Category Archives: news

What’s Parnell hiding in that secret Medicaid report?

In Sunday’s Anchorage Daily News, Rich Mauer wrote again about the report commissioned by the state on Medicaid expansion that Gov. Sean Parnell’s administration has for months refused to release. Their refusal is based on “deliberative process,” a catchall phrase, apparently, used by the administration to encompass anything that they’re thinking about.

Parnell hasn’t yet decided whether or not he’s going to accept federal money to expand Medicaid, a linchpin of ObamaCare. He claims to be looking out for the state’s best fiscal interest.

It should be noted here that since Parnell took over, the state’s share of the budget has increased by 55 percent and government employment has increased by 3.9 percent. A not unsubstantial part of that increase is due to rising health care costs, for which a large portion of state workers, including state legislators and those in the executive office, pay nothing in monthly premiums.

Like other Republican governors across the country, Parnell’s likely getting pressure from groups opposed to the law, including the anti-tax group, the Club For Growth, which heavily supported him during his 2008 run against Rep. Don Young.

However, As Mauer points out, there are other ways of getting information about the effects of Medicaid expansion. Through various sources, this is what is known, according to the ADN:

• 41,500 uninsured Alaska residents, including 15,700 Alaska Natives, would become eligible for Medicaid if the expansion is approved (ANTHC).

• Alaska’s statewide mortality rate would decline significantly — one prevented death per year for each 176 newly covered adults (ANTHC).

• About 3,500 new jobs would be created by 2017 through expansion (ANTHC).

• Between 2014 and 2020, the state would spend $90.7 million on expansion, while receiving $1.1 billion federal funds. Savings in other programs would offset the state contribution by at least $67.3 million. Over the first five years, the offsets would actually be greater than the expenditures on Medicaid (ANTHC).

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

New Alaska Railroad president takes over in troubled times

The new president of the Alaska Railroad Corp. is Bill O’Leary, who has been an executive with the railroad since 2001, most recently as chief operating officer. As I wrote last week, the railroad received around 200 applications for the position. It’s unclear how many were interviewed.

O’Leary is from Fairbanks and has an accounting degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He’s well liked and respected among the organization. However, his political mettle has yet to be tested and he’ll need some of that going into the next legislative session.

The railroad has seen better days. It’s had a $45 million drop in revenues in the past two years and is requesting that Gov. Sean Parnell include $40 million in his fiscal year 2015 budget submission for safety improvements to passenger service. The railroad is making the request to comply with federally mandated passenger safety upgrades. All told, the railroad will need an additional $69.7 million from 2015 to 2018 to complete the project.

“At stake is the continuation of Alaska Railroad passenger service,” railroad spokesman Tim Sullivan said.

The railroad received $19.1 from the legislature last year, an appropriation that was requested by Parnell in the final hours of the legislative session without time for committee review or public comment.

Roughly 400,000 people a year ride the railroad. About 60 percent of those passengers come to Alaska via cruise ships. It’s unclear how many Alaskans take the train. The direct financial impact to Alaska if the passenger service is disrupted is also unclear. The railroad is working on an impact study, Sullivan said.

A disruption would undoubtedly impact businesses and communities that rely on tourism.

The railroad and all its assets were transferred from federal to state hands in 1985 and were established as a state-owned corporation. Those assets now total about $989 million and include about 500 miles of railroad line and about 36,000 acres of land, about half of which are available for lease, and which accounted for roughly $10 million of the railroad’s revenue in 2012.

It does not pay state or corporate income taxes, nor any property taxes.

Its total revenue in 2012 was $190.4 million, including about $40 million of federal government grants.

According to the railroad’s annual report, operating revenues exceeded operating expenses by $3.8 million.

Unlike the Alaska Housing Finance Corp., another state corporation, the Legislature has no say over the railroad’s budget, and it doesn’t pay annual dividends to the state. The intent was for the corporation to use any profits to be self-sustaining. However since 1996, it has relied on federal grants to make ends meet, and state appropriations in the last few years for capital projects.

