Last year during the 29th Alaska State
Legislature, the notion of using a portion of the Permanent Fund profits
normally allocated to pay out the annual dividend was floated by several
legislators and the Governor. These
circumstances came out of a decade of above-inflation deficit spending,
lopsided agreements with oil companies and government growth. Immediately into fray supporting grabbing
more money from Alaskans was a coalition of corporate interests that all stand
to benefit from the continued growth of Our government. The other company he mentioned was Lynden. Both of these companies stand to lose big
bucks as state spending is reduced, so of course it benefits them for the
budget to be funded as much as possible, thus there support for the coalition
of businesses calling themselves, Alaska’s Future.
Almost immediately a resistance to this idea sprung up and
multiple outlets were established to amplify the voices of Alaskans. However, those voices were quite frankly
ignored. Petitions were presented and
people spoke out in groves against the path being taken by Our representatives
way down there in Juneau. Readers should
check out this link: http://protectthepfd.com/currently/monday-memothank-you-alaskans
from last April.
Only 13% of the legislators even bothered to read an email
containing signatures and comments from 100 Alaskans. That petition eventually garnered 860+
signatures and was forwarded to the Alaska Legislature and Governor’s
Office. We have no way of knowing what
happened to it once there other than the fact that Governor Walker did in fact
veto about half of the funds to payout the PFD in 2016. This action was contrary to his position as a
populist candidate that wasn’t supposed to do business as usual in Juneau. Petition Link: https://www.change.org/p/calling-on-alaskans-to-stop-the-alaska-governor-legislature-from-using-the-permanent-fund-for-deficit-spending
Fast Forward to the 30th Alaska Legislature…
During a Town Hall event at the local LIO on March 18, 2017;
Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon mentioned that he had met with several large
business interests that relayed to him that they had in fact seen a decrease in
their Alaska operations. One in
particular that stood out was Alaska Airlines.
Edgmon went onto to say that the airline company attributed it mainly to
the reduction of ‘state travel’. During
this same exchange he also mentioned the “work” being done by Alaska’s Future
and The Rasmussen Foundation, both advocates of using PFD funds and new taxes
to fund growing government. And Growing
Government is exactly what Alaskans are getting… that ‘hard work of making
cuts’ as claimed by the Legislature is a sham.
In the graph below with was created using the figures as
provided by the Alaska Governor’s Office of Management & Budget, one can
clearly see that the State of Alaska’s budget isn’t being cut at all and is
growing faster than inflation. All that’s happened is a shell game of shifting
money around.
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| #FactNotFiction |