Legislators, the governor and his top aides should qualify for automatic pay hikes every two years to make up for inflation unless the 2025 Legislature moves quickly to strike down the plan.

That’s the idea that three members of the Alaska State Officers Compensation Commission tentatively agreed to Wednesday, saying they would meet again in January before taking final action.

The commission is supposed to have five members, but it only has three. Gov. Mike Dunleavy has refused to fill two positions, which concentrates the power to help set key state salaries in the hands of commission members Jomo Stewart, Larry LeDoux and Lynn Gattis.

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Legislators and the governor have avoided an open and transparent discussion about how the public process was subverted in 2023 to get big pay raises, but the issue will not go away. The State Officers Compensation Commission can do the right thing Wednesday and recommend that the commission be done away with.

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The $250,000 examination of AIDEA’s history that the state agency refuses to release to the public can be kept secret because it is a draft report, according to AIDEA Executive Director Randy Ruaro.

“Under Alaska law, until a report is final, it is not required to be released,” Ruaro wrote in a letter to the editor accusing me of being a bad guy.

But that is not what Alaska law says.

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The state announced that it intends to award a contract to Six-7 Strategies for the proposed $9 million public relations and marketing campaign envisioned by Gov. Mike Dunleavy to promote Alaska to companies Outside.

The Dunleavy plan is to sell Alaska as imagined in the colorful pages of this 32-page pamphlet titled the “Alaska Standard,” a document created under a previous state contract. The Alaska Standard, created by Bridge House Advisors of Chicago, promotes development of oil, gas, minerals, renewable energy, etc. in Alaska.

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In a letter to the editor, Randy Ruaro, the executive director of the Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority, accuses me of making things up, waging a smear campaign and opposing resource development and jobs for Alaskans.

He is wrong on all counts.

I suspect Ruaro didn’t intend to do this, but his broadside actually confirms what I wrote here on November 26—that Anchorage consultant Northern Economics completed its $250,000 study of AIDEA’s economics early this year. I concluded that AIDEA did not like the results and refused to release the findings, claiming it was a draft and therefore secret.

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Two state-owned corporations that don’t act without the blessing of Gov. Mike Dunleavy have cooked up a plan to tap into a slush fund to provide a $50 million guarantee to pay for a gasline study.

The corporations excluded the Legislature Wednesday and avoided the sometimes messy process of holding public hearings and seeking testimony when dealing with public money.

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But it appears clear now that the Dunleavy administration never had any intention of weighing all the trucks and made no effort to do so, an issue that is particularly relevant given the wear and tear on highways and bridges.

The heavy-handed intervention by the Dunleavy administration is clear in the report, which now opposes a plan to extend the hours of weigh stations and weigh every truck.

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Contango Ore claims new weight restrictions on the Chena River flood control bridge will mean a 20 percent cut in the amount of ore hauled to the Fort Knox mine.

Contango and Kinross had intended to haul 50 tons of rock per load. A 20 percent reduction means the trucks will only carry 40 tons per load.

But something about this doesn’t add up. The new 80-ton bridge limit should not have led to a 10-ton reduction for each truck.

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The AIDEA study about the economics of AIDEA is not the only important state-funded report that has yet to see the light of day.

A comprehensive $800,000 study on the salaries of state workers and whether they are high enough for market conditions is another. Hiring problems have become chronic at state agencies, leading to a decline in services. Low salaries are one of the recruitment problems.

The salary study was to have been completed by June 30, allowing enough time to work its recommendations into the proposed state budget that is due from Gov. Mike Dunleavy in two weeks.

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The Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority spent $250,000 of public money to complete an economic study that AIDEA refuses to release to the public.

AIDEA hired a respected Alaska contracting company, Northern Economics of Anchorage, to perform an independent analysis of what AIDEA has accomplished or not accomplished over the years.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy has plenty of time to opine on why Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees deserve prompt approval by the U.S. Senate and he has plenty of time to go on Fox News and praise the wisdom of Donald Trump.

But the Alaska governor won’t take the time to explain to Alaskans what he has done—if anything—about the critical collapse in operations under his watch at the Alaska Division of Retirement and Benefits.

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Either Dunleavy hasn’t found anyone in the Second Judicial District who pledges to be loyal to him and didn’t sign the recall petition or he doesn’t care enough to make the effort to fill the vacancy on the state school board, a key entity in creating state education policy.

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Perhaps Dunleavy didn’t get his face on Fox News often enough to sing Trump’s praises while Trump was watching TV. Perhaps the people around Trump regard Dunleavy as a lightweight. Perhaps it is because Dunleavy’s political constituency is tiny and there are plenty of sycophants in the sea.

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Donald Trump, who told voters he won’t listen to lobbyists, is again giving top jobs to lobbyists, after having relied on lobbyists during his campaign.

Susie Wiles, his new chief of staff, is a former lobbyist for the Pebble Mine project.

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Sen. Dan Sullivan has had nothing to say about the growing scandal regarding Pete Hegseth and his behavior at a 2017 conference that led to a sexual assault complaint, a payment to the woman and a nondisclosure agreement. Hegseth had a two-month-old at the time after an affair. He had just been divorced.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy says once more it would be great to have a 42-inch gas pipeline from the North Slope to Southcentral, but he offers no details on how to make it happen.

In a memo to legislators under the subject line, “Alaska’s Energy Crisis,” Dunleavy said he hopes that private industry will lead the way.

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As predicted last spring before the tax cap election, the Fairbanks school district faces the prospect of major cuts in the next fiscal year of anywhere from $8 million to $32 million, the school board heard Tuesday night.

The financial environment for public education in Alaska is not stable, largely because of inaction at the state level and the lack of leadership from Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

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The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation is the most important financial institution in Alaska. The flaws in the leadership structure are on full display, with all the power granted to a disconnected governor, still hoping Trump will give him a way out.

The process of selecting trustees for the fund needs to change. Only the Legislature can do that.

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Elon Musk, temporarily on good terms with Donald Trump after spending more than $100 million to help him win, warns that “everyone’s taking a haircut here” and there will be “temporary hardship” if he has his way.

Sen. Dan Sullivan will not say what haircuts and temporary hardships can be expected in Alaska if more than $2 trillion is cut from the federal budget.

But asking Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the way is exactly what the nation needs, according to Sullivan, referring to it as “reinventing government.”

“I mean to me that’s probably one of the most brilliant things I’ve seen that’s come out of the announcements from the incoming administration,” Sullivan told Neil Cavuto of Fox News last week.

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It’s clear that Fox & Friends TV talker Pete Hegseth does not have the bio, the skills, the temperament or the experience to lead the largest department in the U.S. government, contrary to Sen. Dan Sullivan’s assumptions.

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