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Study shows vaccine mandates did not stop spread of Covid in nine cities that ordered the jab for workers

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Study shows vaccine mandates did not stop spread of Covid in nine cities that ordered the jab for workers

By CASEY HARPER | THE CENTER SQUARE

Researchers analyzed nine U.S. cities that implemented vaccine mandates during the pandemic and found that those mandates had no real effect on the spread of Covid-19.

Now, those cities’ leaders are not responding to questions about their mandates and the economic impact they had on residents.

Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C. were part of the study conducted through George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

Those cities announced some form of city-wide vaccine mandate in 2021, leading to economic hardship for local businesses and lost jobs for those who refused to comply.

“Our findings put into question the efficacy of city-level vaccine mandates,” the report said. “Indoor vaccine man-dates caused large disruptions for many individuals and businesses.

New York City, for example, fired 1,430 city workers for failing to comply with its vaccine mandate (Fitzsimmons, 2022). A survey found that over 90% of NYC restaurants reported having customer-related challenges, such as losing customers who objected to the mandate, and 75% having staff-related challenges (New York State Restaurant Association, 2021). Those are just a small fraction of the disruptions caused by the mandates.”

Despite the economic hardship they caused, the study found no noteworthy slow of Covid-19. Researchers said this was in part because residents could simply travel outside city limits to participate in any activities banned in the city.

“We find no evidence that the announcement or implementation of indoor vaccine mandates in the cities listed had any significant effect on vaccine uptake, Covid-19 cases, or Covid-19 deaths, and this is largely consistent for all US cities that implemented the mandate,” the report said.

The Center Square reached out to the mayor’s offices for all nine cities to present the findings and ask if their respective governments made a mistake but received no response.

“I think the more important thing is to find out what was in the minds of the people both at the federal level and at the state and local level who imposed these policies,” said Bob Moffit, an expert at the Heritage Foundation who served as a senior official of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Personnel Management during the Reagan administration.

“Because based on the data, these kind of comprehensive vaccine mandate policies, there is no other way to describe except as a stupid, ham-handed policy,” he added. “The economic consequences were awful.”

Vitor Melo, one of the researchers behind the report, told The Center Square his team was surprised by the results. They expected to find some benefit to the mandates.

“We were all surprised, and I think we were all surprised as we kept going with this how consistent the results were for all the cities,” Melo said.

The researchers hope this report impacts decision-making for these kinds of policies going forward.

“Public health restrictions and regulations were widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic, and so understanding their consequences is essential,” the report said. “The authors find that city-level mandates had smaller effect on vaccine uptake (and consequently on COVID-19 cases and deaths) than nationwide mandates – and thus failed to achieve their intended objectives.”

Casey Harper is a Senior Reporter for the Washington, D.C. Bureau. He previously worked for The Daily Caller, The Hill, and Sinclair Broadcast Group. A graduate of Hillsdale College, Casey’s work has also appeared in Fox News, Fox Business, and USA Today.

Alex Gimarc: A return to defined benefits

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Alex Gimarc: A return to defined benefits

By ALEX GIMARC

One of the remarkably ugly proposals happily making its way through the Alaska Legislature is a return to defined benefit pensions for state employees. The vehicle for doing this is difficulty in hiring and retaining police, fire, and first responders.  

Legislation to make this so is HB 22, spearheaded in the House by Rep. Andy Josephson, who has been pushing it hard. As of this writing, there is no fiscal note, though we are promised one — real soon now.  

Before we get into the pointing and yelling portion of this piece, I want to remind everyone why Alaska doesn’t do defined benefits. The reason? We can’t afford it anymore, a problem that became obvious nearly 40 years ago. That is why Tier I PERS / TERS was replaced by Tier II (a partial move to defined contributions) in 1986. Tier III was passed 1996, and Tier IV in 2006. 

HB 22 is an attempt to return to Tier I for police / fire / first responders. Think of it as a start.

Problem Definition

The stated problem is poor retention of law enforcement and firefighters following training. The solution proffered in HB 22 is to pump up their retirement benefits, potentially blowing up the currently (and perennially) stressed PERS/TERS retirement system. This solution would seem to be both high risk and premature.  

