To steal the line from a country-western song of almost 30 years ago — “Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it” — Gov. Mike Dunleavy is sticking to his story that the Permanent Fund dividend is just about the most important thing in Alaska today.
So much so that not only does he want the PFD enshrined in the constitution, but he wants the formula for calculating the annual payment to residents hard-wired into the everlasting document. Even education, public health and safety don’t get that kind of star treatment.
The governor wants legislators to put before voters next year a constitutional amendment to guarantee that half of the annual draw on Permanent Fund earnings go to dividends and the other half to public services.
His 50-50 plan would generate a PFD of around $2,400 the first couple of years, which is about double the average of the past decade.
But what Dunleavy glosses over is that his bigger PFD would leave a billion-dollar-plus hole in the annual state budget for schools, health services, troopers, courts, state ferries, and everything else needed by 730,000 Alaskans.
It’s like when kids proudly tell their parents they got a gold star in class but neglect to say they stole it from another student.
To his credit, the governor acknowledged in last week’s announcement that the annual fight over the size of the dividend has immobilized politics in Alaska. The Legislature and governors have not followed the PFD formula in law the past five years because the state did not have the cash. Dunleavy won his job in 2018 by campaigning on bigger dividends, and now he wants to double down on an irresponsible political pledge by putting the dividend in the constitution.
“The time is now to make the tough decisions for Alaska’s future. Alaskans need to know their lawmakers, and governor, will follow the law or change it,” Dunleavy said last week. He is right, the Legislature needs to change the 1982 law for calculating the PFD. But he is wrong not to provide equally specific and honest proposals for covering the checks.
He says he wants to address the state budget deficit, which has existed for much of the past 30 years. He says he would be open to “anything and everything that helps solve the problem.” But he has proposed nothing specific. It’s as if he believes someone else is in charge of unpopular taxes while he is in charge of popular dividends. Is job sharing the governor’s office in the constitution?
The Alaska Constitution says “all persons have corresponding obligations to the people and to the state.” The governor has an obligation to tell Alaskans how he intends to pay for the larger dividends and all the public services he says he supports. Until then, his talk of a $2,400 PFD is no more than fool’s gold.
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