Drop the hysteria: AIDEA reform package has real potential
Here’s a whopper from the Resource Development Council: Carrying out the mission of AIDEA “depends on insulating AIDEA’s investment decisions from political interference and treating its assets as separate from general state funds.”
Here’s a whopper from Rep. Kevin McCabe: “AIDEA works because it is insulated from day-to-day politics.”
Hint to RDC and McCabe: AIDEA’s investment decisions have never been insulated from political interference or day-to-day politics.
McCabe is a member of the Legislature, who passes himself off as an expert on this. His false claim about board confirmation is all the evidence needed to show that we need real legislative oversight.
He also says the AIDEA “board is structured to focus on finance, feasibility, and public benefit,” which is not true. The board is structured to focus on what the governor wants. It includes two Dunleavy commissioners and five public members who are Dunleavy supporters.
McCabe should educate himself on the AIDEA board requirements.
AIDEA’s investment decisions are almost always driven by the politics of whoever is governor at the moment because the governor appoints the board with no legislative confirmation. AIDEA functions as a development bank controlled by whoever is governor at the moment.
Under Dunleavy, AIDEA is led by former Dunleavy emoployee Randy Ruaro. Dunleavy uses it as a means of doing things that are hard or impossible to get through the Legislature and might face public opposition and debate.
The agency has a massive slush fund that it can use in any way that Dunleavy’s allies on the board deem proper, bypassing the open budget process.
The Resource Development Council pretends this isn’t true. The RDC also says that requiring legislative approval for projects costing more than $10 million would be “legislative micromanagement,” according to the RDC letter by Connor Hajdukovich.
The right-wing hysteria over HB 124 is unwarranted. Here is Rep. Ashley Carrick’s sponsor statement.
The bill would require legislative confirmation for AIDEA board members, which is a good idea, as even McCabe recognizes.
The bill would allow legislative leaders to appoint two members of the board and require that one member of the board be from an environmental advocacy organization. It would require more public notice of AIDEA proposals and bring the agency under the public records act to allow more transparency.
It would also end the governor’s ability to remove board members he doesn’t aprove of before their terms expire. The board would be increased to nine members from seven.
Most of these ideas are good ones.
What the defenders of the status quo with AIDEA forget is that as long as the agency is tightly controlled by whoever is governor, the agency will reflect the governor’s ideas. So when a governor who has questions about resource develiopment projects gets into office that person has the ability to pull the plug.
Getting the Legislature more involved with setting policy for AIDEA would restore balance, regardless of who is governor at the time.
House State Affairs is taking public testimony on the bill today at 3:15 p.m.
Here is a presentation by Carrick that outlines her thinking.
I think there is room for debate on whether AIDEA’s assets should be capped at a certain amount. I also think the proposal that a board member must include a member of an environmental organization is not necessary.
The expansion of the board to include a broader variety of viewpoints is a good idea, as is the proposal to require legislative approval of large projects, which would stop the governor from using AIDEA as a means of bypassing the Legislature and the public process on capital projects.
The experience of recent years has shown that AIDEA excludes the public from its operations and many decisions voted on in public appear to have already been decided in a secret meeting, a so-called executive session.
AIDEA opposes the idea of legislative confirmation for its members, as the agency wants to be free of legislative oversight.
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