The Alaska Aerospace Corporation (AAC) has $4 million of unused funds left over from last year, and had legislators done their job and passed HB 256 – Amendment 7 on March 10, the money would have been put back into the state’s general funds to help pay for programs that are being cut (seniors, education, e.g).
The AAC keeps saying it wants to ‘privatize’ but in order to do so it wants the state to turn over all the assets — cash balances, reappropriated funds, contracts, accounts receivable, office leases, furniture, furnishings, equipment and supplies — to its ‘new’ company. If the state agrees to the transfer of all these assets, the AAC would allow the state to receive future revenues from the AAC’s ventures. Unbelievable! The AAC should be obligated and forced to pay all the dividends it owes and never paid the state under the original agreement 20 years ago. Why should the state hand over all assets to the AAC when it has not received any investment return? If AAC cannot privatize on its own without the state’s help, then it needs to seek out funds from private investors or else shut down its operations.
Futhermore, the AAC wants the governor’s administration to introduce legislation this session reappropriating $2.3 million of the FY 2013 medium-lift appropriation to fund all of its transitional expenses, i.e legal, financial, accounting, financial advisory and administrative services and any other necessary things for the AAC to go ‘private.’ I doubt the administration has helped other individuals set up their own companies using state funds.
Carolyn Heitman
Kodiak