There are several things missing in this discussion, most importantly the cost benefit analysis of the problem. First is to actually scope the problem. How many people are we talking about? How much is it costing us? Are there any other possible approaches other than simply throwing money at it?  

Once we have that discussion (which hasn’t happened yet in public that I know of), we can then start talking about solutions. What do we propose spending to fix it? What happens if the solution proposed in HB 22 doesn’t work? Is the benefit of going to defined benefit for pensions greater than the risk of blowing up the entire PERS / TERS system as it exists today? How do we quantify a positive result?  

The fact that the fiscal note does not yet exist is telling. The fact that nobody at any level has proposed running a test for a few years tells us even more. Testing is a really smart thing to do, and we ought to do a lot more of it. It would have quickly identified problems that surfaced following passage of SB 91 in 2015, problems that took the legislature multiple pieces of legislation to fix. Testing this proposal for a few years will tell us if it works before we bet the farm with the entire PERS/TERS system, the PFD and the corpus of the Permanent Fund.  

Training Costs

If retention of trained police and fire is a problem, we then need to look at training costs (time and money).

The State of Alaska pays a $20,000 hiring bonus to new troopers. Half of it is paid upon hire. The other half after probation and certification (one year). No other bonus is paid. No additional obligation for service is agreed upon receipt of the bonus. And for some reason, the newly trained officers don’t hang around.  

Contrast this with how the Department of Defense responds to pilot shortages. Pilots are expensive to manufacture both in time and cost.  In response to pilot shortages, DoD came up with substantial bonuses to retain trained people. These range from $15,000 – $35,000 / year. When receiving the bonus, the pilot signs a fixed term of future service, generally five years following their initial obligation with an option to extend. Note that it takes about 52 months to manufacture a new USAF pilot. USAF pilots generally cost $0.84 – 1.60 million to train in basic military flight training. There are additional training costs associated with whatever they end up flying after basic training.

Alaska State Troopers attend a live-in 18-week course in Sitka. Their training costs are $225,000 / new trooper (first year). APD puts its new officers through a 25-week course with 1,063 hours in the syllabus. Their training costs are not available.  

From here, it would appear that the legislature and the Governor aren’t even considering increasing signing bonuses or tying receipt to a fixed term of future service. Why would they rather blow up the budget with a return to defined benefit pensions?

Why indeed?

Politics

This is where we get into the pointing and yelling (politics) part of this. Public employee unions have long despised defined contribution, which we can afford, and demanded a return to defined benefit, which we can’t. From here, it appears they have finally elected enough legislators to make it happen. There is no small amount of concern that Gov. Mike Dunleavy will sign the legislation when it passes.  

Legislators backing this even think they’ve got the outyear budget increases covered, paid for by the size of the future PFD which will rapidly be driven to zero. Look at public comments by Sen. Matt Claman or Cathy Giessel about right sizing the PFD, and “responsibly” paying for spending (disbursement of a statutory PFD is somehow irresponsible). 

Look at every single legislator who voted against the PFD passed last session as a someone who will pay for this with your PFD. Even Gov. Dunleavy has political cover, as he can point to the PFD passed last year as an example of him delivering what he promised to do. For just one year.

Police / fire / first responders are the opening gambit, the camel’s nose under the tent, as a vote against HB 22 will be construed as a vote against first responders. The Alaska Education Association will be next in line, closely followed by Local 71 and the rest of the public employee unions. 

All of them marching happily into the land of zero-dollar PFDs, because we must pay our obligations as a state to our employees, mustn’t we? Statutory obligations to our citizens? Not so much.  

And the unions will funnel contributions from their members to democrat political campaigns to elect more democrats to put more obligations on the Permanent Fund. When there isn’t enough money in the PFD to pay for this expansion, the supporters will quickly be into the corpus of the Permanent Fund itself to cover their costs.  

And the first responders are simply the opening bid, a sympathetic one at that.

We can stop this with simple bonuses coupled with fixed obligations that do not impact PERS / TERS outyear costs. And somewhere along the line, we ought to run a multi-year test to see if it actually works. The fact that these are not even being mentioned — much less debated — speaks volumes. 

Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.