In the past, there have been discussions about giving the Legislature more control over the railroad’s budget through the Executive Budget Act, which the railroad has always strenuously opposed on grounds that they weren’t asking for or needed state appropriations

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Miller to Begich over delay in healthcare mandate: Welcome to ‘knucklehead’ club

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich announced a change of heart about the healthcare law Thursday. In a statement, he said that given the problems with the federal exchange, he now supports extending the deadline to sign up for healthcare ~~delaying the individual mandate~~ until the public can actually use the website intended to be a portal for the insurance.

“I have repeatedly said this law is not perfect and have proposed changes to make it work for Alaska families and small businesses,” he said in a written statement. “Given the recent website issues, I also support extending open enrollment season. I want to work with the administration to ensure that individuals are not unfairly penalized if technical issues with the website continue.”

Begich is among a handful of moderate Democrats in “red states” who called for the delay. Most of them are up for reelection in 2014 and their seats are considered vulnerable.

The online exchanges, or marketplaces, are part of the new healthcare law and were intended to be the place where consumers, who didn’t have it as part of their employment, could buy affordable insurance. The law requires most Americans to have coverage by Jan. 1 or face a fine.

But as the senators pointed out, it’s absurd to fine people who don’t purchase something that they can’t purchase because they can’t for technical reasons. The White House hasn’t ruled out a delay.

Joe Miller, a Republican who hopes to take Begich’s seat, used the opportunity to take a shot at Begich. In a release, Miller questioned if Begich was turning into one of the “knuckleheads” Begich has been criticizing in radio ads.

“Senator Begich called those who offered this compromise ‘a small band of knuckleheads’ who are ‘holding the country hostage over the health care law,’” Miller wrote. “I am happy to learn that Senator Begich has taken off his rose-colored glasses long enough to see one of the glaring flaws of Obamacare. Interestingly enough, the senator promised the people of Alaska that the healthcare exchange would function like buying airline tickets on Expedia. Well, let’s just say that was a little overly optimistic.”

Indeed, only a handful of Alaskans, at most, have been able to sign up for the health care exchange, which is widely considered a disaster.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Sullivan fundraiser proves he can raise money. Will he connect with Alaskans?

The food was lousy – greasy, boney, and ungainly – but the long awaited first fundraiser for former Alaska DNR Commissioner Dan Sullivan’s run for U.S. Senate, held on Wednesday night at Ruby’s in midtown Anchorage, was a success. According to the campaign, the evening’s spoils were more than 25 percent of what his most heavily financed primary challenger, Mead Treadwell, managed to raise in 90 days.

Which would be about $50,000.

Depending on who you ask, somewhere between 70 to 100 people showed and a good many were co-hosts, such as former GOP chair Randy Ruedrich, ENSTAR president Colleen Starring, head of Alaska Gasline Development Authority Dan Fauske, Northrim Bank’s Marc Langland, private equity guy Mark Kroloff, Jim Jansen who owns Lynden Transport, Cook Inlet Tribal Council head Gloria O’Neill and the always aggravating lobbyist Ashley Reed, with whom I’m in a relationship.

Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan was there and joked about walking away with the evening’s take to use in his own race for lieutenant governor. Whatever you think about the mayor, he can be funny.

Also in attendance: Acting DNR Commish Joe Balash, head of Alaska Housing Finance Corp. Bryan Butcher, Alaska state Sen. Charlie Huggins and his lovely wife Becky, Alaska GOP brain trust Frank McQueary, and Attorney General Mike Geraghty, among others.

A handful of staffers from other campaigns also showed to monitor the event. “Trackers,” they’re called in political circles, and they’re pretty easy to spot. Their presence proved what some in the room were saying: Sullivan’s the candidate that most scares both Mark Begich and Mead Treadwell.

DNR Dan’s obviously got the money behind him, as well as the Republican credentials. But this is his first run at political office, and it sometimes shows. His campaign slogan is “New Energy for Alaska,” (the same slogan Sarah Palin used in her 2006 governor’s race) and his stump speech needs some of that energy. As I wrote before, Sullivan is at heart a Marine, but he also has the illusive quality best known as charm, and there’s a fine line between charm and superciliousness.

Treadwell doesn’t have charm. He does, however, have an awkward, pulling gravitas that can be appealing. Alaskans will accept a lot from their politicians, as long as they feel that you’re talking to them and with them as one of them. Sullivan has some work to do in this area, some are saying.

