What are those yahoos in Juneau up to now? By Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkin March 11, 2014
Like a good story, most legislative sessions have a narrative. Last session's narrative was simple and wholesome: the passage of a multi-billion dollar tax cut for oil companies. And by golly, we got the job done with SB 21, which passed the Senate 11-9, and fulfilled its unfortunate destiny by a vote of 27-12 on the floor of the House of Representatives at 2:07 a.m. in the wee hours of April 14, 2013. (I was among the dozen dissenters.) Fast forward to 2014. ConocoPhillips just reported $2.3 billion in annual profit from its Alaska operations. BP and ExxonMobil are each suffering in similar fashion. My bleeding heart is practically hemorrhaging with compassion. Meanwhile, having surrendered billions of dollars of Alaska's oil to BP, Conoco, and Exxon, the State of Alaska is contemplating the meaning of a $2.2 billion deficit. 2014: The Deficit Session So we're short $2.2 billion. What's the big deal anyway? It means we're going broke. We're sitting on $16 billion savings, so we're not broke yet. But we will be soon — around 2024, give or take a few years. What are we going to do? Choose your cliché: "tough choices"; "hard decisions"; yadda yadda yadda. What are the tough choices in real and specific terms? Within the next decade, the legislature needs to: • slash the state budget (by billions and billions) in a way that would make the Demon Barber of Fleet Street blush; • reclaim a fair share of the billions of dollars coming from our God-given oil resource on the North Slope; • dramatically increase oil production; • raid the $50 billion lying ever so innocently in the Permanent Fund and use the interest — or if we're incredibly short-sighted, the principal — to pay for government; • establish a statewide income and/or sales tax; • align the stars and (perhaps more difficult:) BP, Conoco, and Exxon and build the much ballyhooed $45 billion natural gas pipeline that will generate ~$2 billion in annual royalties and tax revenues; or • pick some combination of the above. The end of an era, Rep. Beth Kerttula (D-Juneau) resigns from the Alaska Legislature. Well-wishers, boxes of papers, and of course chocolate cake (pictured) mark her Friday 5 p.m. move-out from the Capitol. She leaves to accept a fellowship at Stanford where she will suffer from inhospitable weather and Rose Bowl heartbreak. Talk about a buzzkill, huh? It's a menu for the political masochist, although some of those choices are more palatable than others. Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins About: "Representative for rural Southeast Alaska, including the communities of Angoon, Pelican, Hoonah, Sitka, Haines, Kake, Port Alexander, Klawock, Craig, Hydaburg, Kasaan, Elfin Cove, Klukwan, and Metlakatla" Received March 07, 2014 - Published March 11, 2014 Viewpoints - Opinion Letters:
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