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Senate gives unanimous no to pay raises for governor, lieutenant governor, and commissioners

Suzanne Downing
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Senate gives unanimous no to pay raises for governor, lieutenant governor, and commissioners

The office holders for Alaska governor and lieutenant governor haven’t seen a pay raise since 2010, and even though inflation eats away at their compensation, they aren’t going to get one this year.

The Alaska State Officers Compensation Commission recommended a 2% increase for each year since 2011, to make up for inflation, but the Senate voted down the raise, 19-0, with Sen. Robert Myers taking an excused absence.

The compensation commission is directed by law to “review the salaries, benefits, and allowances of members of the legislature, the governor, the lieutenant governor, and each principal executive department head and prepare a report on its findings at least once every two years, but not more frequently than every year.”

Senate Bill 86 rejected the raises that had been recommended unanimously, which would have resulted in the governor earning about $176,000 instead of his current compensation of $145,000. The lieutenant governor would have gone from $125,000 to $140,000 and department commissioners would have gotten raises to bring them to about $168,000. Currently they average $141,000, less than some of the people who work for them.

For comparison, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee makes about $187,000 a year, as the fifth highest paid among the 50 States. Most governors make about $148,000 per year, according to the Council on State Governments.

State Executive Salaries: Regional and State-level Comparisons

Peltola votes in favor of ‘woke’ ESG investing rules to harm Alaska resource development

Suzanne Downing
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Peltola votes in favor of ‘woke’ ESG investing rules to harm Alaska resource development

If Alaska’s Rep. Mary Peltola had her way, investment fund managers of America could starve Alaska’s timber, oil, and mining companies of all investments.

Peltola on Tuesday voted against a Congressional Review Act disapproval of a Biden rule that changed the relationship of fund managers to their clients, from being fiscal fiduciaries to being woke investors. The resolution was sponsored by Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky.

The Congressional Review Act disapproval passed with all Republicans and one Democrat voting for it, and all Democrats voting against it. Peltola stuck with the majority Democrats.

The matter involves what’s called “ESG” rules, which allow fund managers to make investments based on evolving “Environmental, Social, and Governance” preferences — things that make liberals and Democrats happy.

The rules, prior to the Department of Labor changing them late last year — required fund managers to only consider the financial concerns of their clients — not some fast-moving woke target like critical race theory or critical gender theory.

Companies like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America have all said they will no longer invest in drilling in the Arctic. In late 2022, HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, said it would stop investing in all new oil and natural gas plays.

With the Biden rule, the boycott on investing in Alaska could spread like a virus to many other funds held by retirement accounts worth billions of dollars in America.

But a vote could not be taken until the rule, which is now in effect, was finally published in the Federal Registry this year.

The measure has a companion resolution in the Senate, where it’s believed that there is the simple majority required to pass the CRA, with the support of Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Both of Alaska’s senators have signed on as co-sponsors to the one tool that Congress has to undo actions of the Administration.

This ESG rule, issued by the Department of Labor, encourages retirement fund managers to insert political bias into their investment decisions, in favor of environmental, social, and corporate governance ideals, rather than profitability. This rule is a slap in the face to the intent of Congress when it passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974, which set safeguards for most voluntarily established retirement and health plans in the private sector, as America moved away from defined benefit pensions and into individual retirement accounts.

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USA Today: Rep. George Santos and Mary Peltola have something in common — resumes that don’t hold up

USA Today: Rep. George Santos and Mary Peltola have something in common — resumes that don’t hold up

Are Peltolas violating federal laws against influence peddling?

Are Peltolas violating federal laws against influence peddling?

Through her teeth: Rep. Peltola said Inflation Reduction Act is about cost of living, but Al Gore tells Davos it’s really a climate change act

Carbon crazy 101: Rep. Andrew Gray thinks there could be a GoFundMe account to keep oil in the ground in Alaska

Suzanne Downing
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Carbon crazy 101: Rep. Andrew Gray thinks there could be a GoFundMe account to keep oil in the ground in Alaska

Carbon credits are hard to understand. But after an hour and 45 minutes of explanation from the Department of Natural Resources, Rep. Andrew Gray was no clearer to understanding them. He said he wants the state to set up a sort of GoFundMe account that would keep Alaska’s oil in the ground.

At the end of a presentation by the Department of Natural Resources to the House Ways and Means Committee, Gray said that if carbon credits are going to work, Alaska needs to threaten to cut down trees if it’s going to get paid to not cut them.

