Former Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum ignored numerous safeguards and pressed ahead with his decision to try to put $225 million into long-term investments last year, neglecting to follow the advice of the chief investment officer of the Department of Revenue.

Legislative leaders and the CIO of the revenue department told Crum that all money in the Constitutional Budget Reserve should have remained in cash or in investments that could be turned into cash quickly, but Crum went ahead anyway with the $225 million plan three days before he quit to run for governor.

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The spike in world oil prices created by Donald Trump’s war with Iran is bringing grief to Fairbanks and Anchorage. In rural Alaska, however, the situation is a great deal worse. For many parts of rural Alaska, the survival of villages is on the line. What follows is a good overview of this complex situation by Gwen Holdmann of UAF and Ben Mallott of AFN.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s appointment to the Arctic Research Commission by President Donald Trump is clearly illegal.

Dunleavy, who may see this part-time gig as a way to keep his name in circulation in advance of a 2028 campaign against Sen. Lisa Murkowski, should admit he can’t serve on the commission and resign.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced three years ago that he had a goal of cutting electricity prices to 10 cents a kilowatt hour by 2030.

“Now some people will say that’s incredibly optimistic, we can’t do that, etc., etc., etc. But I’ve gotta remind you of a couple of things done in history here in the not-too-distant past. 1961, John F. Kennedy said we’re gonna go to the moon by the end of the decade,” Dunleavy told his energy task force, a group he wanted to tell him how to get to 10 cents.

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Here’s the easiest $1.4 million the Alaska Legislature can save in the next month.

Any agency that wants to give $1.4 million to former Dunleavy cheerleader Dave Stieren for a publicity campaign deserves to have $1.4 million removed from its budget.

The agency in question is the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, which decided to spend $1.4 million on publicity over the next two years without any discussion or debate.

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Sen. Dan Sullivan has claimed on many occasions in the past that, compared to Obama and Biden, Trump “has a history of actions that are significantly harder on Putin — and the other dictators around the world.”

Sullivan keeps making this claim even though Trump has shown over and over again that he sides with Putin in the war against Ukraine.

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who claimed a month ago that Donald Trump’s war in Iran is a “strategic master stroke,” is now saying that although gas prices are way up because of the master stroke, the good news is that there is a lot of high-priced fuel for people who can afford it.

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Linden Staciokas, who has died at 74, worked for years in her professional life to improve the lives of thousands of children in Alaska.

She also had a large following among gardeners and those who never got their hands dirty but liked to read all about it. She shared the mysteries of growing in columns that ostensibly dealt with the specifics of nurturing plants, but always included bits of her personality and humor in the mixture.

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There are many ways to look at the energy problems facing the Golden Valley Electric Association, an urgent matter because of the disappearance of relatively cheap gas-fired power from Southcentral via the Intertie. This column by Gwen Holdmann, reprinted from the Alaska Beacon, features her take on how and why GVEA is in this situation. We haven’t seen the leadership we need from the state to help find solutions. Telling everyone that the gas line is coming is not the answer.

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House Republicans marked the end of their latest recess by praising themselves for passing the One Big Beautiful Bill act last summer.

But they refused to call the One Big Beautiful Bill act by the name they gave it a year ago, when they thought the beautiful bill name was a brilliant public relations gimmick.

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