Dunleavy bill seeks to ensure PFD workers pass background checks

Suzanne Downing
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Dunleavy bill seeks to ensure PFD workers pass background checks

Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced SB 85, updating eligibility requirements for the Permanent Fund Dividend and modernizing the way the Department of Revenue can issue a notice of levy and conduct background checks on Department employees.

The bill allows merchant mariners attending a qualified vocational program to qualify for an allowable absence from the state for purposes of PFD eligibility.

Under Alaska’s current system, Alaskans serving as a merchant mariner are eligible for an allowed absence when serving aboard a vessel, but Alaskans training to be a merchant mariner are not provided the same allowed absence. This bill remedies that disparity so that Alaskans training to be merchant mariners are treated the same as other students.

The bill also clarifies the meaning of “education on a full-time basis.” Due to variability in educational schedules, certain students lose dividend eligibility due to breaks in the academic year. SB 85 provides for a specific definition for “education on a full-time basis” that includes academic year breaks, excluding summer break, so that students are not penalized based on vagaries in academic schedules.

SB 85 also allows the Permanent Fund Division to use electronic notice of levy for individuals who are subject to a court order or writ for the collection of a debt. Currently, if another individual attempts to place a levy on a dividend payment, Department of Revenue is required to contact the levied individual via the postal system. Allowing consent to receive electronic notice of levy will assist Alaskans in receiving vital information in the manner of their choosing.

The legislation also provides statutory authority for the Department of Revenue to collect fingerprints for the purpose of conducting background checks on Department employees. This will strengthen the security of Alaskan’s personal information by authorizing the Department to perform national criminal history checks on employees that have access to the banking and vital records of nearly every citizen in Alaska. By allowing the Department to obtain full background checks, Alaska will have taken every measure to provide the most secure system possible, the Governor’s Office said.

Book review: Parents, grandparents defend Anchorage children at the Anchorage School Board

Suzanne Downing
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Book review: Parents, grandparents defend Anchorage children at the Anchorage School Board

By DAVID BOYLE

Like bears coming out from hibernation, mama and papa bears showed up at the Anchorage School Board on Feb. 22 to defend their children and grandchildren from pornographic books that are being found more frequently in school libraries.

A veteran who has two children in Anchorage schools, testified about the board shutting down fellow parent Jay McDonald reading from “Let’s Talk About It.” The board had stopped McDonald earlier this month from reading from “Let’s Talk About It,” giving no reason for suppressing his right of free speech.

Anchorage School Board shuts down parent reading a passage from a sexting-porn manual in schools’ libraries

“This board’s 5-2 vote to censor speech is a slap in the face of one of the most important constitutional rights afforded to all citizens,” the veteran said.

He then questioned if the board could not handle the testimony, then members have no right being part of the conversation. He also said worried what would happen to students if they are not allowed to speak up in class when they disagree with the teacher or a book. He asked if a student would be able to have a different opinion than the “institutionally approved lesson plan or textbook?” Would students merely censor themselves because they feel marginalized?

McDonald, who previously read from the book, “Let’s Talk About It”, and read to the board a passage from “This Book Is Gay” in October, said the district’s response to him was, “We never let kids see that book, it’s just for the staff.”

Why are the State of Alaska and the Municipality of Anchorage taxpayer funding pornographic books for school staff that they believe are not appropriate for the children? Does the staff read these books in their break rooms? Or are these books selected by staff for children to read?  

“The policy that ASD has under their diversity, equity, and inclusion push, that they’ve been transitioning kids in school and hiding it from parents — first they were telling me that it was not happening, and the materials I was asking for don’t exist,” McDonald said to the board Tuesday.

Another parent testified, “This material is actually illegal according to Alaska Statute AS 61.11.128.” He wondered how the district was going to control access to the pornographic books. “That’s like keeping cocaine in your house and telling kids, “Do not touch.”

One parent asked the board, “Why would staff need access to a sexually explicit material when it is obviously not appropriate for our children in the school”?

Robert from Utqiagvik has two students in the district schools. He asked why there were different pronouns on the district’s “Plan to Address Title IX Gender Issues.”  He also objected that parents were not consulted on that student’s gender identity form.