Then, Gray suggested that Alaska needs to set up a crowd-sourcing fund to get paid to not tap its massive oil reserves. People from all over the world would gladly pay into the fund, and Alaska could fund its government with that, he said.

“Coming out of this idea that we might be able to get paid to not cut down trees that we weren’t going to cut down anyway, I kind of have the ultimate CCUS [Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage]: Is it possible under some circumstance for us to get paid not to take oil out of the ground? And my brief sort of crazy idea is to just sort of, if we did it like a GoFundMe, there’s so many environmentalists around the world that we could potentially set up a charge, to fund our government, to be paid not to drill oil. If we had people, if we had 100 billion in the ground, and we divide it up how much that would be over time, that we could potentially get paid not to drill. Do people talk about that? Is that possible?” Rep. Gray said.

John Crowther, deputy commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources, was polite: “Rep. Gray, through the chair, I don’t think we’ve heard those kinds of proposals,” he said.

The presentation on carbon credits and Rep. Gray’s suggestions can be viewed at this link.

The exchange between Gray and Crowther illustrates how difficult it is for many people to understand the world of carbon capture, credits, and storage.

Background on the carbon bills from Gov. Mike Dunleavy

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced legislation to help the state can make money off of the carbon trading market. Senate Bill (SB) 48, SB 49, House Bill (HB) 49, and HB 50, the Dunleavy Carbon Management and Monetization Bill Package, creates statutory and regulatory framework needed so the State can take advantage of this growing sector. The package consists of two bills that would create a carbon offset program; and a carbon capture, utilization, and storage program.

Carbon Offset Program

SB 48 and HB 49 establish a statewide carbon offset program through forest sequestration within the Department of Natural Resources. Many of the forested lands in Alaska are not even commercially viable because of their size or location, but through a carbon offset program, they have the potential to generate additional revenue for the State of Alaska through biologic carbon storage projects that can mitigate a portion of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.

Current statutes do not allow for carbon offset projects. The carbon offset program bill seeks to grant DNR the ability to establish a carbon offset program and enable carbon offset projects on state lands. The carbon offset program would allow private entities to lease state land to undertake carbon offset programs to meet their company goals of becoming net-zero for carbon emissions.

Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage

SB 49 and HB 50 are part of the State’s efforts to get revenue from vast underground storage it has for carbon dioxide that is a byproduct of oil and gas project. The carbon dioxide can be injected into underground caverns and geologic formation and can be used to force out more oil, or just store the carbon dioxide.

Alaska’s older oil and gas basins, particularly in Cook Inlet, have the right geology to sequester carbon underground. Cook Inlet has been identified as one of the top spots on earth with the ability to sequester carbon underground — with at least 50 gigatons of capacity, the governor’s office said.

This bill specifically creates new authorities for State agencies to license, lease, and administer the State’s pore space for geological storage; administer pipeline infrastructure for transportation of captured carbon to geological storage facilities and administer injection wells and carbon storage facilities; and protect correlative rights of all subsurface owners.

Alaska Native corporations are already making money on carbon trading. “They’ve realized about $350 million on 350,000 acres of land. So that’s a small example, and there’s projects such as this ongoing in the Lower 48 with private landowners as well,” Dunleavy said earlier this month.

“Carbon management will complement—and in some cases enhance—Alaska’s existing industries like forestry, oil and gas, mining, tourism, and outdoor recreation,” said DNR Commissioner John Boyle. “These bills do not lock up State land, rather, they unleash new opportunities. Carbon offset projects will not prevent mineral development, timber harvests, new oil and gas exploration, or infrastructure development. Land within the carbon offset program area will still be available for hunting, fishing, camping and recreational activities for Alaskans and visitors.”Conventional resource development companies operating in Alaska stand to benefit in multiple ways from a strong State carbon management regulatory framework. These companies can use carbon credits to offset their carbon emissions, creating new opportunities.” 

“In Alaska, we are blessed with the resources of today, but we’re also blessed with the resources of tomorrow,” Dunleavy said. “With support from the Legislature for our carbon management bill package, we’ll change the conversation about new revenue. We’ve been told by some that we can generate revenue in the billions over 20 years just from our forest lands. This represents the means to fund services, lower the cost of living and improve our quality of life, to create wealth and billions of dollars in economic activity without taxing Alaskans or eliminating the PFD.” 

Environmentalists are not on board. Many of them see it as a way of delaying the conversion to renewable energy, and they don’t want to monetize nature.