What Treadwell doesn’t seem to have, however, is a smart campaign. On Wednesday night, a young man from out of state sat in the building’s hallway, outside of the restaurant, taking pictures of those who were leaving. He said his name was Austin and that he was working for Treadwell. Everyone inside knew he was there and what he was doing. It was a horribly demoralizing job.

Some of Sullivan’s staffers went outside the restaurant to offer him food. He didn’t accept, but he looked hungry, and grateful.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Why should the state help Alaskans get health insurance?

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports that the private company, Enroll Alaska, involved in helping people register for ObamaCare, has only enrolled three people so far because of the failure of the federal marketplace exchange. It had hoped to enroll as many as 2,000 by this point.

When asked at a legislative hearing if the state had plans to take care of “our own,” by creating its own marketplace, Bret Kolb, the director of the Alaska Division of Insurance said it was unlikely.

“We’re trying to figure out what our motivation would be,” he said.

Good question: Would could possibly be the motivation for the state and its workers, including the governor, to help the public get health insurance, when they get such good publicly funded health insurance themselves?

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

For the first time, majority of Americans want pot legalized

According to Gallup, for the first time, a clear majority of Americans (58 percent) say that marijuana should be legalized. When Gallup first asked the question in 1969, only 12 percent favored legalization. Click on the chart below, via Mother Jones, to see the change in attitudes:

Maximizing the resources for all: The State of Alaska is a landlord to a strip club

In the Kenai Peninsula, Good Time Charlies boasts the only strip club within 120 miles. In the summer, it has 55 entertainers who dance on stage or if you prefer, on your table, either topless or nude. They do this in a building in Soldotna, off the Sterling Highway, atop a parcel of land owned by the State of Alaska.

Surprisingly, the State of Alaska is the landlord to a strip joint.

The Alaska state Department of Transportation bought the .79 acre parcel of land in 1991, when it planned to widen the highway. It paid $249,000 for it then (now it’s only assessed at $123,400) and instead of kicking the property owner, Charles Cunningham, off of the land, it chose to lease it to him for $2490 a year.

That’s less than $210 a month.

DOT spokeswoman Jill Reese admitted that it was an “unusual situation,” but that DOT wanted to err on the side of fairness and not put someone out of business, no matter the type of business, before the land was needed.

Until 2007, the State of Rhode Island also owned a building that housed a strip club called Desire. Desire’s rent was $7,000 a month. Rhode Island DOT thought it was getting a good deal for tax payers. The public, however, didn’t think that it was healthy for the state to be benefiting from sin quite so blatantly. The state forced it to move out shortly after it made the news.

In Alaska that probably won’t happen anytime soon. We don’t have as much of a puritanical strain up here. And we’re an “owner” state that is constitutionally mandated to maximize the resources for all.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

GOP shutdown damages party and slows fundraising

We all know that the public mood can change on a dime. And Republicans better hope that it does, and fast. Polls are coming out nearly daily showing the abysmal public perception of the GOP in the aftermath of the government shutdown.

A Washington Post-ABC poll released on Monday shows that the party’s image has sunk to an all-time low. About 32 percent of the public says that they have a favorable image of the party, while 63 percent say they have an unfavorable view. Further, a CNN poll finds that 54 percent of the public say it’s a bad thing that the GOP controls the House, and only 38 percent say it’s a good thing.

The Post-ABC poll also finds that only 25 percent of the public has a favorable image of the tea party, which is the lowest rating ever in that poll.

Congressional Democrats aren’t doing that great either. More than six in 10 disapprove of how they handled budget negotiations, and the party’s unfavorable ratings is at a record high of 49 percent. However, all three federal Democratic congressional committees outraised their Republican counterparts in September.

According to The Hill, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $8.4 million, more than $3 million above the National Republican Campaign Committee’s $5.3 million.

The Democratic National Committee raised $7.4 million. The Republican National Committee raised $7.1 million.

And the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee outraised the National Republican Senatorial Committee by about $1 million, $4.6 million to $3.4 million.

As expected, the Alaska Democrats also did better on federal fundraising than the Republicans. In September, the party raised more than $41,000 while the Republicans raised $11,425. For the year to date, the Dems in Alaska have raised $348,418 to the Republicans $64,821.

