I found it disturbing that two trustees, Craig Richards and Gabrielle Rubenstein, were quick to claim that the fund did not want to borrow money to make investments, dressing up their comments with gibberish.
Contrary to their claims, the strategic plan memo released by the corporation to explain the plan to the public said that the borrowed money would be used for investments. Perhaps they failed to read their own report.
Read MoreLargely ignoring the substance of the public comments they received on a proposed strategic plan, the six-member Permanent Fund board of trustees pushed ahead with a proposal promoting the idea of borrowing billions to make more billions.
They did scale back the size of the proposal, however.
Read MorePredictably, the Dunleavy administration is trying to direct blame everywhere except where it belongs for the state highway funding fiasco. It’s all damage control.
And the potential damage if the state cannot get the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan approved by the Federal Highway Administration by the end of March could be enormous.
The Dunleavy administration created this failure by not following specific guidelines or instructions provided by the federal agencies. There are numerous errors that should have been fixed months ago.
Read MoreThe federal government, which provides most of the construction money, rejected the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan for 2024-2027, which puts the road building season in Alaska and thousands of jobs at grave risk.
This is not a case of federal overreach. The blame for this rests entirely with the Dunleavy administration.
Read MoreBlogger Matt Buxton did a good job capturing the bizarre press conference Gov. Mike Dunleavy gave last week. The news stories that treated this event like a normal presentation did not convey just how weird and disjointed it was.
The press conference, unlike the news stories that presented a few topics as if they were dealt with in a rational way, was as random as the spinning images on a slot machine. This was Dunleavy behaving like a free-lance rapper, stringing words together.
Read More“As a matter of fact, our charter schools are actually doing better because of kids that aren’t white,” Dunleavy said. “That’s what the research says.”
That’s not what the research says. Even if it did, a competent governor would not be making the sweeping claims about charter schools that Dunleavy is based on a single small study.
Read MoreRead the public comments submitted so far and you will see skepticism and opposition regarding: the notion of borrowing billions so that billions more can be invested to produce billions more in income; the dream of “outperformance through the generation of alpha’; the idea that the corporation needs to keep the names of applicants for its top job secret; and the wish to open satellite offices in the Lower 48 or in foreign lands.
Read MoreThe Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority has become more aggressive about throwing public money at questionable enterprises. The agency needs stronger oversight and an approach to development more intelligent than the Dunleavy dictum of saying yes to everything and anything.
The Legislature can start by exerting its authority over the authority.
Read MoreWho needs a state law to infringe on constitutional rights when you have Gov. Mike Dunleavy willing to infringe to his heart’s content?
Dunleavy signed Administrative Order No. 352, which purports to enact what Vance calls the “Israel Anti-Discrimination Act.”
Rep. Sarah Vance responded on social media, “Those who bless Israel will be blessed!”
Read MoreThe Dunleavy administration is putting all road construction projects at risk with its intransigence and refusal to follow federal highway planning rules on a handful of projects.
The so-called final version of the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan should be rejected by the Federal Highway Administration.
I say that because the state has refused to remove projects from the plan that can’t legally be there because they were not approved and reviewed by local planning agencies in Fairbanks and Anchorage.
Read MoreWhen it comes to a discussion of cold weather in Fairbanks, the topic is never complete without recognizing the enduring contributions of the great Carl Benson, who ventured into the cold in the early 1960s in Fairbanks and began to unlock the secrets of ice fog.
Benson, 96, is still pursuing his scholarly studies, thanks to a good constitution and an unending sense of curiosity about the world around him. I can’t tell you how much I admire him.
Read MoreDunleavy, who won’t propose raising taxes, is looking at $1 billion deficits that would be covered in the next two years by spending most of the remaining contents of the Constitutional Budget Reserve on his watch.
After that, Dunleavy will be gone without having proposed any taxes or having tried to fix the state’s finances. And the Permanent Fund will be the only alternative to pay for deficits far into the future.
Read MoreThe Subway manager was invited to Juneau to serve as the embodiment of a real Alaskan who wants what Dunleavy is selling—big PFDs and great services. She wants safe roads, a safe community, affordable housing and affordable childcare.
The Dunleavy text could have been created by the state Office of Pandering to the Folks.
Read MoreThe Permanent Fund coroporation extended the period for public comment on the proposed strategic plan “due to popular demand.”
That’s a stretcher no doubt, but let’s not quibble. It’s a good move, instigated by trustee Jason Brune, who agreed it was sensible to keep getting comments from the public until just before the next meeting of the trustees, February 15. He and a couple of other trustees asked for the two-week extension.
Read MoreUPDATE: The comment deadline has been extended on the Permanent Fund’s strategic plan.
The Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. has not done a major promotional campaign seeking public comment on the proposed strategic plan drafted by the six trustees.
Comments on the plan opened Jan. 24 and are to close Friday at 5 p.m.
Here is the list of comments submitted as of Tuesday. Considering the important of this document and the lack of public involvement, the trustees should extend the deadline and make a real effort to get public comments from Alaskans.
Read More“It was the Republicans, I will remind you, that told the Democrats months ago that if you want to try to get your Ukraine funding, you're gonna have to take up the border issue. This is what we asked for,” she said. “This is what we asked Senator Lankford to negotiate. It's what he did. He did it in good faith. So let's take up what we asked for,” Sen. Lisa Murkowsi said, according to CNN reporter Manu Raju.
Read MoreIn his catalog of what the late wordsmith Don Young would have called “negatism,” Dunleavy forgot a few big ones:
No to bad speeches. No to dumb ideas. No to pandering politicians who claim every choice is a simple yeah or nay. And no to a governor who continues to promise giant dividends, while failing to deliver a fiscal plan to pay for giant dividends.
Read MoreJuneau Sen. Jesse Kiehl is one of the few legislators paying close attention to what is happening with the trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation.
“I’ve been very concerned with a real interest in secrecy. I think that decision about the second office appeared to have been taken between board meetings. There was open discussion of having an out-of-state meeting to avoid the Open Meetings Act,” Kiehl said Friday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the Permanent Fund.
Read MoreThe Alaska Permanent Fund trustees want state law changed to allow them to keep the names of applicants secret when hiring the executive director or the chief investment officer.
The proposal is part of the strategic plan now out for public comment. Comments are due by February 2.
Read MoreThe trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation want the Legislature to allow the corporation to borrow several billion dollars that it can invest with the hope of speeding up the growth of the $78 billion fund to $100 billion.
The idea to borrow 5 percent to 10 percent of the value of the fund is a key element in the proposed strategic plan that the fund has now made available for public comment.
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