Such a magical number. It is the dollar amount Bill Walker and his democrat, indy, and Musk Ox majority in the House and minority in the Senate believe they need more than you, me, our children, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, and fellow travelers in this Great State.
When Bill Walker ran for governor four long years ago, he was not a fan of the PFD. He said so during the campaign. Unfortunately, he said a lot of other things during that campaign, one or two of which were actually true, making it difficult for voters to keep things properly sorted out.
After taking office, rather than offer promised budgets with an average of 16% budget cuts yearly which would have quickly balanced the budget, he increased spending every chance he got. He demanded income, sales, and other statewide taxes and fees. When the legislature wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he went after the PFD, with a stroke of a pen eventually stealing $3,733 from every single Alaskan over the course of the last three years.
Senate attempts to roll back the theft were stymied by the democrat minority in the senate, the House majority (democrat, indy, and Musk Ox) and Walker himself. They never could muster enough votes to override an expected veto, so they didn’t get very far. Bill Wielechowski’s Quixotic attempt to get the courts to do something he was unwilling to lead in the legislature was slapped down by the Alaska Supreme Court, a good show, but always just a show.
It was supposedly done in the name of fiscal responsibility. Funny thing, that, as the withheld portion of the PFD was never used to balance a budget. Rather it went into the Constitutional Budget Reserve, a pot of money the eyed with no small amount of glee by democrats, indys, and Musk Ox caucus members.
Over the next two years, Walker, his Alaska First, union, democrat supporters, and anti-development lawyers (Robin Brena, among others), successfully elected 16 democrats to the House in 2016. These were joined by a pair of self-identified independents, Dan Ortiz (House District 36) and Jason Grenn (House District 22), and the remaining three Republican Musk Ox coalition members, Gabby LeDoux, Louise Stutes, and Paul Seaton, organizing a 21-seat majority coalition in late 2016.
This coalition was supportive as Walker continued to withhold PFD monies from Alaskan citizens, opting instead to help Walker attempt to pass income taxes, other taxes, and increase state spending so all those new taxes are absolutely necessary. Last session they attempted to appropriate the entire Constitutional Budget Reserve, spending every single penny in it.
This year, they are back at it, with an attempt to add two more so-called independents to the House, Shawn Butler (House District 29) and Chris Dimond (House District 33). Walker, Grenn, Ortiz and the two new players got together at the IBEW Hall on Sept. 27 for a fund raiser co-hosted by union luminaries in South Central Alaska including AFL/CIO boss Vince Beltrami who ran as a self-described independent against Cathy Giessel in 2016. That’s a lot of independence. It is also a lot of other stuff, most of it brown and stinky.
The thing is, none of these people are independent at all. If you apply the Duck Test (walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a pretty good chance it is a duck) to these guys, they are all democrats. And with them fundraising with unions, not only will they be beholden to what the democrats want to do in this state, they will also be beholden to their masters writing union checks to their campaigns.
At this point, it might be a good idea to ask the union bosses why they think the State of Alaska or their backed candidates know how to spend that $3,733 better than you do. And once you allow them to do so, set that precedent, there will always be another reason, another fiscal crisis, another emergency, that will need that money. Juneau will quickly grab increasingly large chunks of that PFD until it will be just a distant memory.
In the race for Alaska governor, there is only one candidate who thinks you can spend your own PFD better than he can, and that is neither Bill Walker nor Mark Begich.
There are candidates for the legislature out there who think you can likewise spend your own PFD better than they can. None of them are running as democrats or independents.
Keep that in mind in a few weeks when you go to the polls. Otherwise, you will simply encourage them to steal from your pocketbook once again. And if we allow it without punishing them at the polls next month, we will get more of it which won’t do any of us any good.
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 is a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