This money doesn’t include money raised by either party for state candidates, only to help federal candidates. For the Dems, most, if not all, of that money will go to getting U.S. Sen. Mark Begich elected. The Republicans still have to choose their candidate. After the primary in August, the national committees will assess the viability of their candidate and transfer money accordingly.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Lisa Murkowski announces that she’s running in 2016

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski put to rest persistent rumors that she wasn’t going to run again in 2016, when her seat is up. “Yes, I’m running,” she said on Friday, where she was attending the first Alaska Women’s Summit at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage. “I guess I’m announcing on AmandaCoyne.com,” a fact which she and others in the room found amusing.

She did admit that she gets frustrated with her job, but then she thinks about all the work that went into her 2010 write-in campaign to make sure that Joe Miller didn’t take her seat.

“I didn’t work so darned hard to give it up,” she said.

The rumors were perpetuated in large part because she hasn’t been fundraising in the state. She said she wasn’t doing so to allow other Republicans who are running for office in 2014 to raise money. She said she’s doing her fundraising outside of the state.

Indeed, it’s tough for federal candidates to raise money in the state. The only state or territory that gave less so far in the federal 2014 cycle is Guam and Vermont.

Murkowski, a moderate, will likely face a challenger for her seat, and she’ll have to get through another grueling primary. And while she has gained a great deal of respect nationally for her role in ending the shutdown, many say that her stances, particularly on social issues such as gay rights, is going to make it very difficult for her to win the Republican primary.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Don Young is now the longest serving Republican in the House

The man who made his way to Fort Yukon in the state’s first year of statehood. The man who won his first House seat in 1973. The man who brandished a walrus penis on the House floor, who threatened to bite a political opponent “like a mink,” who stuffed a transportation bill “like a turkey,” who called Hispanics “wetbacks,” and who is the congressman for all Alaskans except for Sheila Toomey, is now the House’s longest serving Republican.

Florida Rep. Bill Young, who was elected in 1970, had that distinction. He died on Friday while being hospitalized for a back injury. He was 82 years old.

Alaska’s Don Young is 80 years old. He is running again for the 22nd time. He’ll likely win by a large margin, as he’s done so many times in the past.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Begich far outraises Treadwell in quest for U.S. Senate seat

Alaska U.S. Sen. Mark Begich raised $813,000 in the third quarter, which runs from July 1 to Sept. 30, according to a filing shared by his campaign staff. He has $2.4 million cash on hand. All told, Begich has raised $4.8 million this election cycle.

Begich does not have a Democratic challenger in the primary, so the real heat in the race belongs to the three Republicans who have so far filed to run against him: Joe Miller, Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, and Dan Sullivan. Miller did not respond to a request to share his file. Sullivan wasn’t running this past quarter and didn’t have to report.

Treadwell raised less than $200,000. He has about $155,000 on hand. In total, Treadwell, who announced his plans to run in June, has raised only $340,000.

His campaign called it “tremendous” but it has to be a disappointment. Candidates in other races who are challenging in what are considered vulnerable Democratic Senators have done much better.

In Arkansas for instance, Rep. Tom Cotton outraised Sen. Mark Pryor $1.07 million to Pryor’s $1.04 million.The Republican favorite in Louisiana, Rep. Bill Cassidy, raised. $700,000. In North Carolina, GOP favorite Thom Tillis raised $800,000.

As everyone knows, despite its geographic size, Alaska is a small state demographically, making fundraising more difficult. Also, there isn’t a contested Republican primary in these other states.

Even so, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee is watching closely, and it won’t throw the full weight of its support behind a candidate who can’t raise more than 25 percent of what his opponent raises.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Hey Sarah Palin: Your tea cups are cracking.

It was not a good week for many Republicans, particularly the roughly half of the party’s current House members who were elected in 2010 or 2012, and marched into Washington with tea cups balanced on their heads. And it certainly wasn’t a good week for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who helped get many of them elected.

In fact, it probably is on the list of her three worst weeks. The first being the week she quit her job. Second, when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, on Palin’s “crosshair” list, was shot. And then this week, a candidate in New Jersey that she had fought hard for, Steve Lonegan, lost his bid for Senate against Cory Booker, who, in Palin’s words, is a “celebrity stand in” for Obama. Whatever that means.

