It’s a good sign that Sen. Bert Stedman is planning to hold public hearings on former Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum’s ill-conceived attempt to take $225 million of public funds that might be needed soon and lock it up for years.
The public has not been given a clear picture of this irresponsible action.
Read MoreLongtime Alaska Attorney John W. Wood, 79, whose confirmation by the Legislature was in serious trouble, has resigned from the Alaska Judicial Council.
There were three major reasons he was likely to be rejected by the Legislature.
First, he was convicted in 1993 of failing to file his federal income taxes in 1987. On Feb. 10, 1995, the Alaska Supreme Court publicly censured Wood as a result of his conviction.
Read MoreFormer 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreGov. 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.
Read MoreGov. 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.
Read MoreHere’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.
Read MoreSen. 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.
Read MoreGov. 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.
Read MoreLinden 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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