Juneau Sen. Jesse Kiehl is one of the few legislators paying close attention to what is happening with the trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation.
“I’ve been very concerned with a real interest in secrecy. I think that decision about the second office appeared to have been taken between board meetings. There was open discussion of having an out-of-state meeting to avoid the Open Meetings Act,” Kiehl said Friday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the Permanent Fund.
Read MoreThe Alaska Permanent Fund trustees want state law changed to allow them to keep the names of applicants secret when hiring the executive director or the chief investment officer.
The proposal is part of the strategic plan now out for public comment. Comments are due by February 2.
Read MoreThe trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation want the Legislature to allow the corporation to borrow several billion dollars that it can invest with the hope of speeding up the growth of the $78 billion fund to $100 billion.
The idea to borrow 5 percent to 10 percent of the value of the fund is a key element in the proposed strategic plan that the fund has now made available for public comment.
Read MoreThe federal building in Fairbanks is named for the late Rep. Don Young, who was a federal employee for a half-century.
In addition to the Don Young Federal Office Building, the 2,598-foot volcanic peak in the Aleutians formerly known as Mt. Cerberus is now “Mount Young” in his honor. And the Jobs Corps Center in Palmer is the Don Young Job Corps Center, all names created through the federal law signed by President Biden called the “Don Young Recognition Act.”
Read MoreIn May 2022, the wife of Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor said she would seek $8,000 in public funds from the Family Partnership Charter School in Anchorage to subsidize two-thirds of their children’s tuition at a private school in Anchorage.
“Using public correspondence school allotments to pay most or all of a private educational institiution’s tuition is almost certainly unconstitutional,” wrote Deputy Attorney General Cori Mills, in an opinion dated July 22, 2022.
Read MoreIt appears that the Dunleavy and House GOP “plan” to stuff unexamined education items into a bill and pass it without public review has drawn enough opposition to slow it down, which is good. The attempt to rework the charter school model to take power away from local school boards is one of the unexamined elements.
Read MoreThe Dunleavy approach, now the Deena Bishop approach, is to take power away from local school boards and concentrate it in the hands of the state education bureaucracy and the state school board that is made up of Dunleavy supporters.
Read MoreUnder the proposed $25 billion corporate merger between the companies that own Fred Meyer and Safeway, 14 stores in Alaska would be sold to C&S Wholesale Grocers, a company that hasn’t been in the retail business in Alaska.
Kroger, which wants to acquire Albertsons, says it needs a merger to become larger and be better able to compete, so no one should expect that the 14 stores to be sold to the smaller company would be long for this world. Kroger has not identified the 14 stores.
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The state is dutiful about reporting certain expenses on its online checkbook, such as the $600,000 or so paid to Gorilla Fireworks LLC for right of way condemnation and relocation in the latter months of 2023.
But nearly every statehood defense industry contract is missing from the online database.
Read MoreGov. Mike Dunleavy and his legislative allies want to strip local school boards of a key power in deciding the future of charter schools.
They want to give the state Board of Education, controlled by Dunleavy supporters, the power to approve charter schools in local communities across Alaska.
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