News-Miner misses the point with lazy broadside against all legislators

The Daily News-Miner opened its legislative whine catalog Friday in a blustery editorial.

One sign that whoever wrote the piece did so by relying on a faulty memory is the assertion that the 90-day session limit was “overwhelmingly mandated by voters in 2006. . .”

The vote was 50.83 percent in favor and 49.17 percent opposed, as underwhelming as the News-Miner’s tired bag of complaints.

The thrust of the piece is that legislators are lazy, eager to sit in Juneau and get paid for doing nothing.

What’s really lazy is the News-Miner editorial position.

There is no News-Miner position on the size of the dividend, the need for state taxes, the level of oil taxes, the level of state services, the future of education, the dividend amendment, the spending limit amendment, and much more.

There is a News-Miner position that unfairly brands legislators as freeloading losers.

A majority of legislators approved the budget and the dividend months ago, but were stymied by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and most House Republicans. Because of a flaw in our government structure, the state budget requires a supermajority to take key actions.

Majority rule is hard enough. Supermajority rule is nearly impossible. The miracle is that the dividend at least has been settled, despite the potential for paralysis.

Rather than recognize this complexity, the News-Miner is ready to write off the entire branch of government with recycled generalizations that go back decades and require no research or thought.

“Alaskans are beginning to wonder: Why, if there is not enough money for a full Permanent Fund dividend, are we paying these guys to sit in Juneau and do so little?” the newspaper asked itself.

The News-Miner neglected to give credit where credit is due—Reps. Steve Thompson, Bart LeBon, Grier Hopkins, Adam Wool and Sens. Click Bishop and Scott Kawasaki all voted for the $1,100 Permanent Fund dividend, a reasonable amount that does not inflate the deficit and is what the state can afford.

On the other hand, Sen. Rob Myers and Reps. Mike Cronk and Mike Prax wanted to spend billions more without any coherent financial plan, something that the News-Miner should have called out for attention.

Myers voted to spend $2.5 billion on dividends. When that failed, Myers voted to spend $1.5 billion on dividends, joined by Kawasaki. Kawasaki switched his vote and the Senate joined the House in approving $730 million for dividends this year. That final vote was the sensible move.

Kawasaki continues to say that he wants a bigger dividend and new taxes of up to $775 million a year. Kawasaki’s Senate allies on this are mostly Republicans who won’t go for higher taxes, so his argument on why a higher dividend is justified has a $775 million hole in it.

Myers, Cronk and Prax voted against the $1,100 dividend. Had they prevailed on that final vote, the dividend would be zero.

On an earlier vote, Cronk and Prax proposed spending more than $4.5 billion on dividends, to include money for previous years. This may have been the most irresponsible vote of the year.

The House defeated that ill-conceived plan 24-16 with Thompson, LeBon, Hopkins, and Wool opposing it.

While moaning about the fourth special session, due to start Oct. 1, the newspaper failed to mention that Gov. Mike Dunleavy is to blame for this needless gathering or call on him to drop it.

One person leads the executive branch, a position uniquely suited to lead the development of a fiscal plan or to abrogate the responsibility that comes with the job. Dunleavy has chosen the latter course.

Dunleavy has not said how he intends to pay for state government, what services he wants to cut, what taxes he will support and what the real long-term impact of paying inflated dividends will be on Alaska.

A governor who refuses to do those things creates an ideal environment for legislative stalemate of the sort we have in Alaska.

Dunleavy wants the entire focus to be on how much money he can distribute to Alaskans right now. He is joined in that deceptive tactic by a cadre of loyal Republican legislators that includes Myers, Cronk and Prax.

All of these issues are better topics for editorials than the lazy broadside in the paper Friday.

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