Gov. Mike Dunleavy appears ready to veto the education bill approved by the Legislature. The Legislature should override the veto.
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Alaska Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor and other attorneys general were visiting Rome courtesy of the Attorney General Alliance, a bipartisan group funded mostly by corporate donations that don’t have to be disclosed. The donors include companies that some attorneys general are facing in court.
Read MoreFour Fairbanks assembly members said they have a conflict of interest because of their personal or business dealings with Savannah Fletcher. A fifth member, Barbara Haney, has a bigger conflict than anyone else on the assembly and not just because of her repeated attacks on Fletcher.
Haney is also in court, with a nuisance lawsuit challenging the legality of her $1 fine, which she paid. She claims what the assembly did last year to her was illegal.
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After trying to understand why Alaska politicians have suddenly abandoned Murphy’s Law, I have come to the conclusion that Dunleavy and Sullivan have put all of their trust in Trump.
Their new motto is “Whatever can go right, will,” forgetting the 50-year history of gas lines that were never built.
They now believe that Trump can do anything. Just ask him.
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If you guessed that the truth about air traffic control is more complicated than Sen. Dan Sullivan claims—blaming the entire problem on Joe Biden—you’re right.
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The deficit is growing because oil prices have collapsed at the dawn of the Golden Age of Alaska.
Dunleavy took note of the drop in a May 6 letter to the finance committee leaders in the Legislature, saying there will be “hundreds of millions dollars less coming into the state treasury.”
The state’s March update to the oil price guessbook has been cast aside.
“We should only be focused on the most critical items to preserve our reduced cash flows and liquid reserves in this lower price environment,” Dunleavy told legislators.
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Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who thinks he has all the answers, doesn’t trust locally elected school boards, mayors, borough assemblies, teachers, administrators and families. They are not under his control and they don’t share his opinions on some key policy matters.
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Sen. Bill Wielechowski said he was handed a copy of the draft bill directly by the governor in 2023.
He also said that Dunleavy had asked him to introduce bills to close the Hilcorp loophole, because Hilcorp would not provide its North Slope gas, and to reduce oil tax credits.
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More oil and gas production in Alaska will never happen unless prices are high enough to produce big profits, a contradiction buried at the heart of the energy dominance scam.
What is more noteworthy is that the GOP is trying to ban court challenges of any government action and allow oil companies to get expedited treatment if they pay for environmental reviews. The plan is a radical one that deserves thorough analysis in Alaska.
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Some Republicans and nearly all of the Senate Democrats are supporting closing the Hilcorp loophole, though it may stall because Democrat Matt Claman says his constituents don’t want higher oil taxes.
As I’ve written here before, that is not a good excuse on the easiest oil tax vote in the history of oil tax votes. The situation is only going to get worse. This is just one of the tax changes the state has to face.
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