Anchorage School District lays claim on key decisions on gender identity, and plans to keep parents in dark

John Cunningham, who also testified, believes that culture belongs to the family. He stressed that the family needed to be notified about questionable or possibly pornographic books. The family has the responsibility and right to control the child’s education.

Referring to a pornographic book, Cunningham further stated, “I figure anyone who would hurt a kid in that way shouldn’t be working in this kind of field. And these kids didn’t sign up to be pawns in this culture war.”

He continued: “I’m not here to address a specific piece of material, I’m just trying to tell you, you can be on the side that’s trying to get this in kids’ hands, and whether or not you’re doing it on purpose, I don’t know, but to do so without the family’s input, without the parents tracking it, doesn’t seem right.”

A mother with two young boys spoke in defense of all children. She asked, “My biggest concern is how can I protect them. You guys cannot have my children and they will not be subject to this,” as she showed two of the pornographic books.

A teacher testified that she found the books “positively defiling.”  She wondered why the staff needed these books in a public school setting.

Another former teacher and military instructor said it was a great mystery to him why we are teaching elementary age children about sex at all. He noted that this is where perversion starts that winds people up in prison.

That former teacher said, “You put the wrong material out there and you just bred a molester, you just bred a rapist.  That’s where it starts.  Our children are better than this.”

After the concerned parents voiced their serious concerns, Celeste Hodge Growden, the CEO of Alaska Black Caucus, addressed honesty and integrity. She said Jay McDonald had actually checked out the book from the Loussac Library, not the ASD school libraries.

She implied that the book was not even in the ASD school libraries.

Growden said, “I learned this book was never accessible to students.”  But it was available to students. Until it wasn’t, suddenly.

McDonald said he cannot check books out from the school libraries, which is why he got it from the Loussac. He said she is arguing irrelevant details to avoid the real issues.

She then attacked Jay McDonald’s testimony as “baseless allegations.”  She further wanted him to apologize to the board or walk back his “misinformation.”

A page from a book, “Let’s Talk About It,” that Alaska Black Caucus CEO Celeste Hodge Growden defended.

Growden then that several articles have “misinformation” and implied that these articles have led to personal attacks and threats against teachers, librarians, the school board, administrative staff, and even bomb threats.

It is unclear how Growden knew about alleged attacks on various board and ASD staff. There is no substantiation about the source of the alleged bomb threats.

Parents stood up for children, unlike the National Education Association, which believes, “Teachers and school library media specialists must have the right to select and use materials and techniques without censorship or legislative interference.” (NEA Today magazine).

The culture wars have begun. Only active parents, grandparents and other citizens can determine the outcome.

David Boyle is the education writer for Must Read Alaska.

Read aloud: Anchorage School Board gets treated to gay ‘how to’ sex manual that is in elementary school library

Dunleavy introduces bill to improve occupational licensing reciprocity with other states

Suzanne Downing
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Dunleavy introduces bill to improve occupational licensing reciprocity with other states

Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced SB83 to provide people who work in a licensed occupation and who are licensed in another state the ability to get a temporary, limited license so they can begin working in Alaska sooner. 

The bill will allow individuals with “clean licenses” in other states to work up to 180 days while completing final requirements for Alaska licensure. 

The bill covers more than three dozen licensed occupations, ranging from barbers and hairdressers to pharmacists and nurses.

“For people who want to live, work and play in the most beautiful state in the country, nowhere competes with Alaska,” Dunleavy said. “Making sure that qualified professionals who come to Alaska can get to work right away is important for both attracting skilled workers and meeting workforce needs.”

The bill establishes limited reciprocity for qualified practitioners who hold substantially equivalent licenses in other states or in Canada. 

The measure will benefit both employers and workers by reducing wait times, lost revenue and frustration.

About one in four employed Americans work in a licensed occupation.

Muni manager to Assembly: City will pay Roger Hickel Contracting for work done on navigation center site prep

Suzanne Downing
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Muni manager to Assembly: City will pay Roger Hickel Contracting for work done on navigation center site prep

The mayor and the Assembly may disagree on whether Anchorage needs a navigation center to help homeless, vagrants, and transients get their feet on the ground, but the bills for the work that has been done on the center do need to be paid, and Acting Municipal Manager Ken Kohlhase intends to pay them.

