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Last Chance to Save Your PFD in 2017!

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ACTION ALERT!!

Final budget vote this week,Thurs. 7/27. Last chance in 2017 to restore the PFD with public pressure. Legislators have made a deal on the Capital Budget so they will vote soon…they can restore the PFD to the full amount in the final vote.

Please contact your Senator and Representative by phone and email to let them know that you want the full PFD to be restored in this Capital Budget. If you are a registered voter you can send a message to all legislators at once at www.akleg.gov/poms. Call the LIO for information on contacting legislators if you need it at 269-0111.

If the full calculation for the PFD is not put into the Capital Budget, once again, the PFD will be reduced by $1,000 as it was last year. Ask your legislators to request full funding for the dividend according to the law that established the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend in “Alaska Statute 37.13.145. Disposition of Income”.

Visit www.pfdak.com to learn about the Permanent Fund and thank you for doing your part to defend the People’s money now and for the future. Tell your friends to join with you to help, too, there is strength in numbers.

Will Government’s Looting of Alaska’s PFD Be Stopped by the Rule of Law?

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Governor Jay Hammond, Permanent Fund founder, knew this time would come – the time when politicians would move to spend the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) without public consent. Hammond believed in the PFD as Alaskans’ right to share equally in the resource wealth saved in the Alaska Permanent Fund and as a way to protect the Fund. Ever since the start of the PFD in 1983 the dividend has been the politicians’ target for spending. Today, politicians are working to grab a large percentage of the people’s PFD. That is exactly what Hammond and other Alaskans warned against and opposed during past failed attempts.

Voters approved the Alaska Permanent Fund by Constitutional amendment in 1976 based on the foresighted proposal of leaders to save a portion of the oil revenues instead of blowing every dollar on government programs and needless projects. Together we saved a portion of the vast wealth generated by a non-renewable oil bonanza owned in common by the people for our future and for future generations.

The leaders who created the Fund wisely knew that protecting the Permanent Fund and stopping the political caste from looting the Fund was going to be difficult. That’s why they advanced the idea of creating the PFD. Establishment of the PFD was designed so that every Alaskan shares equally in the proceeds of the Permanent Fund. Hammond believed the PFD would insulate the Permanent Fund from plunder by future politicians.

Deceptive statements by some government and business leaders are confusing many Alaskans. They claim we need to hand over a large portion of our PFD to fill the gap from declining oil revenue or else Alaska will face financial catastrophe. I’m not buying this PFD grab and neither are many other savvy Alaskans. My Democrat friends tell me we have a revenue problem. My Republican friends insist our state has a spending problem. But these beliefs miss the main point. Alaska has a serious leadership problem after years of unsustainable budgets. This is a cash flow management problem not a full-blown fiscal crisis. What we have is a self-inflicted political crisis that select members of the political establishment are using to reduce your share of the PFD.

This “Owner State” we call home has ample sources of other income as well as areas where we can make additional targeted cuts. We have the means to pass a balanced and sustainable budget without slashing every Alaskan’s PFD. What’s missing now from our elected officials is the will to adopt reasonable measures that achieve this. Fights about taxes, cuts, and oil credits produced political gridlock that has led to a raid on PFD money as a convenient way to balance the budget.

Gov. Jay Hammond wouldn’t have put up with this grab of your funds and neither would have my father, Gov. Wally Hickel. And neither should we.

So how, exactly, did your PFD get chopped over $1,000 last year with another big reduction scheduled for this year?

Current law directs the trustees of the Permanent Fund Corporation to transfer Fund revenue into the Earnings Reserve Account for PFD distribution. These funds are never placed in the General Fund for government spending according to this law. The entire PFD process is automatically governed by statute; no further appropriation or action is required by the legislature or the Governor to make the full payment to every Alaskan.

The basic problem is that the Alaska Legislature, the Governor and the Permanent Fund Corporation all failed to follow the law for the PFD distribution process. The Legislature needlessly added language related to transfer of PFD funds into an appropriation bill. The Permanent Fund Corporation didn’t promptly transfer the necessary funds for disbursement of the PFD as required by law. Then the current Governor incorrectly vetoed the existing PFD transfer that has worked legally for the past 37 years.

Not surprisingly, the Governor’s actions were challenged in court. At the core of the PFD dispute is the law that requires payment of an equal dividend to every eligible Alaskan.

I believe in holding our public officials accountable. I believe every Alaskan eligible for a PFD should receive the full measure of their dividend according to the law. Any change in the PFD law should take place in an open and transparent way through the legislature not some sleight-of-hand process by an illegal veto.

