Dear Gov. Bill Walker,
The oil industry multinationals have been suckling the Alaska teat and filling their one percenters’ milk jugs for nearly a half a century ($40 billion in one-year profit for Exxon a few years back … that’s pretty gross!). Our state and its children deserve what can’t be given to them because of this economic dereliction. What the Senate passed digging into the Permanent Fund corpus Monday, and now this HB 247 inanity, will not only be robbing our future of an educated citizenry but will be depriving our economy of the strength and stimulus necessary to provide those one percenters something to capitalize on.
If government regulation is instrumental to spur innovation (and that can’t be denied, it is regulation that spurs any humanly-healthy innovation), regulation of sufficiently funded education, and destimulating through the flat taxing of our PFD’s, won’t be done with HB 247!
The flawed version of HB 247 that passed the Legislature this week will continue the enormously costly subsidy regime for oil and gas operations in Alaska. Although some legislators believe that heavily subsidizing global oil and gas operations will lead to statewide economic prosperity, I think this calculation plays a dangerous game with Alaska’s future.
John S. Sonin
Juneau