Kohlhase today notified the Anchorage Assembly that money sitting in an account for the homeless navigation center, which was started late last year, will be used to pay the invoice of one of the contractors.

“As we all anticipated, Roger Hickel Contracting, Inc. has made a claim against the Municipality asserting an entitlement to payment for work it performed in construction of the Navigation Center prior to the time the project was terminated. The cost basis of that claim was carefully reviewed by The Boutet Company on behalf of the Administration, and largely found to consist of valid charges,” wrote Kohlhase to the Assembly, which is the appropriating body.

Kohlhase said it’s in the best interest to settle the claim, and that he intends to pay $2.455,351.93 to Roger Hickel Contracting on March 24.

Kohlhase referred to a resolution for $4.9 million that the Assembly passed last May that was “to be used for construction of an adult shelter and/or navigation center.”

The Assembly has been preparing to claw back that money because many of the liberal members don’t want Mayor Dave Bronson to finish the navigation center, even though funds were appropriated by the Assembly for that purpose. The struggle over what direction to take on homeless issues has consumed the Assembly and mayor’s relationship since the outset.

“This existing appropriation is more than sufficient to satisfy the claim at hand. Since the claim is for construction work falling squarely within the appropriation’s designation that it be used to pay for ‘”‘construction of an adult shelter and/or navigation center'”‘, it is the Administration’s intent to fund the settlement with this appropriation,” Kohlhase wrote.

Kohlhase also wrote that he acknowledged the appropriation was conditional on the Bronson Administration using the old Golden Lion Hotel for a substance misuse treatment center.” Since then, doubts have arisen about whether it could be used as such legally.

“The Mayor satisfied that condition on June 1, 2022, when he issued a statement acknowledging that direction was given to ‘the facilitation group guiding the mass care exit to recommend the best option to providing substance misuse treatment centers’ and promising to consider the former Golden Lion Hotel for this purpose.”

Several liberal members of the Assembly are determined to force the mayor to use the Golden Lion Hotel for a drug treatment facility, but the neighborhood opposes it. Bronson came into office with the idea that a navigation center near Elmore and Tudor Roads was a best practice that had worked in other communities. He convinced the Assembly to fund it, but they later reneged on the agreement and have fought the mayor ever since.

Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel, who is paid well over $100,000 per year to run the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, opens her own navigation center in downtown Anchorage this month, in partnership with Catholic Social Services, after having fought the mayor over his navigation center concept. the ACEH-CSS center is on Third Avenue downtown.

Meeting Tuesday: Second double-cross expected by Assembly majority on homeless navigation center

Assembly approves funding for mayor’s navigation center for Anchorage homeless

Double-cross: Navigation Center for homeless was approved by Assembly long ago, but now Leftist majority won’t pay the bill

Who — besides Murkowski and Collins — will likely vote to raise the roof on national debt?

Suzanne Downing
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Who — besides Murkowski and Collins — will likely vote to raise the roof on national debt?

The debt ceiling is the legal limit on what debt the federal government can accrue, and right now that includes $24.5 trillion of debt held by (owed by) the public and the roughly $7 trillion the government owes itself due to inter-agency account borrowing (Social Security and Medicare funds).

Today, the debt is beyond its authorized limit and the government is taking extraordinary actions to avoid being in a default position, with the U.S. Treasury unable to borrow money to make payments.

The U.S. House and Senate, when they return next week, will face this grim fact of their own making and will have to deal with it before summer. Conservatives want to see spending cuts, while liberals, including the president, want to raise the borrowing limit. It will not have been the first time Congress has faced this test.

FiveThirtyEight.com senior analyst Geoffrey Skelley believes Sen. Lisa Murkowski is one of the most likely of Republicans to vote for an increase to the debt ceiling. She has a record of voting to raise the limit. In fact, Murkowski has voted to raise the debt ceiling nearly seven out of 10 times.

