The Alaska Permanent Fund Board of Trustees is set to meet July 24 in Fairbanks, a regular quarterly meeting at which decisions will be made and updates presented regarding the policy direction of this vital institution.

But there are only five members of the trustees at this point—two employees of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a former employee of Dunleavy’s, a contract employee of Dunleavy’s and Gabrielle Rubenstein, a political supporter of Dunleavy’s.
The chairman’s position has been vacant since July 1, when Ethan Schutt’s four-year term expired.

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It’s time for Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan to be candid with Alaskans about how their flawed political process helped elevate Josh Kindred to a lifetime seat on the federal bench.

They now admit he was the wrong man for the job. They don’t admit that their secrecy and lack of transparency is part of the problem.

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After Kindred’s forced resignation, Sullivan said he will continue to work with his personal judicial council “for appointment of federal judges who understand Alaska’s unique role in our federal system. This is crucially important for our state. Federal judges have lifetime tenure—their decisions will positively or negatively impact Alaskans for decades.”

Sullivan and Murkowski boosted Kindred into a lifetime job with little public review. Their public statements this week overflowed with regret about Kindred. They said they were outraged, etc.

That’s not even close to the response this case demands.

They should learn from this debacle and their part in it. They should make the selection of federal judges a more transparent process—which would include public hearings on potential nominees and an end to the secrecy of the Dan Sullivan Alaska Federal Judicial Council.

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I spent several days traveling and away from the blog.

I want to update you on some things.

In response to reader requests, I have changed the subject line in emails sent to everyone on my mailing list to reflect the topic of the day and not just the name of this blog.

It appears, however, that this change is in some cases directing my missives out of regular inboxes and into other categories, namely “promotions.” This has happened to some readers using gmail. Please check your spam folder to see if my emails have landed there.

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Ambler Metals LLC promotes itself as an “Alaskan company with offices in Anchorage and Fairbanks.”

It is an Alaska company in the sense that it has registered with the state of Alaska as a “Foreign Limited Liability Company,” which means it is not what anyone in Alaska would consider an Alaska company.

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Ethan Schutt’s term on the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation board of trustees, one of the most important positions in Alaska, expired Monday.

There’s been no word from Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s publicity office about whether he has reappointed Schutt or replaced him.

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“The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law,” wrote Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” she said.

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The most likely step now is a challenge of one or more of the school districts that are allowing public allotment money to be used to pay for private school tuition. The districts in Fairbanks, the Denali Borough and Mat-Su are among those allowing this to happen. The Alaska Supreme Court said it believes the Dunleavy administration argues that this practice is against the law.

Nothing in the Supreme Court ruling Friday can be read as an endorsement of spending public funds for private school tuition. In fact, the opposite is the case.

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The conflict of interest demonstrated by the action and inaction of the attorney general may have led to the indefensible claim by the attorney general—that an allegation of unconstitutional spending by school districts is none of his business.

The statute the state is trying to defend came under scrutiny after the attorney general’s family publicized its plan for tuition reimbursement. “Thanks to Dunleavy’s 2014 statute, private schools have been added to the list of allowable vendors for parents,” wrote Jodi Taylor, wife of the AG and a leader of the Alaska Policy Forum.

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Just one more blog post, for the moment, on the school funding appeal to be heard by the Alaska Supreme Court Thursday at 10 a.m. Gavel to Gavel plans to cover it live.

The Alaska Constitution prohibits using public funds for private or religious schools in Article VII, Section I.

But home school parents who intervened in the case—represented by the Institute for Justice in Texas and Virginia, and former Attorney General Craig Richards—claim they have a right to receive public funds to pay tuition at private schools.

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