But for the State of Alaska, getting Alaska’s natural gas to a market like Japan may depend on being able to show the Japan government, which is very sensitive to lowering the nation’s carbon footprint, that Alaska can sell space to store the natural gas byproducts like carbon dioxide, making Alaska a more attractive supplier. Such a framework for carbon storage may be the key to being able to build the Alaska gasline, supporters say, if Alaska can demonstrate that it can also provide the means to mitigate the carbon from natural gas.

He’d offended before, but until now, no one knew he had sexually abused a 5-year-old in an Anchorage park in 1994

Suzanne Downing
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He’d offended before, but until now, no one knew he had sexually abused a 5-year-old in an Anchorage park in 1994

An Anchorage grand jury has indicted 52-year-old Lawrence Andrew Lekanoff on two counts of sexual abuse of a minor — a five-year-old child in an Anchorage park in 1994.

Lekanoff, whose address one time showed him as homeless and living in the woods in Muldoon, has a history of other charges. He was arrested in the Lower 48 on Feb. 27, and faces extradition to Alaska.

In 2018, Lekanoff was arrested in Thurston County, Washington, where he was a transient who was required to register as a sex offender due to a 1996 conviction in Anchorage on one count of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor.

For that 1996 conviction, he had received a 12-year sentence with four years suspended. When he was 24, he was accused of sexually assaulting two girls, ages 4 and 6. He’s also been registered as a sex offender in Montana and Colorado.

The Anchorage Police Department had investigated this 1994 case, but efforts to identify a suspect were unsuccessful at the time and the case went cold. The sexual assault kit collected in the case was tested in 2020 as part of the Capital Project, a State initiative to analyze untested sexual assault kits collected by 47 police departments across the state.

One of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s priorities was to get all the rape kits that had been on the shelf processed. Thousands of untested sexual assault examination kits from across Alaska were processed by the end of 2021. A new law requires rape kits to be tested within one year to avoid backlogs and delays of justice.

DNA evidence linked Lekanoff to the 1994 sexual assault, bringing his known victims in Anchorage to three. The Anchorage Police Department reopened the investigation, and the Department of Law’s Office of Special Prosecutions presented the case to the grand jury. 

If convicted, Lekanoff faces a sentence of up to 30 years imprisonment.

New Education Commissioner is Susan McKenzie

Suzanne Downing
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New Education Commissioner is Susan McKenzie

The Alaska State Board of Education and Early Development has selected, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy has approved Susan McKenzie as the new commissioner for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development. Heidi Teshner, who has served as acting commissioner since July, will return to her previous role as deputy commissioner.

McKenzie does not have to stand for confirmation from the Alaska Legislature.

“Ms. McKenzie has demonstrated a strong commitment to improving education and a vision for Alaska’s education system that aligns with the State Board’s strategic priorities and direction, especially in reading improvement. I look forward to working with her and Alaska’s entire education community to improve outcomes for all students, ” Dunleavy said.

“As an educator for 40 years, my life’s work has been to improve education for students, optimizing their achievement, leading to greater future choices. I’ve witnessed the pattern of failure to support students with evidence-based practices and have been desperately determined to affect change,” McKenzie said. “Our children deserve our best. Movement into higher leadership roles has been a blessing, and I’ve realized there is great alignment in my skill set and the service as Commissioner. I bring gained educational wisdom, Alaska experience and relationships, strong leadership, and knowledge of Alaska Department of Education and Early Development to use for such a time as this. I am a change agent for ineffective systems and practices. As a servant leader, I lead by example and will be involved with all groups, making changes needed to provide an excellent education for every student every day.”

The State Board of Education is looking forward to working with Ms. McKenzie in moving the state’s education priorities forward for all the kids of Alaska,” said Chairman James Fields, DEED State Board of Education. “Ms. McKenzie comes with a wide breadth of experience in education and leadership including rural Alaska experience.”

Ms. McKenzie currently serves as DEED’s Director of Innovation and Education Excellence. Previously she was a superintendent for eight years in the Gaston School District in Oregon. Prior to this she served as a principal in the Copper River School District in Glennallen, Alaska. Ms. McKenzie began her career as a teacher and special education teacher in Oregon. 

She has a master’s degree in Education from University of Alaska, Fairbanks in Language and Literacy with a reading endorsement. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education and added a Special Education endorsement later. Her administrator licensing was completed at Portland State University in 2009 and renewed in 2015 at Concordia University Chicago. 

