion of the Permanent Fund is now about $11.7 billion. That’s the money that can be used to pay for state government. In addition to that fund, the government has nearly $5 billion in the Constitutional Budget Reserve, the CBR, as legislative types know it.
There are a few other accounts around state government, but those are the big chunks. Together, the State has well over $65 billion in its piggy bank, and $16 billion of it is more or less available for appropriation.
And yet, the Democrats in control of the House won’t pass a budget unless they get an income tax that would take $700 million from Alaskan families. HB 115 is their vehicle, which was designed by Governor Bill Walker’s Department of Revenue.
In his latest compromise package, the governor asked the Senate to accept a “head tax” (aka still an income tax) that would bring in $100 million.
But with the House Democrats quickly rejecting his proposed compromise, the governor is likely to ratchet up his request for taxes to something closer to what the Democrats want.
Over in the Senate, controlled by Republicans, lawmakers say no tax is needed. All that’s needed are some modest cuts and a restructuring of the Permanent Fund, per Senate Bill 26, which is the governor’s bill.
The House agrees in principle with the framework of SB26, but are holding it hostage in order to force through their taxes. The upshot is that pink slips have gone out to state workers in advance of a government shutdown on July 2.
Stay tuned for Monday, when the Senate should hear back from the governor with his responses to a list of questions asked by Senate leadership that pertain to the compromise Gov. Walker is trying to reach.
Very likely, some of those answers will be unpalatable because they will involve even higher taxes than his first compromise offer of $100 million.
Senate leadership sent a letter to Gov. Walker last week asking for answers for why the governor:
Offers no spending cuts, but actually agrees to the Democrats’ $200 million increase in state spending.
Cuts down his tax request, while providing no documentation to the public as to why he needed $700 million two months ago, but only $100 million now.
Accepts a shortfall of $300 million that could be paid for with savings, even though just weeks ago he said he would not accept anything but a fully funded plan.
Shrinks the Permanent Fund dividend.
Accepts the Senate’s version of SB 26, a restructuring of the Permanent Fund.
Establishes a compromise on oil taxes, but only if he gets his “head tax” and only so long as there are no cuts to the budget.
Insiders at the Capitol say it is no secret that the governor’s head tax is a gateway tax, to get something on the books, and come back later for more. His team has told several people in the Capitol this week that the tax is just to get the infrastructure in place.
MICCICHE ON ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
Sen. Peter Micciche
Senate Majority Leader Peter Micciche, a Republican from Soldotna, says the struggle is over the philosophies about the role of government. Democrats see government as the economy and have little concern for the private sector, he said.
“This Permanent Fund milestone proves the percent-of-market-value numbers in our SB 26 model is conservative, and doesn’t even reflect the gains made by the fund this year,” he said.
“We began this ‘fiscal gap’ discussion at the end of 2014 with a $4 billion deficit. I believe the House majority and the Administration have failed to adapt to the fact that because of increased oil production,an improved price environment and budget reductions, our deficit has been roughly halved to $2.2 billion,” Micciche said.
By using the Senate’s model, government is funded through the use of earnings of the Constitutional Budget Reserve and the Earnings Reserve Account, without consuming savings, he said.
“Considering the many layers of conservatism built into the modeling…the fact that we are not crediting the 16 percent earnings year of the Permanent Fund, increasing production, improved pricing, etc., the Senate majority feels that we are in a position to fund our government without the burden of new broad-based taxes,” Micciche said.
“Our plan provides the quickest and most economically healthy way to deliver Alaska out of this current recession; providing more private sector jobs while still preserving critical government services,” Micciche said.
DUNLEAVY SAYS TAX ISN’T NEEDED
Sen. Mike Dunleavy
Sen. Mike Dunleavy of Mat-Su, has been an opponent of an income tax. He’s a Republican who no longer aligns with the Senate Republican majority because of his budget hawk approach that is stridently anti-tax.
“This has nothing to do with the budget. They don’t need a tax. They want a tax,” Dunleavy said.
