Legislature canceled confirmation hearing on Porcaro

The Senate Resources Committee announced a confirmation hearing on right-wing talk show host Mike Porcaro for his fisheries job Wednesday, but it was canceled before the hearing.

I’m waiting to hear back from legislators on when the hearing will be rescheduled.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy gave Porcaro a $136,000 state job on the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission last year, though even Porcaro says he never applied for the job, he knows nothing about fish and there aren’t enough hours in the day for the state to get its money’s worth out of him.

“And the first question that people ask is ‘Well you don’t know anything about fish.’ Well, apparently that’s not what they were looking for, somebody who knows about fish,” Porcaro said last summer.

Porcaro, now in his mid 70s, is still running his business and his daily radio talk show on which he continually complains about government waste and the need to cut spending, without mentioning his full-time state job, a position that state audits said should have been eliminated years ago.

“The people of this town have got to stand up and say no, this is not what we want. We don’t want any more taxes. We pay more than enough,” Porcaro said before the recent local election.

He claims that Dave Donley a fellow state employee with a political job under Dunleavy, is the only member of the Anchorage School Board doing good work.

“That’s why we need some new school board members, so at least they’ll second his motions. I mean they treat him like he’s some sort of low-class, second-class citizen. He’s a member of the board just as they are,” said Porcaro.

“I think what we need is we need to get control of the school board. There’s no question in my mind. This must happen,” he said.

The Porcaro “we” did not get control of the school board during the Anchorage election. The candidates he told people to vote for lost.

Porcaro can be counted on to defend Dunleavy, sometimes a client of his business, at all times, as he recently did on the school funding battle with the Legislature.

“It seems to me that the governor wasn’t either getting through or they were ignoring him. And I thought, you know, you ignore a governor, especially in this state at your own peril. When he said in the paper, ‘I’m not rolling over like a rainbow trout,’ I thought, oh boy, I’ve never heard him say that before and he, he basically held his ground,” said Porcaro.

Here is what I wrote about Porcaro and his reluctance to publicize his state job in December:

Mike Porcaro, the Anchorage adman and talk show host, likes to claim that the Anchorage school board and assembly don’t understand economics.

He’s not talking about the economics of Porcaro getting a cushy $136,000 state fisheries job from Gov. Mike Dunleavy without applying, without knowing anything about fish and without moving to Juneau. The work should take less than 15 hours a week, a 2015 audit said.

No, Porcaro is talking about the lack of budget discipline he sees everywhere else in government.

He went on the radio Wednesday to pooh-pooh the pending $98 million deficit confronting Anchorage schools and ridicule this resolution approved by the board and the assembly.

It was clear that he had not read the resolution, which contains specifics on how the state has not increased the education formula to keep up with inflation since 2016.

The budget gap is such that 650 teachers and support staff will have to be laid off unless the Legislature acts by mid-February to increase school funding. This is a serious matter.

Rather than deal with facts, Porcaro pontificated, stringing words and imaginary inflation numbers together with complete confidence.

“I look at the school board and I say, well, guess what? Most people’s budgets are flat and they’re not keeping up with inflation. What cost you $72 this year, cost you $40 last year. And cost you a who lot less the year before. But I guess maybe that’s part of the equation they don’t understand. Most of us have to live on a budget,” he said.

“I at the end of the month have to make sure that my expenses don’t exceed my income. And if that happens, it’s a win. Now in order to do that it’s a dynamic situation. I have to monitor it and I have to cut things,” said Porcaro.

“I know everybody out there is on a budget and they have to do this. If you find that things are starting to get too expensive, you have to cut them out of your budget,” said Porcaro.

What Porcaro doesn’t mention when he boasts about his personal budget discipline and self-sufficiency as a model for others is how much state government is now subsidizing his lifestyle.

The subsidy is in the form of a state job that requires little work and should have been turned into a part-time job years ago, as recommended in this 2015 audit.

The 2015 audit said that the commissioners of the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission had to work less than 15 hours a week and shouldn’t be collecting benefits.

Commissioner Porcaro, who never stops attacking government waste, may have the lightest workload of any government employee in Alaska.

In addition to running his advertising business, radio show and collecting Social Security—which combined gave him a 2022 income of from $150,000 to $300,000—he become a fulltime salaried state bureaucrat this year.

Porcaro collects $5,513.25 every two weeks for the fisheries job bestowed upon him by a grateful governor.

Porcaro has found it pays to be a leader of the Dunleavy praise team on right-wing radio.

When Dunleavy quietly put Porcaro on the state payroll in August, the claim was made that Porcaro would only get paid for the hours he worked, even though it was a salaried full-time job. I think this was to try to appease those who would rightly ask how many full-time jobs can one 75-year-old man have?

“Porcaro’s new job would pay $136,000 a year if he works full time, but he may work less than that and will only be compensated for the hours he reports having worked, said Glenn Haight, CFEC’s other commissioner,” wrote Nat Herz of the Northern Journal, who first wrote about this.

Not to worry. Porcaro has been collecting his full state salary in addition to the full-time work he was doing before.

You won’t hear him complaining about the full-time commissioner’s job that should be a part-time commissioner’s job, at best, and how this is an outrageous government handout.

Porcaro admits that he knows nothing about fish and says he did not seek the job, but it was offered to him by the governor. He didn’t reveal his state job to his radio audience when it happened.

“And the first question that people ask is ‘Well you don’t know anything about fish.’ Well, apparently that’s not what they were looking for, somebody who knows about fish,” Porcaro said on his radio show after Herz broke the news.

“Now it doesn’t affect my radio show. It doesn’t affect my other business. I just need to make sure that when I do what I do I’m not impinging on state time, which I wouldn’t do anyway because it’s not right. If the state of Alaska is paying me to do something then they have free call on what I do, After I’m done, however, I have free call on what I do.”

The Legislature has a chance to trim the budget by refusing to confirm Porcaro next year and cutting the job to less than 15 hours a week with no benefits. All in the interest of budget discipline.

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