Commissioner-designee McKenzie starts as commissioner on April 1.

Supreme Court seems skeptical of Biden’s student loan forgiveness powers

SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR
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Supreme Court seems skeptical of Biden’s student loan forgiveness powers

By CASEY HARPER | THE CENTER SQUARE

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt.

Biden announced in August of last year that his administration would “forgive” $10,000 in federal student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 per year or $250,000 for married couples. Debtors who borrowed money before July 1 can qualify. 

For Pell Grant recipients, the debt reduction would total $20,000. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimated that the plan would cost taxpayers roughly $400 billion.

The Biden administration argued that the administration has the legal authority to cancel the debt. Justices poked back at that claim, asking whether Congress’ HEROES ACT, which allowed the federal government to delay debt collection because of national emergencies, really grants power to cancel that debt.

Justices point out that the law does not explicitly allow for the waiving of student debt in this way, but the Biden administration argued that forgiving the student debt was still in line with the purpose of the bill.

Justices also raised concerns that using a questionable legal argument to allow such a large release of federal funds may go beyond the power of the legislation. The Biden administration, though, argued that the legal challengers did not have a real injury because of the policy that would give them legal standing to challenge the plan in the first place.

The Biden administration has paused student loan repayment until the Supreme Court rules on this case, expected by June and no later than July.

“Today, my Administration argues our case for student debt relief in the Supreme Court,” Biden said in a statement. “This relief is critical to over 40 million Americans as they recover from the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. We’re confident it’s legal. And we’re fighting for it in court.”

A poll from August 2022 found Americans are concerned that forgiving the student loan debt will hike inflation.

A CNBC/Momentive survey found that 59% of those surveyed said they are concerned forgiving the debt will make inflation worse.

“Republicans are especially concerned: 81% of Republicans say student loan forgiveness will make inflation worse, nearly double the number of Democrats who say the same (41%),” Momentive said.

Interest payments on national debt will soon exceed defense spending, Congressional Budget Office says

SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR
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Interest payments on national debt will soon exceed defense spending, Congressional Budget Office says

By CASEY HARPER | THE CENTER SQUARE

The cost of interest payments on the national debt will continue to grow as a financial burden for the U.S. over the next decade, even surpassing what the nation spends on national defense within a few years, a newly released budget analysis shows.

The national debt hit $31 trillion last fall and is well on its way to $32 trillion this year. As that debt grows, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office projects that the federal government will shell out over $10 trillion in the next decade on interest payments alone.

“To put this $10.5 trillion total in perspective, this means that spending on net interest will exceed all defense spending over the next decade,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said in its analysis of CBO’s data. “In addition, we estimate the net interest spending will surpass all federal spending on children this year, meaning that we will be paying more to service our debts of the past than to invest in future generations.

“For every dollar that the U.S. government will borrow over the next decade, 50 cents will be just to pay interest on our national debt,” the group added.

CBO also projects that the debt as a percentage of GDP will hit record levels in that time and average $2 trillion deficits.

The latest debt projections are based on current spending obligations. That means new spending from Congress without offsetting tax increases or spending cuts will accelerate that growth of the debt beyond those projections.

“After jumping from $352 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 to $475 billion in 2022, annual net interest outlays will triple, reaching $1.4 trillion by 2033,” the CRFB said. “As a share of the economy, net interest will rise from 1.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in FY 2022 to exceed its record as a share of GDP – 3.2 percent set in 1991 – by 2030 before reaching a high of 3.6 percent of GDP by 2033.”

CRFB said the cost of interest on the national debt will soon surpass entitlement spending if nothing changes.

“Unfortunately, the decades to follow 2033 are projected to be in even worse fiscal shape. With deficits continuing to grow unsustainably over time, interest on debt will eventually become the largest part of the federal budget,” the group said. “Net interest will surpass defense spending by 2028, Medicare spending by 2044, and Social Security spending by 2050, becoming the largest single line item in the budget. By 2053, net interest will consume approximately 7.2 percent of GDP – nearly 40 percent of federal revenues.”

Alaska Supreme Court approves lowering score required to pass Alaska Bar exam

Suzanne Downing
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Alaska Supreme Court approves lowering score required to pass Alaska Bar exam

The Alaska Supreme Court signed an order on Monday that lowers the score needed to pass the Uniform Bar Examination in order to practice law in Alaska.

The old score needed was 280. The new score is 270, a 3.57% decrease in the passing score. The rule takes effect immediately.

