Dunleavy leads the field of pandering politicians, abandoning conservative handling of the Permanent Fund

Readers Mike Szymanski and Robert Carlson responded to a recent blog post about the lie that Alaskans are “owed” back Permanent Fund dividends with perceptive comments about what our governor and a minority of legislators are missing—Alaska’s future.

The governor and his supporters claim otherwise, but they are focused entirely on the next election, not on the next generation or those to follow. Anyone looking out for the long term has to realize that putting more money aside now, and resisting immediate gratification, is the only sensible choice.

If the Permanent Fund is allowed to grow to $100 billion or more, it would allow Alaskans to maintain a healthy level of state services and keep state taxes low. That is the conservative choice for Alaska. What Dunleavy and right-wing Republicans are promoting is reckless.

Szymanski, a former state legislator, introduced a bill in 1983 to end the dividend program and put all of the money into savings so that it would never be spent. The goal was to build up the principal so that the earnings would be larger for all time.

“It was introduced because I believed it would have allowed the fund to grow exponentially for future generations,” Szymanski wrote.

“You see, my belief was then and is today that we the people of Alaska were reaping tremendous benefits from the oil wealth in the form of no income tax, not paying for roads, schools or school construction, and all other governmental services. But I could see the day oil revenues would be drying up and all those things that we had become accustomed to getting for free would have to once again be paid for by future generations of Alaskans. Plus the cost of maintenance on all the infrastructure the state has built over the years was being passed onto future generations.”

“I guess the clock is still ticking and we will see if the PFD vs our state government will prevail into the future.”

In the decades ahead, Alaskans will wonder why more of the giant nonrenewable oil bonanza from the North Slope was not set aside. The choice right now is whether Alaskans can restrain their appetite.

Dunleavy and others claiming that $81 billion is an excellent reason to withdraw billions more in the years ahead are ignoring the lessons of history and abandoning the pretense of prudent management.

Robert Carlson wrote that “uncounted generations of unborn Alaskans who will look back at how a couple of generations looted Alaskans singular, non-renewable legacy resource, and curse us.”

The idea that the only direct benefit Alaskans have gained from oil came from the Permanent Fund dividend is a lie, endlessly repeated by people who don’t think or are unable to think about what they are saying.

“Aside from the nearly forty years of PFDs, the last two generations of Alaskans have gobbled up the lion's share of the dollars generated from our legacy oil, most of which has already been sent down the pipeline. Schools, roads, airports, courts, troopers, social service, ferries, environmental protection, and on and on. Much of it needed; much of it wasted. All without requiring a single dime from Alaskans in the form of a statewide tax,” Carlson wrote.

“But that was not enough, eh? No. Alaskans also demanded and received billions in PFD checks, merely for staying alive for each year. Billions that were stolen from future Alaskans, in the form of Permanent Fund investments and revenue that would have sustained those unborn Alaskans in fine fashion for decades or centuries to come.

“Indeed, a Fund whose revenues would sustain us now, had we not demanded PFDs as the quid pro quo in voting for politicians. Of which our governor is the grandest poster child.”

“I can't help but be reminded, as the politicians in Juneau twist in the wind, trying to find a way to pass a budget that won't get them fired, of John Greenleaf Whittier's famous lament: "For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.”

The Prudhoe Bay bonanza is not something that can be repeated.

Our governor and legislators need to stop focusing on the next election and direct more attention to a future in which they—and all of us—are a distant memory.

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