“When it comes to which GOP senators are most likely to be involved in passing a debt limit increase, we unsurprisingly start with the chamber’s two prominent moderates: Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Collins has voted for three-fourths of debt ceiling bills since 2001, while Murkowski has voted for nearly 7 in 10. But in looking for other potential votes, some other names may surprise. Sens. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Mike Rounds of South Dakota have supported two of every three debt ceiling bills that have come before them. And indicative of his common involvement in dealmaking on the debt ceiling, McConnell has supported 65 percent of the bills that have come before the Senate since 2001,” Skelley writes in FiveThirtyEight.com.

Murkowski votes in favor of President Biden positions 65% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight.com, while Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan votes with Biden just 45% of the time. In 2021, Sullivan voted against increasing the debt ceiling, while Murkowski voted for it.

In the House, Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola, in Congress for just five months, is in the 100% Biden category, already on record saying how she will vote: “Not raising the debt ceiling is reckless and irresponsible. We have to do it.”

Thirty years ago, the national debt was less than $5 trillion. Much has happened in those years, including inflation, the war on terror, Obamacare, the Covid pandemic, the influx of 10 million illegal immigrants per year, and an overall national population rising from 260 million people in 1993 to 332 million people in 2023. Add to that presidents and members of Congress unable to cut spending, and it appears the nation is heading for a debt that will be 126% of the national gross domestic product by this time next year. It ended 2022 at 122% of GDP.

Read the FiveThirtyEight report about who among Republicans will probably vote to raise the debt ceiling at this link.

Michael Tavoliero: Eaglexit, two years later and the paperwork is about to be submitted

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Michael Tavoliero: Eaglexit, two years later and the paperwork is about to be submitted

By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO

A bunch of my friends and I got together in the beginning of 2019 and formed Eaglexit. Eaglexit is an organization founded to educate the citizens of Anchorage’s Assembly District 2 (Eagle River and Chugiak) on the realities of detaching from Anchorage and incorporating as its own municipal government. This idea has been around since the early 1970s.

Education on the topic of Alaska’s local government and the fundamentals to form a local government, especially in these times, is critical to understanding how local government will work for its constituents rather than the current reality of constituents working for their local government.

What was fascinating were the responses we encountered in our journey to provide local government education to one of the most “conservative” communities in Alaska.

When considering our approaches to informing our neighbors, we discovered that often conservatives were more rigid and resistant to change and preferred clear answers. What was a bigger surprise was conservatives weren’t as interested as I thought they would be to find out for themselves the answers to their own questions.

On the other hand, the liberals we engaged were more flexible and tolerant of our mission. They were curious, but also weren’t motivated to discover answers to their own questions.

Both groups were hesitant about change and reluctant to discover what it would bring.

I’m not saying that either one is smarter than the other. Everybody is different. It is just how wiring has evolved over their lives. 

The result is conservatives lean to more structured and persistent cognitive styles, while liberals are likely to draw from that “aha” moment. In many ways they end up with the same conclusions, but their journeys take them down different paths.

Regardless of political persuasion, most of the good people of Assembly District 2 are working. They are providing for those they love. They are taking care of their families. Most working couples in Assembly District 2 don’t have time for extra activities. They work with their heads down with one purpose…to enjoy the company of those they love. They work and live because time for them is a precious resource, which cannot be recycled. 

With the responsibilities of raising a family and working, there is scarce opportunity to engage in community involvement, which poses a challenge as the limited time available often results in ignorance and apathy. 

Ignorance and apathy manifest as pseudo-somnambulation. For most of us, we “wake up” only when something affects us personally and by then it is often too late.

The majority who spoke supportively and wanted us to get the job done supported us through donations and kept us moving in the right direction. Thank you.

We are now about to submit working documents to the Alaska Local Boundary Commission. But even now after almost four years, I find newcomers who will ask the standard question, “Will my taxes go up?”, and some who declare, “I don’t get involved in politics.”, and only a few who say “I’m not interested.

For those that ask, “Will my taxes go up?”, my answer is no. Under our analysis, property taxes will go down. As you will see in the following paragraphs, property taxes through the municipality of Anchorage have gone up tremendously in the past few years.

More to the point and to answer that question, in 2019, the value assigned by the Municipality of Anchorage in Assembly District 2 to taxable real property assessments less exemptions was $3.706 billion. Add in the business property inventory tax assessment of $80 million, the total was $3.786 billion. All combined, the total property taxes for Assembly District 2 came to $58.687 million.

