Dunleavy promises half of permanent fund take for dividends, half for government and up to half for PCE
After losing a lawsuit about his handling of the Power Cost Equalization endowment for rural Alaskans, Gov. Mike Dunleavy claimed he had welcomed the lawsuit and was pleased with the result.
But that wasn’t the biggest lie in his press release about the latest court defeat for his administration.
The biggest lie was his claim that Power Cost Equalization payments will be “protected” if the Legislature follows his proposal to put it in the Alaska Constitution, along with the Permanent Fund dividend.
Dunleavy has long been an opponent of the PCE endowment. The idea of putting it into the Constitution is simply an attempt to buy the vote of Sen. Lyman Hoffman in the Senate on putting the dividend in the Constitution, the real goal.
“The court did not address an important political challenge: at any point, the PCE fund can be raided by the legislature with a simple majority vote. That is why my proposed constitutional amendment that enshrines and protects the PCE endowment must pass this year,” Dunleavy’s press release claimed.
But the Dunleavy plan does not do that. All it would do is require that the Legislature appropriate some money for power cost equalization.
“The amount appropriated shall be the amount necessary to equalize the cost of power in the state, according to state law,” his proposed amendment says.
The key phrase is “according to state law,” which means that the Legislature sets the amount and can change it at any time.
The PCE does not belong in the Constitution, in my opinion, under any circumstances.
And it makes no sense to put the PCE endowment in the Permanent Fund. But remember, this is simply a poorly designed vote-buying scheme by Dunleavy. Hoffman and other rural legislators are not going to be fooled so easily.
The PCE endowment certainly does not belong in the Constitution under the false pretenses offered by Dunleavy. Had he been honest with rural Alaskans, he would have offered amendment language that excluded the words “according to state law” and specified some level of annual PCE payments.
But specifics are not in the amendment language of SJR 6 because Dunleavy and his right-wing allies in the Legislature don’t want to make any binding commitment on PCE subsidies. They just want to appear to make a commitment.
The Dunleavy amendment claims to put an upper limit on the size of the PCE subsidy, saying it may not exceed more than half of what the state takes out of the Permanent Fund in a year. Really? The annual amount could be up to $1.5 billion under Dunleavy math?
Future legislators are not about to agree that under the percent of market value plan, half would go to dividends and half would go to PCE.
But Dunleavy is pitching his amendment as one that would spend half of the percent of market value on dividends, up to half on PCE and half on government services. This is not the 50/50 plan. This is the 50/50/50 plan.
It’s like a new version of the Dunleavy fiscal fantasy. He’s giving it 150 percent.
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Dunleavy’s proposed constitutional amendment would spend half of the percent of market value on dividends and up to half on PCE. The third half would be spent on government services.