“This is like begging your relatives for money and telling them you’re broke when everyone knows you aren’t broke. The public isn’t buying it. They know you can live on your savings for at least 13 years. Meanwhile, you get your other investments going, like Armstrong and Caelus (and other oil companies) and you put more oil in the pipeline.”
Some 670,407 individuals applied for the 2017 Permanent Fund dividend, according to the Alaska Permanent Fund Division. The number of applicants this year is down slightly from 2016’s applicant pool of 670,599, a difference of 192.
All eligible Alaskans who applied by the March 31 deadline will receive a dividend in October from the Permanent Fund’s investments.
In 2016, the check amount was $1,022, and for the first time in the fund’s history, the amount was set by the governor based on political considerations.
Those who apply by March 31 deadline and those who are determined eligible are two different matters, but the numbers are telling: Population is holding steady. Even while there is a net migration from Alaska of workers, those who remain are filling in the population with babies, keeping the overall population stable at 739,828.
In 2015, the number of applicants was up, with 678,689 Alaskans appling for the dividend, and the royalty check itself was the largest ever to be distributed, at $2,072.
At the same time, the state was plunging into a recession, with oil patch workers leaving for jobs in other states. Net migration from Alaska over the past three years has exceeded 17,000, and anecdotal evidence from Alaska trucking companies indicate that trend continues this summer. Oil companies uncertain about the investment climate in Alaska have put projects on hold and oil field contractors see work slowing down, with many reporting the economic hit at about 20 percent.
VALUE OF P-FUND UP
The value of the Alaska Permanent Fund itself has increased since 2007, when it held $40 billion. It’s now at an all-time high, closing in on $60 billion. The earnings reserve fund, which can be used to fund state services, has about $11.7 billion.
The Alaska Permanent Fund’s investment return for the fiscal year to date was up 9 percent, according to the agency’s web site.
The fund was created through an amendment to the Alaska Constitution shortly after oil started flowing through the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. A portion of the oil money from North Slope fields is put into the fund because future generations will not have oil as a resource, and the prediction was that Alaska would need to become an investment state.
The state now earns more from investments of the Fund than it does from oil royalties. The Fund started with just $734,000 in 1977.
Gov. Bill Walker held a brief press conference today to discuss the progress of the special session and the impending shutdown of state government in nine days.
And then he did something he may live to regret.
He answered a question from KTVA reporter Liz Raines, who asked why he doesn’t limit the call of the special session to the budget. Why not take everything off the call but the budget and avoid a government shutdown?
Walker responded, “I can’t take anything off the call. My role is once I put something on the call, it stays there.”
“Once I put something on the call, it’s not within my powers to remove it from the call.” – Gov. Bill Walker
But that’s not the case.
In October of 2015, Walker did amend his call for special session. He withdrew “an act to monetize certain natural gas reserves through the levy of a gas reserves tax. This proclamation supplements my proclamation of September 24, 2015.” Apparently, amending a special session call is only legal when he wishes it to be:
INSTEAD, A PLETHORA OF NEWS RELEASES
Meanwhile, instead of narrowing his focus to passing a budget, the governor issued a series of 15 press releases from his different departments today, describing the crisis that is about to hit Alaska if government shuts down on July 2 and putting together an incident command structure for when there is no government.
A review of history shows that removing items from a call for special session is rather ordinary:
Gov. Sean Parnell removed something from a call. In 2012, he removed oil tax reform, saying the bipartisan working group in the Senate appeared “incapable of passing comprehensive oil tax reform.”
In fact, Alaska’s strong-governor form of government gives Walker broad powers to do just about anything, including shut the government down.
Instead of saying he “can’t” take items off his call for special session, Walker might have been more transparent by saying: “I’m choosing not to take anything off the call because I need to frighten my 20,000 employees in order to get my income tax, higher oil taxes, and higher motor fuel taxes.”
Rather than transparency, we get a blizzard of press releases.
