The House Finance Committee stripped the $300 million blank check from a bond bill Friday for the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.
The change, if it survives the rest of the legislative process, means AIDEA would have to come back at a future date with a specific plan on how it would like to use the $300 million.
The decision is a step toward establishing checks and balances with the state-owned development bank, which is controlled by the governor.
Read MoreThe haphazard handling of the Dunleavy administration response to the landmark court ruling on correspondence schools continued Friday with Gov. Mike Dunleavy reversing the position he had taken two days earlier.
“This is literally a disaster, potentially, an emergency because of its magnitude,” he told reporters Wednesday.
It is not literally a disaster. And it is not an emergency. It is a problem that can be solved. It’s hard to do that, however, when the governor and his attorney general are more interested in creating hysteria and getting people angry than in solving the problem.
Read MoreRadio talk show host and adman Mike Porcaro led the “red pen” campaign in 2019 to harass legislators who balked at Dunleavy’s plan for $1.6 billion in budget cuts that would slash every state and local government service.
Porcaro claimed the government could be smaller, with no income tax and no reduction in Permanent Fund Dividends. That was a complete fantasy, of course.
He now says it was just show business.
Read MoreThe Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority has refused to explain how it came up with the $300 million bond plan under review by the Legislature.
It has also refused to explain how it came up with another amendment—one that has yet to be officially added to a bill—that would also allow the corporation to borrow $100 million without bothering with legislative approval, up from the current $25 million.
Read MoreIn his confirmation hearing before the Senate Education Committee Monday, Bob Griffin recycled the misleading conclusions he draws about the quality of education in Alasksa based on the percentage of Alaska students who earn a score of 3 or higher on an Advanced Placement test compared to Florida.
Read MoreMatt Glover, 48, traveled more than 5,000 miles a year by bicycle, rising every morning at 4 a.m. and commuting winter and summer from North Pole to Fairbanks along the shoulder of the Richardson Highway. He worked as a locomotive engineer for the Alaska Railroad.
“He was very conscientious of being visible on his bike with reflective clothing and lights,” Arleen Glover, his mother, wrote to Alaska legislators. “But with all that, he wasn’t safe.”
Read MoreThe Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority wants approval to borrow $300 million without telling the Legislature or the public where the money would go. Trust us, says AIDEA.
The agency, run by Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s former chief of staff, Randy Ruaro, and a board comprised of Dunleavy employees and political supporters, is telling the Legislature to approve the $300 million and stop worrying. AIDEA will pick the right projects, AIDEA says.
Read MoreThe Alaska Permanent Fund is facing the most serious leadership crisis in its history, triggered by the behavior of trustee Gabrielle Rubenstein.
The chief investment officer of the fund, Marcus Frampton, took the extraordinary step in January to privately document what he believes are the serious conflicts of interest that Rubenstein has brought to the operation of the fund.
Read MoreBob Griffin, the Dunleavy point man on the state school board, has his Senate confirmation hearing Monday at 3:30 p.m. before the Senate Education Committee.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy nominated Griffin for a second five-year term on the state board. Griffin works as a pilot for Alaska Airlines and his volunteer job is as “senior education research fellow” for the right-wing Alaska Policy Forum, which propagates many of the same ideas as Dunleavy.
Read MoreA church school can’t exclude religious teaching from any part of its daily operations, so there is an inherent contradiction in claims that some courses have nothing to do with the values inherent in the religion.
But the lure of lucre is powerful, especially when the state makes public funds available, contrary to the clear constitutional mandate: “No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”
Read MoreSo here we have Arkansas lawyer and Christian nationalist Bob Ballinger claiming he knows that the late Vic Fischer would support a constitutional amendment to allow state funds for private and religious schools.
I can guarantee you that Ballinger, who never met Vic Fischer, doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Read More“I don’t have any experience whatsoever in commercial fishing. And as I looked at the statutes and as everyone else looked at the statutes, that’s not a requirement to do this job,” said Mike Porcaro.
“I think it’s actually a benefit, since I have no entangling alliances. I have no preconceived ideas. And I’m learning and believe me I’m learning every day, just as most people do, what’s going on. And I’ve got some excellent teachers,” he said during his Senate Resources Committee confirmation hearing Wednesday.
Read MoreBob Griffin, who describes himself as “kind of a numbers-driven guy,” always coats his opinions with a steady stream of percentages, rankings, jargon and raw numbers, speaking with the complete authority you would expect from any long-time Alaska Airlines 737 captain.
Griffin, a campaign supporter and close ally of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, has been nominated by the governor for a second five-year term on the state school board. He faces a Senate Education Committee confirmation hearing Monday. His appointment will be among the many decided at a joint session of the Legislature in the next few weeks.
Read MoreThe Senate Resources Committee has set a confirmation hearing for radio talk show host and adman Mike Porcaro Wednesday at 3:30 p.m.
Porcaro, who has no experience in fisheries, was granted a state job as a fisheries commissioner by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Porcaro, who is in his mid 70s, has said he did not ask for the job.
Porcaro has been ill and an earlier confirmation hearing was canceled in early April.
Read More“Bach's Prélude from Suite No. 2, amidst the melting permafrost on Lower Tanana Dene lands in Fairbanks, Alaska, where I was brought by Princess Daazhraii Johnson,” says Yo-Yo Ma, who traveled to Fairbanks last summer.
Read MoreThere is no doubt that Gov. Mike Dunleavy, state school board member Bob Griffin and others see the creation of statewide charter schools, which would act like correspondence schools, as a way to direct more public money into private schools.
Read MoreThe Alaska attorney general and his wife were involved in changing the policy of a former Anchorage charter school to pay for private school tuition in ways that haven’t been fully disclosed or examined.
Attorney general Tregarrick Taylor’s recusal on May 21, 2022 from the topic occurred many months after the Taylor lobbying campaign began. When Taylor recused himself, he created the impression that a column his wife had posted on May 16, 2022 was the first sign of her active engagement in pushing for public funds to be spent on private schools.
Read MorePerhaps the most significant change in the past two years is that that the Anchorage Family Partnership Charter School that his family planned to get $8,000 from no longer exists.
And public money from the Anchorage School District is no longer available to parents who have their kids enrolled fulltime in a private school and try to enroll in a public correspondence school as well.
Other districts still grant public funds to pay for tuition, however, for fulltime private school students who enroll as public school correspondence students at the same time.
Read MoreAlaska school districts did not call it a voucher system for private schools, but that’s what some of them have created, using a system that a state judge has declared unconstitutional.
Few of the districts have spelled out the working details so clearly as the CyberLynx Homeschool & Correspondence Program based in Nenana and largely state funded.
It had about 1,500 students statewide in 2022-2023, according to the Alaska Policy Forum, which promotes using state funds for private tuition.
Read MoreAttorney General Tregarrick Taylor reinserted himself into the debate over using public funds for private schools, almost two years after his wife announced plans for she and her husband to seek $8,000 in state funds to pay most of the cost of private school tuition for two of their children.
He says his conflict of interest no longer exists, hinting that it is because his family is not longer seeking public funds to pay for private school tuition in Anchorage.
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