Kinross is telling Alaskans that it is not economical to build an ore processing facility at the high-grade gold deposit near Tetlin, so it has no choice but to use the highway system to truck ore to the Fort Knox mine for processing.

But there is good reason to dispute the claim.

Why?

Because a 2018 study of the proposed Tetlin project—before Kinross got involved—found that a mine project built at Tetlin would be an economical and profitable venture for all concerned, even with a gold price of $1,250 per ounce. Gold is now about $1,830 an ounce.

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The Dunleavy administration hadn’t planned to move ahead this soon with the replacement of five major bridges between Tetlin and the Fort Knox mine until the Kinross plan to use the highways as a haul road for mining trucks came along.

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One of the secret investments, the amount unknown, made on behalf of Alaskans by a contractor hired by the Alaska Permanent Fund is in a California company called SafeAI.

The description released to the public by McKinley Capital says SafeAI is “focused on retrofitting heavy equipment with AI technology to prevent accidents.”

But that language does not fully convey the corporate mission of SafeAI‚—the promotion of robotic vehicles for mining and construction, a goal that goes far beyond safety.

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They subscribe to the Dunleavy lockbox plan for the budget. First, you create a lockbox to limit state spending. Everyone likes a good lockbox. Only after the lockbox is in the Alaska Constitution do you bother to tell anyone what won’t fit inside.“It’s a lockbox and then you kind of duke it out, if you need to, what’s inside that lockbox,” is how Dunleavy described his vision of a painless process in 2016.

They don’t want to talk now about what won’t in the lockbox of the future. Road maintenance? Public safety? Schools? Don’t worry about any of that now, they say.

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The Alaska Permanent Fund board of trustees reviewed the so-called "in-state” investment program earlier this month and some of the issues that arise from the $200 million program.

My major complaint all along has been about the claim by the fund managers that they can keep all investment details—including the names of recipients and the purpose of investments—secret, based on a line inserted into state law for another reason more than four decades ago.

But secrecy is not the only issue to consider.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointed Dave Weisz of Wasilla, the president of Three Bears, to the state fisheries board last March.

Last fall Dunleavy staged a campaign event to announce the amount of the 2022 Permanent Fund Dividend at the Three Bears store in Palmer.

Weisz resigned from the fish board in October, writing that his personal circumstances were such that he didn’t have the time to do the position justice. He was replaced by Stan Zuray in December.

A year ago the state secretly invested in Three Bears through the Alaska Permanent Fund. The investment was kept secret until last week. The exact amount of the investment is still a secret.

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A year ago the news broke that an investment firm called Westward Partners had purchased the Three Bears grocery chain, which has 20 stores in Alaska and Montana and $300 million in annual sales.

But there was no hint that the state of Alaska was a secret investor in the deal through the Alaska Permanent Fund last February.

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The state House censured Republican Rep. David Eastman Wednesday on a 35-1 vote, with Eastman providing the only pro-Eastman vote.

Despite the near unanimous vote, however, let’s admit that a motion to censure is symbolic, not significant. The House refused to take real action against Eastman for belonging to an anti-government militia, but it should at least remove him from the judiciary committee and find a better legislator to fill that seat.

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Rep. David Eastman had plenty of chances to apologize for his remarks about the long-term “benefits” to society when a child is killed by an abuser. That Eastman refused to do so is another reason why someone of his ilk doesn’t belong in the Legislature.

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Assembly Presiding Officer Aaron Lojewski fired the volunteers on the climate committee as his first action last fall. The friends and Republican allies he named to the committee are now supporting vague and innocuous recommendations that are packaged with enough hedge words that they contain no clear action plan for dealing with climate change.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy and state transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson need to be honest with the public about the new plan to spend $200 million or more on road and bridge upgrades between Tetlin and Fairbanks to benefit the Kinross trucking plan.

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The new Alaska elections director, hired for the job with no experience running elections, is off to a bad start.

Carol Beecher, a Republican and longtime state employee, claims she doesn’t know enough to say whether President Joe Biden was rightfully elected in 2020. And she refuses to say whether she believes Trump’s lies about the vote.

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The balloon shot down over the Yukon Territory remains a former UFO, but the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade fears the Air Force has burst its world-traveling balloon, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology.

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“So the estimated 50 to 100 unsheltered people who live in Fairbanks find ways to survive. They walk all night in bunny boots, trying to stave off frostbite. They crowd into motel rooms 10 at a time. They build forested encampments and dig snow caves. They squat in abandoned houses and sleep in cars.”

If you haven’t done so, read the investigation of homelessness in Fairbanks in the winter by one of Alaska’s top reporters, Michelle Theriault Boots of the Anchorage Daily News.

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The Alaska Policy Forum has long peddled the claim that the easy cure-all for public education in Alaska is to spend less money on it and redirect the money so it can be spent on private schools.

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Sen. Dan Sullivan, at his boarding-school whiniest, comes across as if someone took his puppy in his inquisition of Gigi Sohn, nominated by President Biden to the Federal Communications Commission in October 2021 and opposed by all Republicans.

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The problem with these events is not that Dunleavy went to a rodeo in Texas and to a hunting conference in Michigan, but that state employees felt the need to hide this from Alaskans when there were questions about his statement attacking Biden over the balloon affair.

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The Anchorage Daily News says Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson has proven himself to be “unqualified, incompetent and out of his depth” during his year-and-a-half as mayor of the state’s largest city. The newspaper backed this up with a powerful editorial, one of the best I’ve seen in years, which stops short of calling for his resignation.

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I have no doubt that Sen. Cathy Giessel regrets the introduction of Senate Bill 50. I take it as a good sign that she withdrew the week-old bill, which was written at the behest of a single gas company in Cook Inlet.

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One sign of how Dunleavy’s approach created lasting damage is the declining number of students eligible for the Alaska Performance Scholarship who choose to attend school in Alaska. The percentage of top students choosing to remain in Alaska and use this program—which is worth up to $4,755 a year—has been dropping since 2016, down from 39 percent to 22 percent.

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