Dunleavy tries political distancing, washing his hands of any responsibility on budget

The Alaska Permanent Fund opened the week by losing $2.1 billion Monday, a day on which oil prices tanked and the threat of the coronavirus added immeasurably to the economic and public health questions facing Alaskans.

On that same day, the out-of-touch Dunleavy administration lied about the state being able to afford giving away an additional $815 million from Permanent Fund earnings for a retroactive 2019 dividend.

The state can afford it, according to longtime state employee Mike Barnhill, now the deputy revenue commissioner assigned to spread bogus information about state finances and the Permanent Fund.

He didn’t connect the Dunleavy giveaway to the real world in an appearance before the House Finance Committee. He didn’t connect the Dunleavy giveaway to the reality of the state budget. He didn’t connect the Dunleavy giveaway to an attempt to buy votes and fight the recall.

Barnhill, who led the Dunleavy campaign a year ago to dismantle the University of Alaska with phony statistics, failed to tell legislators that the Dunleavy budget for the next fiscal year would exhaust all state reserves except the Permanent Fund.

He kept repeating “paradigm” as a magic word, as if that would obscure the snake oil. He failed to tell legislators that no responsible financial analyst would support the Dunleavy proposal.

He talked at length about the lagging five-year real return and intergenerational equity with a world-class assemblage of irrelevant claims.

“What fundamentally I’m doing here is presenting a new lens, if you will, for watching spending from the Permanent Fund,” Barnhill said. “It’s measuring the funds spent and comparing that to the real return earned. I think this is a discipline we’re going to need to engage in every year.”

The old lens works just fine. Math, if you will, is not a priority of the Dunleavy administration. The Legislature is not going to approve this plan, as most legislators recognize the scam.

Even before the collapse of oil prices, the drop in the stock market and the spread of the coronavirus, the state could not afford this extra $815 million for a retroactive dividend. Just as the state cannot afford the Dunleavy budget plan for $2 billion in 2020 dividends, no cuts to public services and no taxes or increased taxes.

The state’s financial situation has become much worse in the past week. The combination of these economic and health problems points to a calamity and there is no coherent response from the governor, who is using political distancing to avoid the responsibility of leadership.

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