Some applicants just finished the February 2023 Alaska Bar Exam, and their results won’t be known until May. For those who took the February 2023 exam, but did not score high enough but had previously scored a 270 or above on the exam, the Bar Association said it will be reaching out to discuss the best way to gain admission to the bar. Some may be able to apply if they previously had a score of 270 within the past five years.

Uniform Bar Exam states like Alaska have different scoring requirement but test-takers require a score typically between 260 and 280 to pass one of these two-day tests. A score above 280 is considered passing in all Uniform Bar Exam states.

Most states, Alaska included, allow qualifying applicants who graduated from an accredited law school to take the test an unlimited number of times, if they need to, while others put limits on the number of attempts. Sen. Lisa Murkowski failed to get a 280 score four times on the Alaska test, but passed the exam on her fifth try. In 21 states, bar exam attempts are limited from between two and six tries. States with absolute limits on the number of attempts are:

Kansas – 4
Kentucky – 5
New Hampshire – 4
North Dakota – 6
Rhode Island – 5
Vermont – 4

Alaska’s bar exam is administered three times a year, with the next two-day test scheduled July 25-26.

More details on the Alaska Bar Exam from the Alaska Bar Association at this link.

Media bias: MSNBC reporter says no credence given to China lab theory because it came from ‘the right’

Suzanne Downing
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Media bias: MSNBC reporter says no credence given to China lab theory because it came from ‘the right’

A reporter from MSNBC said the quiet part out loud on social media this week: Journalists like him and “people” didn’t give the “China lab Covid theory” credence because it came from conservatives, or as he calls them, “right with ‘Chinese bio weapon’ conspiracies” and “right with anti-Fauci conspiracies.”

MSNBC reporter Mehdi Hasan, who is British-American, then concluded: “Blame the conspiracy theorists.”

The admission that news was biased against conservative perspectives on Covid was in response to a Twitter comment by poll analyst Nate Silver, who said that scientists who suppressed discussion of the origins of the Covid-19 virus should be embarrassed.

“The reason this drives me up the wall is that if you’re ever going to pretend that ‘misinformation’ is a useful category, at least acknowledge it was a massive error to label lab leak discussion as ‘misinformation’ when multiple US government agencies now put the chances ≥50%,” Silver said.

“It’s hard to have a good faith disagreement about a major issue if the issue itself has been hijacked by bad faith folks,” Hasan said.

The back-and-forth between the two major media conversation-shapers comes at a time when there has been more public reflection about the suppression of free speech during the pandemic, and what that means for the public’s trust in their government.

In November, as Dr. Anthony Fauci was retiring from government service as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and top Covid advisor to presidents, pleaded with the public, “The people who have correct information, who take science seriously, who don’t have strange, way-out theories about things but who base what they say on evidence and data, need to speak up more because the other side that just keeps putting out misinformation and disinformation seems to be tireless in that effort.”

But it was reporter Hasan who observed that the reluctance to give any credence to Covid origin theories was based in partisan politics.

“Also: ask yourself why so many people on the right, lay people, were obsessed with this one specific aspect of the science of Covid, which by the view is still not the majority view amongst scientists? Was it because of their scientific curiosity? Lol,” Hasan wrote.

Fauci said this week, in response to the news that the Department of Energy has changed its position and now thinks the lab-leak theory is most likely correct, that there is no evidence to support the lab-leak theory.

Fauci is not being completely forthright. In 2021, the National Institutes of Health was discovered to have been the funder of gain-of-function coronavirus research studies at a Chinese lab in Wuhan. Fauci denied the allegations, but the NIH admitted that it indeed funded those studies. Dr. Fauci’s wife, Dr. Christine Grady is chief of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH Clinical Center.

A scientific study published in October of 2020 supports the idea that news media used a political filter to decide what to cover regarding the pandemic. The study’s abstract says, “Using multiple computer-assisted content analytic approaches, we find that newspaper coverage is highly politicized, network news coverage somewhat less so, and both newspaper and network news coverage are highly polarized. We find that politicians appear in newspaper coverage more frequently than scientists, whereas politicians and scientists are more equally featured in network news. We suggest that the high degree of politicization and polarization in initial COVID-19 coverage may have contributed to polarization in U.S. COVID-19 attitudes.”

Ground Zero: Energy Department changes mind, says Covid-19 was probably from a China lab leak
War of words: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, canceled by publisher, newspapers, and syndicator over race remarks

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