At stake is more than the amount of the PFD. Are we a state that adheres to the rule of law? Or are we going to succumb to convenient measures enacted by short-sighted politicians without regard to our actual financial circumstances or the needs and rights of every Alaskan? The Supreme Court should require nothing less than adherence to the law requiring full dividend distribution to every Alaskan. Disconnect the PFD from the Fund by appropriation, veto, and short term political self-interest and Fund itself will be lost. The future of the Permanent Fund is in the Supreme Court’s hands.

For my part, I’m contacting my political representatives to tell them to follow the PFD distribution law. And I am encouraging all Alaskans to do the same. I expect a full PFD as the proper share of the wealth generated by our Permanent Fund for every Alaskan including my grandchildren. So should you.

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Battle for the Permanent Fund and PFD Heats up as New Special Session Called by Gov. Walker

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Alaskans are facing historic decisions on the Permanent Fund and PFD that affect every citizen in the state. The Legislature’s plans to restructure the Permanent Fund and PFD for government spending remain on the table into another Special Session. And, another decision on the PFD is on the way in the Alaska Supreme Court with the lawsuit challenging Gov. Walker’s PFD veto in 2016 scheduled for a hearing next week, June 20th in Anchorage at the Boney Courthouse.

The lawsuit was filed last September by Sen. Bill Wielechowski and former State Senators, Clem Tillion and Rick Halford against the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation and the State of Alaska. The case hinges on whether it’s legal for the Governor to veto a law that provides an automatic transfer of funds that go directly to Alaskans. If the veto challenge wins, the money cut from PFD in 2016 by the Governor’s veto will be returned to eligible Alaskans – $1032 per resident.

Besides the Governor’s veto, the PFD and Fund are also under threat from the Governor and Legislature’s restructure plans that have not been approved by a public vote. In 1999, an advisory vote was held when similar restructure plans were proposed by lawmakers. The voters rejected the restructure plan by 83%.

As owners of the Permanent Fund, Alaskans’ input and approval of changes to the Fund system is critical to protecting the Permanent Fund from government spending and mismanagement. Clem Tillion, PFD lawsuit plaintiff and former legislator, commented on this in a recent video interview. He said, “Many people who’ve moved to Alaska and received the dividend don’t realize they actually own the resource. We are a land grant state, we received 100 million acres and the People own it. The Fund is yours. If you allow it to be taken away by politicians who want to change the law, then you deserve to lose it. You should have to fight for what you have (if you are able to do so). And the fight is now. Do not let the legislators steal your dividend.”

In response to these attacks on the PFD, Alaskans are taking action with a Save the PFD Rally next week (Tues., June 20 from 11am-1pm) in front of the Boney Courthouse, 303 K. Street in Anchorage before the PFD lawsuit hearing at the Boney Courthouse (1:30pm, 5th floor). Join this family-friendly, non-partisan, rally to defend Alaskans’ shareholder rights as resource owners.

For more information on protecting the PFD and Fund to share with your neighbors, visit Permanent Fund Defenders’ website at www.pfdak.com and Facebook.

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Alaska’s Hunger Games: The Capitol’s War on the PFD

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If you want to know why Alaska’s budget is out of control, you have to shine a light on the indefensibly corrupt process that leads conservative legislators to sell their votes to Juneau even before they are sworn into office. Welcome to the Alaska Hunger Games.

Each year, Alaska’s districts send their representatives to the capital, and most of those legislators offer themselves in tribute to the Republican Majority Caucus. The cost is the same each year; writing a blank check pledging their district’s vote in favor of whatever budget gets cooked up in closed-door meetings of House and Senate Caucus Leadership. If you thought that the Open Meetings Act applied to all government organizations, think again. The legislature passed a law requiring itself to apply the Open Meetings Act to itself. That was in 1994. It’ll get around to it—someday.

Under the process that has held sway over the legislature for years, good people find themselves casting their vote for absolutely terrible things, and they do it even before they are sworn into office. The budget isn’t the only blank check that legislators have been expected to write in recent years. They are also asked to write a blank check for so-called “procedural votes”, votes that we are told aren’t supposed to matter. But they do matter!

In the last special session, Sen. Wielechowski called for a joint session to consider overriding the governor’s veto of the PFD, of education funding, of snowmobile trails, of oil tax credits, and other items. Majority leadership decided that they didn’t want to have a joint session. Unbelievably, every single Republican senator present voted against pursuing the special session. That was a “procedural vote”. What happens under this system if legislators instead cast their vote for the constituents they represent? Rep. Dahlstrom cast such a vote as an Eagle River legislator. In her case, the majority caucus proposed to spend funds invested in the permanent fund. After conducting a survey and finding that 80% of her constituents opposed spending any money from the permanent fund (yes, even from small side accounts that few even know exist), she voted against it.