In 2022, the value assigned by the Municipality of Anchorage in Assembly District 2 to taxable real property assessments, minus exemptions, was $4.178 billion. Add in the business property inventory tax assessment of $91.991 million, this added up to $4.27 billion. Total property taxes for Assembly District 2:  $67.959 million.

The increase in total property assessment from 2019 to 2022 for Assembly District 2 was 12.78%

The increase in total property taxes from 2019 to 2022 for Assembly District 2 was 15.75%.

I urge you now:  It’s time for all of us to wake up and get involved. 

With the utmost respect regarding those that state, “I don’t get involved in politics,” examine our historical record of the last decade. Politics have raised our taxes, duplicated services, inefficiently spent our tax dollars and left a questionable future for our children.

There are those who are not interested in politics, either because they find it boring or because they do not see how it directly affects their lives. Some feel that their political engagement will not make a difference, and therefore choose not to engage in political discussions or activities.

But the overwhelming reason for not getting involved is fear.

Some don’t like conflicts and potential arguments with others, especially friends and family, which political activity will invariably create. Many of us fear being judged or criticized for our political views and avoid politics completely. With that, we become resistant to change.

It’s important to note that while people might say they don’t “do” politics, it is difficult to completely disengage from politics because it affects many aspects of our lives, such as healthcare, education, employment, and more.

For those who insist they are not interested, I’ll leave you with Plato’s warning of almost 20 centuries ago:

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

Michael Tavoliero is a realtor in Eagle River, is active in the Alaska Republican Party and chaired Eaglexit.

Michael Tavoliero: Murkowski, queen of lies, promised to repeal Obamacare, then pulled a fast one on voters

Gov. Dunleavy, with an eye on Ukraine situation, creates energy security task force

Suzanne Downing
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Gov. Dunleavy, with an eye on Ukraine situation, creates energy security task force

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued Administrative Order 344 on Thursday, establishing the Alaska Energy Security Task Force.

The purpose of the task force is to develop a comprehensive statewide energy plan that will evaluate the energy generation, distribution, and transmission for the State of Alaska and its communities. The development of the plan will include collaborating with both the public and private stakeholders, his office said. The statewide energy plan, including proposed timelines and milestones, will be presented to the governor upon completion.

“Despite Alaska’s position as a leading producer of energy, the cost of energy in Alaska, especially in our rural communities, is extremely high,” Dunleavy said. “As everyone has been reminded by the war in Ukraine, access to and cost of energy are influenced by global events. I’m establishing this task force to create a plan that will reduce Alaska’s vulnerability to fluctuating energy markets by securing dependable and affordable energy for Alaskan residents.” 

On Sept. 30, 2022, Governor Dunleavy established the Office of Energy Innovation to provide a central point of focus for Alaska’s efforts to reduce the cost of energy for residents. The Task Force will provide recommendations on overall energy policy for the State of Alaska, as well as strategies and tactics to achieve its goal of reducing the cost of energy for Alaskans. 

The task force’s initial report to the governor is to be completed by May 19. Once the report is received, further clarification and deliverables may be identified that would require additional work by the task force, his office said.

The Alaska Energy Security Task Force will have 13 voting members and five ex officio members appointed by the governor.

The voting members are as follows:

  • The Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, or the Commissioner’s designee.
  • The Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources, or the Commissioner’s designee.
  • The Executive Director of the Alaska Energy Authority, or the Executive Director’s designee.
  • One member from the University of Alaska with a background in energy.
  • One member from a utility that represents rural Alaska or a community receiving power cost equalization.
  • One member who represents a city, borough, or municipality.
  • One member with a Railbelt utility background.
  • One member from the oil and gas industry.
  • One member from the mining industry.
  • One member with a background in economic development.
  • One member from the business community.
  • One member from any segment of the Alaskan energy industry.
  • One member of the general public.

The five ex officio members of the task force are as follows:

  • One member from the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.
  • One representative from the Denali Commission.
  • One representative from the U.S. Department of Energy, Arctic Energy Office.
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