On Feb. 13, 2019, with lots of fanfare, Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed an executive order to consolidate the procurement functions of state government in a single office.

He said that about 100 non-construction procurement staff in various state agencies were to be transferred to the Department of Administration and he created the new Office of Procurement and Property Managment.

It would save money, lead to staff reductions, streamline ordering, make state government more efficient, end redundant purchases, and make it easier to enforce procurement policies, he said in Administrative Order No. 304.

On July 17, 2023, with no fanfare, Dunleavy signed an administrative order saying never mind.

The new order revoked Administrative Order No. 304, declaring an end to statewide procurement consolidation.

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For the second straight year, Permanent Fund investment advisor John Skjervem denounced ESG and fossil-fuel divestment in the presentation prepared for the Alaska Permanent Fund trustees annual meeting. Skjervem is repeating many of the same points he made to the trustees a year ago.

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Far too much power to control Alaska’s most important financial institution is vested in one individual, the governor.

When the governor chooses trustees from a small circle of supporters, as Dunleavy does, the risk of concentrated power in the handling of tens of billions is far too great to be ignored.

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Alaska news organizations have still not reported on the bureaucratic machinations that led the Alaska Permanent Fund’s chief operating officer to quit his job without notice just as the fund announced plans to open a new office in Anchorage.

This story by the Alaska Beacon treats the decision to open an Anchorage office as normal state business, buried in two paragraphs at the bottom of this financial update.

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The Legislature was never going to call a special session to deal with a fiscal plan.

That’s because 40 members would have to agree to it and we don’t have a legislative supermajority on any contentious topic.

So it’s not because of the Legislature that there won’t be a special session, but because of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, the only single person with the ability to make something happen .

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What we need in a school board member is someone with sound judgment, a person grounded in reality who can accurately interpret what is going on around them.

We don’t have that with April Smith, the incumbent running for reelection against challenger Bobby Burgess.

She has a tendency to misinterpret what is going on around her, whipping up hysteria at every opportunity.

In a textbook case exposing Smith’s abysmal judgement a few days ago, she defamed longtime Fairbanks writer David James on Facebook, accusing him of being a criminal, which he is not.

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Sen. Dan Sullivan wants to remake the federal judiciary in Alaska in his own image.

He doesn’t want any of the Alaskans who applied months ago to reach the federal bench and wants to recruit people more to his liking.

A true test of character for the nine people who are taking part in his partisan stunt is whether they will now withdraw from the Dan Sullivan Council Charade. He is using all nine for political cover.

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The nine friendly people chosen by Sen. Dan Sullivan to serve on his so-called “Alaska Federal Judiciary Council” won’t speak with one voice. Some of them will even disagree with him on major issues.

But the alleged council might as well be a product of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping School of Law for all the credibility it starts off with, which is zero.

Whatever this group is, it doesn’t warrant a trumped-up name like “Alaska Federal Judiciary Council.” The group is to give advice to Sullivan on names of potential judges. Sullivan will be free to do whatever he wants with the advice.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy has increased the monthly payments he is making to Washington, D.C. publicist Mary Vought, under what started as a no-bid state contract at the height of the recall drive nearly four years ago. The total cost is nearing $185,000.

In August alone, Dunleavy paid Vought’s company $5,000 on Aug. 23 and $5,000 on Aug. 24, according to the state’s online checkbook. On July 17, she received $5,000.

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Unable to criticize his performance, the Republican party has decided to go after Tim Doran by claiming that six years of public service on the school board should disqualify him from serving three years more.

Doran is one of the best Fairbanks school board members of all time, an even-tempered leader with experience, knowledge and good judgement. He is a retired principal who has spent his career doing all he can to improve education. He is one of those rare individuals who knows how to get people of different points of view to work together.

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Sen. Dan Sullivan won’t stop blustering that Democrats and Republicans like Sen. Lisa Murkowski have to surrender to the whims of Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the guy who likes to be addressed as “Coach.”

True to style, Sullivan won’t use the right word, however, calling for “compromise” with
Tuberville, a former gym major who moved to Alabama to run for the U.S. Senate.

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The Anchorage Daily News has started to kick the tires on the Kinross ore hauling plan, asking at least some of the right questions about what’s legal and what’s fair in what looks like a “classic case of corporate welfare.”

The unanswered questions point to failures by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

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A spectacular section of the Alaska Railroad in the Healy Canyon near Denali National Park, where trains are limited to 15 mph, needs serious repairs.

“The area has a long history of slope stability problems in the form of deep-seated landslides, rapid slope movement, washouts, and rockfall issues, which all affect operations and safety in the Healy Canyon,” a 2022 report by Michael Baker International said.

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One of the biggest puzzles of the Trump administration was why there was no lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge during the years that Trump was in charge.

It was only after he lost the election in November 2020 that the Interior Department hurriedly threw a sale together for Jan. 6, 2021, a day that will be long remembered only for the riot in the Capitol, not for the ANWR lease sale flop.

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The Tetlin Native Corporation has posted a press release on its website making serious allegations about parties involved in the mineral lease that underlies the Kinross plan to truck ore to Fairbanks.

The many legal issues will be sorted out if and when the dispute over the mining lease ever goes to court.

As for the political and ethical issues, the court of public opinion will come into play.

One of the central issues, it seems to me, is whether the people of Tetlin were treated fairly in this matter from the start. There is reason to believe they were not, having entered negotiations with an experienced Texas promoter at a serious disadvantage.

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Enstar, a company owned by Canadian public pension investment funds, is trying to take over efforts to build a small diamater in-state natural gas pipeline that could require an Alaska state subsidy of $8 billion or more to keep Anchorage heating costs about the same.

Nat Herz of the Northern Journal has the story. Herz is doing a lot of good work on energy and politics. I suggest you read this one thoroughly.

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The oil tax for Cook Inlet is permanently capped at $1 a barrel. The natural gas tax for Cook Inlet is permanently capped at 18 cents per thousand cubic feet.

The miniscule state taxes are supposed to be an economic incentive to drill for more gas in Cook Inlet.

With the looming natural gas shortage and the prospect of importing natural gas to supply Alaska utilities, some Republican leaders say the obvious solution is to make the taxes more miniscule or eliminate them altogether.

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The department has ensnared itself in a bureaucratic knot, fully aware that Dunleavy wants to say “Yes” to anything and everything Kinross wants.

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The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation’s makeshift plan for a temporary new 1,200-square-foot office in Anchorage is what happens when bloated political egos get in the way of what should be the only priority of the trustees—overseeing the management of a $75 billion fund.

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The trustees, meeting this week in Juneau, need to explain to Alaskans exactly how and why they gave a policy directive to the staff—one that directly led to Chief Operating Officer Mike Barnhill quitting his job—a month after they met in public and declined to take that step.

I suspect that Gov. Mike Dunleavy inserted himself into the process and orchestrated events that led to the bizarre Permanent Fund press release on Aug. 10, the one that promised the fund will "open a satellite office in Anchorage as soon as possible to support the retention and recruitment of professional staff.”

The governor may have intervened on his own or at the request of one or more of the trustees who called him in for political muscle to demand instant action.

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