Tag Archives: alaska legislature

Keithley to spend big targeting big-spending lawmakers

Until now, with a few exceptions, most of this fall’s state legislative races have seemed pretty predictable. The Democrats might pick up a few seats, but the House will stay in Republican hands, and though there might be one or two new faces in the Senate, it’s been assumed that there wouldn’t be huge upsets or surprises.

Brad Keithley spending up to $200,000 on some races could shake things up.

Keithley a lawyer until recently with Perkins Coie and now a consultant, has tried, and to some extent succeeded, in elbowing his way into Alaska’s political class by preaching fiscal responsibility. Last winter, he was toying with a self-financed run for governor. His model was Ross Perot’s self-financed independent presidential run. Keithley opted out of the governors race, however. Continue reading →

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Incremental oil tax update

The draft of the House Finance Committee substitute on the oil tax bill emerged Thursday morning, and is likely to take up most of the air in the room of the committee meeting this afternoon and evening. In a nutshell, the bill generally strips the amendments proposed in House Resources and follows more closely what the Senate produced last month, which should make concurrence a relatively painless process. I’ll have more on this later this evening, but for now, below is a list of the main changes in the substitute:

1. The base tax rate has been raised from 33 percent to 35 percent.

2. For now, the small producer credit has been taken out of the bill.

3. A Competitive Review Board that was proposed by Sen. Lesil McGuire and killed in Resources is back in.

4. An accounting requirement called joint interest billing, which the producers lobbied hard for, was taken out.

5. There’s a $5 per-barrel credit for new oil produced and a 20 percent tax break, known as a gross revenue exclusion, for production of new oil. And there’s an additional 10 percent for new oil from fields outside the legacy fields which pay a higher royalty rate that those inside the legacy fields.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

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