Lt. Gov. Meyer wants you to forget his part in blocking state fiscal plan

Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer took time out from guarding the state seal to have someone on the state payroll create a fairy tale about the Dunleavy campaign.

“Instead of submitting to the temptations of self-interest or willful delusion, Gov. Dunleavy successfully campaigned on the promise of taking Alaska off its unsustainable path of debt and default, to make the hard choices himself instead of hoping someone else would,” said the ghost writer.

The truth is that Dunleavy did nothing of the kind. His campaign was a delusion from start to finish, founded on claims that there would be painless cuts in the state budget, no new taxes and bigger PFDs. Meyer, skilled politician that he is, knows this.

The worst part of the Meyer piece is that the lieutenant governor fails to acknowledge his vital role in blocking a fiscal plan for all those years he served in the Legislature.

Meyer and Dunleavy were in key positions when they approved spending billions in reserves year after year, claiming they had a permanent fix in mind that would require no new taxes and that oil production would save us.

Meyer seems to have forgotten that it was a just a year ago that he endorsed a Senate plan that “covers essential government expenses, provides a historically average dividend of about $1,000 and allows Alaska Constitutional Budget Reserve to start growing again. No new taxes necessary.”

Two years ago, Meyer was arguing that deficits were not out of control.

"In the Senate, we like that little bit of deficit, whether it's $300 million or $500 million, it keeps the pressure on us to keep spending down," Meyer said about an income tax plan from Rep. Paul Seaton. "Under your income tax proposal, we'd be collecting approximately $300 million more than we need, and I think that's a concern of people too. Are we going to now all of a sudden go back to our old habits of spending more money?"

Meyer also claimed in 2017 that it made no sense to pay dividends and have an income tax.

“I think that’s the hardest for people to accept,” Meyer said. “It’s just the inefficiencies of giving money to people and then taking it back via the income tax.”

The “willful delusion” Meyer offers now should not be taken seriously.