For voting to represent the will of her conservative district, she was summarily ostracized by the Republican Caucus, staff she hired were let go, her membership in the caucus was revoked, and committees she had been working on were told that representation from her district was no longer needed. You see, in addition to writing a blank check on the budget and writing a blank check on whatever “procedural votes” caucus leadership puts forward, you must be willing to do still one more thing. In order to perpetuate the system, you must be willing to hack off another Republican legislator at the knees (politically speaking of course) when they break ranks and vote with their constituents, their conscience, and conservative principles over and against the caucus.

Most recently, and dramatically, the caucus collided with Rep. Reinbold, but it has also had notable collisions with many others over the years, including Sen. Ogan, Sen. Ward, Rep. Lynn, Rep. Kohring, Rep. Vezey, and of course Rep. Dahlstrom. In most all of these cases, it was the “Republican” Caucus demanding that its Republican legislators be “Less Republican!” And therein lies the problem with even calling it a “Republican Majority Caucus”. It isn’t, and the current House Majority Caucus doesn’t even include Republican in its title. Perhaps this explains why the caucus stood in the way of voting to override the governor’s veto of the PFD.

You see, Clive Thomas, former political science professor at the University of Alaska Southeast, had it right: “In Alaska, the party doesn’t matter, but the caucus does.” Let that sink in a minute. In Alaska, legislators have historically pledged their support to a caucus, instead of a political party. This is why Republican legislators did not fight to override the PFD, or even put their opponents on record supporting the raid on the PFD this year. This is why government spending wasn’t cut in Alaska this year. In the midst of the current budget crisis, government spending actually grew!!!

Through extravagant spending, the caucus—long ago—set itself on a collision course with the PFD. Now that we have arrived, that collision is unavoidable. While every man, woman and child in Alaska is getting a $1,300 haircut this year, the capitol is currently facing a lawsuit for improperly using taxes to build a man-made island along a causeway to a statue. The capitol has its priorities, and those priorities are not shared by those of us who live in the Mat-Su Valley. Perhaps that is why Alaskans have voted repeatedly to move the capitol, and our legislators, back home where they belong.

After all, what is the purpose of even having elections in the Mat-Su, when the truly important decisions (like the budget) will be made by people from Juneau and Anchorage, and your role as a legislator is simply to rubberstamp the outcome? I spent twelve years wearing the Army uniform, and never once did I have to demonstrate such blind obedience as our incumbent legislators have grown accustomed to, certainly not as a military officer. It is a corrupt and failed political arrangement, and if our Republican legislators had been men and women of courage they would have jettisoned it long before now.

When a caucus demands greater allegiance than a legislator’s own constituents, it has defeated the very purpose of representative government. Those who have spent nearly ten years supporting such an arrangement, as my opponent Rep. Keller has, have set aside the interests of the people they were elected to represent. As an elected representative, there is no excuse for that. And as a state it is abundantly clear that we cannot afford it.

Alaska doesn’t need a Hunger Games. It needs representatives who will transparently put the interests of their constituents above their own. To her credit, Rep. Reinbold has stood firm these past two years. I hope to see her still standing firm two years from now. And there will be others standing with her. I hope to be one of them, and other candidates I’ve spoken with have echoed the same. The consequences this year are deadly serious. Either the caucus system (with its blank checks, closed-door meetings and out of control budgets) meets its end, or we will no longer be able to call it the permanent fund. After all, once the government gets its hands on it there won’t be anything permanent about it.

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There Is Only One Way to Stop Attacks on the PFD

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On June 29th, we witnessed something unheard of in Alaska. For the first time in state history, a sitting governor asserted the power to unilaterally determine the value of the PFD, or whether he would even permit there to be a PFD at all. If he can get away with it, it is an absolute stroke of political brilliance. For those who say, “but wait, he is only changing the PFD from $2,200 to $1,000”, just think about this a moment. If the governor will now have the power to reduce the PFD to $1,000, why not $100, why not 50¢, why not $0? Politically speaking, the power that the governor has now asserted represents a monumental shift.

The next time the governor doesn’t get his way, or doesn’t feel like the people are sufficiently supportive of his policies (wanna buy a gasline anyone?), all he has to do is ask us if we want a PFD this year. That alone should be more than sufficient to get a flurry of calls to the legislature in support of whatever proposal of his is bogged down in the legislature. And many of those calls would be from those who can least afford to have their PFD slashed or taken away; from those on fixed incomes, from the villages, from those who are barely able to make ends meet as it is. Ah, but the governor would never actually do that, would he?

I think the question is whether he would even have to. In times past we spoke of having the oil companies over a barrel. Now it would be our turn. The thing about political power is that it rarely goes unused. Even without public threats or visible demonstrations, that power is still felt and will have a profound effect on political discourse going forward. And even if one governor decides not to use the full extent of his power, that says nothing about what will happen once a governor is elected (or reelected) when that power is already on the books.

