What I Saw at the District 23 and 24 Joint Meeting

Republicans from House District 23 and 24 held a joint meeting at the Asia Garden Restaurant from 1800 – 2000 on Tuesday, Dec 3, 2019.  There were about 20 in attendance including both District Chairmen and three legislators, State Senator Natasha von Imhof, State Representative Chuck Kopp, and visiting State Representative Sara Rasmussen of a neighboring district.

While the meeting has been described by some as a train wreck, it wasn’t.  OTOH, there were a lot of people in the room very unhappy with both Chuck and Natasha.  And that unhappiness drove the discussion.

Natasha led off the discussion with a PowerPoint presentation on the budget, making the very clear case that paying the statutory PFD was not going to be possible.  Her position was driven home in the Q&A during and following her presentation.  For instance:

• She never mentioned the $16 billion in the earnings reserve, combining what Bill Walker vetoed and what the last two legislatures refused to spend on the PFD.
• She was directly asked if the legislature was going to roll back Walker’s Medicaid expansion and tried to not answer the question.
• She was very proud of a 0.5% education cut (mostly for the university system) and never considered any suggestion to really start moving state education spending to another model.
• She had no response when one constituent pointed out how the UA system slithered out of a significant budget cut with the help of her majority.
• She did not mention her support for looking into changing taxes on the oil and natural gas producers after the legislative session ended. I can’t think of a better way to chase more of them out of the state than to travel this road.

Bottom line on this is that she is right, the PFD is going to indeed be gone, but not for the reason she is giving.  It will be gone because there is no stomach in the legislature, particularly in the Senate, and she is one of the leading budgeteers in the Senate, for downsizing state spending to the point it will be sustainable.  If you don’t even try, you will never, ever get there.

Next up was Chuck Kopp.  He was well prepared and rattled off a list of things he was proud of doing.  Questions for him concentrated mostly on organizing with democrats in the House.  For instance:

• He blamed the organization on the Governor’s former Chief of Staff, Tuckerman Babcock, who he said went around to the House Minority Republicans, reminding them of their support for the full dividend.
• He mentioned the money he lost as a commercial fisherman last summer due to the length of the session and special sessions. If I were a snarky kind of guy, I would point out if he had supported changing the commfish paradigm in this state to allow fish farming for finfish, he would not have lost a dime.  But life is about choices.
• Rebecca Logan made a statement requesting their strong support for resource development, concern that grew out of putting democrats in charge in the House and Natasha’s mention of reopening the tax discussion for the producers.

The meeting then went on to discuss a resolution expressing our displeasure with his choice to caucus with democrats, putting a democrat in charge as Speaker.  The discussion was pointed and blunt.

To digress, there are a group of our neighbors fully in support of Chuck Kopp, mostly because he is the first (perhaps only) elected official who has gone after the Alaska Railroad for property rights abuse of their right of way through their property.  He has fought that battle well. Unfortunately, it is not the only thing he was elected to do.  In the room that night, they were outnumbered by at least 3:1 if not more.  The meeting ended with the resolution tabled until our next meeting in January.

Natasha made an impassioned speech strongly in support of Chuck during this, demanding that if we passed the resolution it should also include her name.  Agreeing with her, I made a motion to that effect that sadly didn’t go anywhere.

I did make the comment to both of my legislators that I had been in the district for a long time and I cannot remember when I was so poorly represented.  They did not hang around afterwards for additional discussion.

So, what do we have going on here?  I would suggest that we constituents have a real, growing lack of trust in our delegation to the legislature, Chuck for caucusing with democrats in the House, and Natasha for choosing to keep the unpaid PFD money in the Earnings Reserve for her future spending plans rather than paying it out.

Further, there are a LOT of things we can do to control the budget.  They include but are not limited to peeling off 14 of the 17 campuses in the UA system; halting all COLAs for all state employees and retirees; embracing block grants for Medicare and Medicaid; embracing vouchers for education; embracing MSAs for health care; and moving to a distance education model for state-funded education at all levels.  There are even three Constitutional amendments aimed at spending proposed by Governor Dunleavy that have not gone anywhere either.

Their failure to even consider much less offer legislation to move to any of these tells me that her solution is to simply grab the $16 billion in the Earnings Reserve to keep the game going at least a little while longer, which is not what she was elected to do.

While either or both might make it through this election cycle successfully, keep this up and it will be the last one they are successful in.

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.