Alaska news organizations need to fact check Dunleavy's press releases

Gov. Mike Dunleavy doesn’t write the press releases that Alaska news organizations print under his name and cite him as the author.

The state’s newspapers have adopted the terrible habit of printing anything that comes from the governor’s office as an opinion column.

If they continue to hype ghostwritten columns from state employees, the newspapers should at least check the facts.

For instance, the latest screed from Dunleavyland portrays Dunleavy as the beleaguered BFF of the PCE.

But allowing him to claim to be the champion of the Power Cost Equalization endowment, ignores his long track record and multiple attempts to get rid of the endowment.

For the moment, Dunleavy’s ghostwriters are praising the PCE savings account because Dunleavy is trying to buy the vote of Sen. Lyman Hoffman with a scheme to put the electric subsidy payments into the Alaska Constitution along with the Permanent Fund dividend.

The PCE endowment contains $1.15 billion, an investment fund established with legislative appropriations that has grown over the years, in part as a political counterpart to the Railbelt Energy Fund that paid for projects from the Kenai Peninsula to Fairbanks.

Dunleavy has long seen the PCE account as money better spent elsewhere.

In 2016, for instance, Dunleavy said it could be reduced to cover the deficit.

“We are experiencing a $4 billion hole and there are a billion in this fund. Just a thought as to why wouldn’t we use this fund to at least backfill some of the deficit? I certainly understand the assistance it gives to many of our communities but I am just curious if there is a comment by anyone,” Dunleavy said on April 11, 2016.

A year later, Dunleavy advanced his plan to spend down the PCE endowment with a proposal to withdraw $300 million from the account. “Just to note that that withdrawal is from the endowment and does not curtail or negatively impact the service delivered under the PCE program,” Dunleavy said on Feb. 23, 2017.

In his understated manner, Sen. John Coghill said that spending one-third of the account on other things was a “huge chunk” that would create a problem going forward.

Dunleavy ramped up his opposition to the PCE endowment in 2019. Early that year, he proposed wiping out the endowment entirely.

Speaking for Dunleavy, temporary budget director Donna Arduin and sidekick Mike Barnhill said that getting rid of the $1 billion endowment was a key part of the Dunleavy budget.

“There seems to be a punitive action here for a program that’s years in the making and has been successful,” Sen. Donny Olson said. “Why would we be sweeping that money so that it can be used for other things besides what it was destined for?”

“With respect, however, Mr. Chair, this is not intended to be punitive in any way, shape, or form. We’re not attacking the program,” Barnhill said of the Dunleavy attack on the program.

He said Dunleavy proposed spending $32 million that year on electric subsidies, but wanted to end the endowment and spend the $1 billion elsewhere.

“We have to weigh the merits and the needs of the state. And that’s what we’re trying to do here, is return the state’s finances to the way it was intended by the framers in 1955. Not punitive. Going back to what was constitutionally intended,” Barnhill said of the punitive plan.

“However long it’s taken to save that $1.1 billion . . . you are proposing that we just put it in the general fund to spend however we want, whenever we want, until it’s gone?” Senate Finance Co-chair Natasha von Imhof asked Barnhill during the hearing.

“I am absolutely not suggesting that this money be frittered away. If anything, the Dunleavy administration is calling on the Legislature to be frugal and a very strict steward of its funds,” Barnhill said of the plan to fritter the money away.

The Legislature refused to eliminate the PCE endowment in 2019, rejecting a bill from Dunleavy, who had claimed that ending the endowment and others would mean a “more transparent annual budget analysis.

Blocked by the Legislature, Dunleavy eliminated the PCE endowment on his own, claiming he had to so do because the Republican minority in the House refused to vote for the “reverse sweep.” Arduin told legislators that Dunleavy wanted the endowment to remain empty.

Later that summer, the Legislature overturned the Dunleavy decision and brought the endowment back to life.

By the fall of 2019, Dunleavy was telling the Alaska Federation of Natives that he wanted to protect the endowment, never mentioning his attempts to get rid of it.

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