But I have reason to believe that we will not need to wait long to see how this plays out. Just yesterday I, and every other legislator and candidate, noted the formal press release from the governor, in which he threatened to bring voters against any candidate who does not support “The Governor’s New Alaska Plan” or his “Permanent Fund Restructure Plan”. He will accept no answer but support for his plan(s), and he will use every bit of his power as governor to get it, even when doing so earns him ethics complaints for threatening legislative candidates on official stationery, paid for by the taxpayers.

Our elected representatives in the legislature now have a choice to make. It’s the same choice they make every time they go down to Juneau. Are they willing to see themselves as expendable for the sake of something greater than their political careers, or is getting re-elected the box in which they live and move and find their personal meaning?

As an Army officer, when I took soldiers into a combat zone, I knew that the mission was larger than any one of us. And while I offered prayers of thanks each time we returned to Alaska from an overseas deployment, it did not change the fact that our state and our nation would have carried on if one of us had fallen.

If one of us had been taken prisoner by the Taliban, it would have been unthinkable that the President would hand the keys to the city over to terrorists in exchange for a single soldier. To be expendable does not diminish the value of your life or service, it puts it up against the lives and families of those you are fighting to protect, and says that their lives and freedom are worth your sacrifice, if it comes to that.

Alaska State Law: The Facts This year’s PFD is expected to be in the neighborhood of $2,200. That is, if the State Dept. of Revenue follows state law as set forth in AS 43.23.025. The calculation of the PFD is set in statute, and is therefore determined by state law. If the Dept. of Revenue does not follow the law, each of us will rightly be able to say that we were robbed by our own government.

When it was created by the legislature, and signed into law by Gov. Hammond, the PFD was never intended to be included as a budget item, or contingent on passage of the state budget. Initially, state budgets reflected this truth and did not pretend, symbolically or otherwise, to reauthorize distribution of the PFD each year. This is because the PFD is not an appropriation from the General Fund. By law, it is paid from the Dividend Fund, over which the governor has no authority. Even the legislature does not have the ability to alter the PFD calculation without first approving the change in each legislative chamber and then securing the approval of the governor, following the same process required of every revision to state law.

What this means is that the Governor has not “cut” anything, except the law. And if he directs the Dept. of Revenue to ignore state law in distributing less than the full amount of the dividend in October, then he should be held to account for directing a state agency to violate state law. The full amount of the PFD is owed to every eligible Alaskan, with a date set in statute by which it is to be paid (according to AS 43.23.055(2) that date is December 31, 2016).

Again, state law does not simply permit the PFD to be distributed, at the discretion of the governor. AS 43.23.055(2) declares: “The department shall annually pay permanent fund dividends from the dividend fund”. And to obstruct timely payment of that amount is no less theft than spending it for some unauthorized purpose.

If you are like my family, your PFD is included in the family budget, just as it is a significant part of the budget for the many businesses throughout our state who target sales, promotions, or loans based on the timely distribution of the PFD. Would Americans sit by if Obama told the IRS not to issue tax refunds this year “because the government needed the money”? I think not.

Such an action would be rightly seen as government theft of personal property owed to its rightful owner. An IRS promise to include it with next year’s refund, does nothing for this year’s family or company budget, or the rent, mortgage, car insurance, and other expenses that still have to come out of that budget this year. People are always hurt when government fails in its obligations. And when you have debts to pay, as many Alaskans and small businesses do, not having the money to pay them can lead to terrible consequences.

And where is our legislature in all this? Have they followed the example of America’s founders and opposed “with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people?” No? According to the news, the question this week is whether they will even take a vote on whether to oppose the governor’s raid on the PFD. And why is that?

I believe it is because those who have been in the legislature for the last decade or more (and specifically, the Republican Majority Caucus), know that they have voted for each and every unsustainable budget that brought us to the place in which we find ourselves today. The governor is clearly wrong today, but a nearly equal share falls on those Republican legislators who have placed their political careers over voting against the very same unsustainable budgets that they now tell us they oppose.

In recent years, Rep. Reinbold has stood alone among her Republican colleagues in voting against budgets that were clearly unsustainable. For that vote, she was removed from the majority caucus and two of her staffers were laid off. Today, her colleagues clamor about protecting the PFD, the very same PFD that they put in jeopardy by going along with, and giving their support to, budgets that they knew were unsustainable—year, after year, after year.

In the situation in which we find ourselves today, there is only one way to protect the PFD from attack. That is to hold our governor accountable for his actions, and to hold our legislators accountable for theirs. And if you vote to send them back to Juneau for another term, do so knowing that past behavior is often an excellent predictor of future behavior—only next time we won’t just be talking about a $1,000 PFD. Before too long, that discussion will shift to the permanent fund itself.

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David Eastman is a firefighter in Wasilla, a former military police officer on JBER, and a candidate for the Alaska State House in District 10.

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.