Dunleavy contradicts revenue commissioner's claim about supporting taxes

Revenue Commissioner Lucinda Mahoney was either lying to legislators or lied to by Gov. Mike Dunleavy when she said that Dunleavy would support taxes if approved by the Legislature.

“If the Legislature supports these measures, these are revenue measures that the governor would support as well,” Mahoney told legislators Tuesday.

According to Dunleavy, now officially a candidate for re-election, that’s not true.

Alaskans deserve to know which one of them was lying.

In an interview with Nat Herz of Alaska Public Media, Dunleavy contradicted Mahoney’s statement. He said he would veto tax increases unless the Legislature also opted to put two constitutional amendments on the ballot.

I recommend that everyone listen to this interview as it features Dunleavy ducking and dancing for all he is worth, trying to evade every difficult question. The condensed written summary doesn’t do justice to Dunleavy’s disingenuousness on everything from COVID and climate change to the $250,000 state-funded publicity drive that coincides with the start of his campaign.

Regarding the taxes that Mahoney claimed Dunleavy would support, if approved by legislators, he said he would not support them unless the Legislature also includes a spending limit and voter approval of taxes.

These are two of the constitutional amendments he has been hyping since the Dunleavy/Koch budget roadshow in early 2019.

In 1992, Colorado voters approved the so-called taxpayer bill of rights, a constitutional amendment requiring voter approval of new taxes or tax increases. Dunleavy wants to replicate this in Alaska with two proposed amendments aimed at shrinking government services and preventing new taxes.

As I wrote in 2019, the Dunleavuy/Koch flimflam is that the amendments would not reduce tax revenue because new investors would flock to Alaska as soon as government services are gutted, the economy would grow and everything would be great.

“You’re going to see investment flowing into Alaska like you’ve never seen before,” Dunleavy said.

The other amendment demanded by Dunleavy would put a limit on state spending. Whenever he mentions state spending, Dunleavy pretends that he is powerless to do anything about limiting it.

But Dunleavy could implement a state spending limit on his own with his veto pen, but he has refused to do that since the Arduin apocalypse nearly sent him home to Wasilla.

He was all-in on the veto path in early 2019, however, and one of his main supporters, Anchorage ad man and right-wing radio talker Mike Porcaro, promoted a stunt of getting people to mail red pens to Dunleavy to encourage him to veto as much as possible.

“Thank you to all of the Alaskans who have been sending me red pens to urge me to line-item veto excess spending,” Dunleavy said of the Porcaro stunt.

Porcaro is CEO of Porcaro Communications, the company that made ads and bought ads for the Dunleavy for Alaska shadow campaign in 2018, which was bankrolled early on by Francis Dunleavy and Bob Penney.

Jeff Landfield of the Alaska Landmine wrote in 2019 that Porcaro didn’t like Porcaro Communications being connected with the red pen campaign that Porcaro came up with on the Porcaro radio show.

Porcaro was on the radio not long ago declaring that Dunleavy is the “adult in the room” in Juneau.

The adult Dunleavy doesn’t forget his friends when he hands out state largesse.

Landfield now reports that the governor has just given no-bid state contracts to Porcaro and former Rep. Tom Anderson to provide $250,000 worth of publicity to promote the governor’s Permanent Fund dividend plan.

Dunleavy is now a candidate for re-election and the $250,000 ad campaign has become a clearer violation of state ethics law, as the money is going to a partisan purpose for candidate Dunleavy.

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