The “celebrity stand-in” thrashed Lonegan, 54.6 percent to 44.4 percent.

And then, of course, the end of the shutdown on Wednesday night. It was something that she and her tea party brethren fought hard against. They lost with nothing to show for it except for mammoth cracks in those tea cups.

People have been predicting Palin’s demise, and what she represents, since she took the national stage in 2008. I haven’t gone along with them until maybe this week, when the business community finally wised up to the fact that their once beloved fiscal conservative tea partiers not only don’t care about them, but seem intent on destroying them.

As the Washington Post put it, the shutdown exposed the fissures between powerful business interests and tea party lawmakers and activist groups like the Heritage Action and the Club for Growth

The Post quotes Dirk Van Dongen, longtime chief lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, as saying, “I don’t know of anybody in the business community who takes the side of the Taliban minority.”

For any lobbyist to speak so brazenly about the tea party is perhaps the best indicator yet that the movement is caving in on itself.

On her Facebook page, Palin promises that she isn’t done yet. “We’re going to shake things up in 2014. Rest well tonight, for soon we must focus on important House and Senate races,” she wrote. “Let’s start with Kentucky – which happens to be awfully close to South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi – from sea to shining sea we will not give up. We’ve only just begun to fight.”

According to the Washington Post, however, the lead trade associations are talking about helping candidates who will challenge the tea party congressmen, the ones that Palin helped elect.

On this one, I’ll bet on the business interests and trade associations, whom Palin and her ilk call “crony capitalists” and have vowed to destroy. I’ll bet on the backbone of America, which is really who those associations represent, the ones who have finally woken up and are ready to fight.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Alaska State Chamber of Commerce’s legislative priorities

The Alaska State Chamber of Commerce held their annual meeting this week in Fairbanks where they adopted their state and federal legislative priorities for 2014.

Their top three state legislative priorities are:

Opposition to the repeal of SB 21 – Alaska’s new oil tax law that will be on the 2014 primary election ballot
Medicaid expansion as provided under the Affordable Health Care Act
Comprehensive workers’ compensation reform.

At the federal level, the group’s top three priorities are:

Supporting oil and gas exploration and development in the Arctic
Opposing locking up more federal lands in Alaska
Supporting 8(a) preferences in federal contracting for Native corporations.

While the Chamber adopted dozens of other resolutions indicative of their support of specific issues, the organization extensively advocates only on behalf of their top priorities.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

If you were a House stenographer, you might become unhinged too

Just when you thought that it couldn’t get any crazier, there goes a stenographer for the U.S .House of Representatives. As the House was finishing up the vote Wednesday night to reopen the government, the woman began yelling about Freemasons and God and had to be dragged out by security.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12l2HRMDMJY

“The greatest deception here is that this is not one nation under God. It never was. It would not have been,” she yelled. “The Constitution would not have been written by Freemasons. They go against God. You cannot serve two masters. Praise be to God. Praise be to Jesus.”

It should be noted that Rep. Don Young, who knows a thing or two about spontaneous outbursts on the House floor, voted to end the shutdown.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

Democrats rally for Byron Mallott

In front of a crowd of about 80 people, Byron Mallott held a rally in downtown Anchorage on Wednesday to officially announce his entrance into the 2014 governor’s race. If he wins the Democratic primary, which is likely, he’ll be facing Republican Gov. Sean Parnell in the general, along with independent candidate Bill Walker.

He was introduced by Democratic activist Jane Angvik as well as Alaska state Sen. Hollis French, who also announced his run for lieutenant governor. French had planned on running for the top of the ticket, but he said that he’s “taking a step back for the team because Byron Mallott can win the election.”

Indeed, there was an air of optimism at the rally. It’s been a long time since the Democrats had such a strong candidate and certainly the first time in a long time that they have had one with such wide-ranging experience, a phrase that Angvik used repeatedly throughout her introduction.

Mallott is a young 70-year-old and brings a unique understanding and perspective to both government service and the private sector, as well as to the rural/urban divide that plagues Alaska. At 22 he was the mayor of Yakutat. He was commissioner of the Alaska Department of Community and Regional Affairs under Gov. Bill Egan. He served as mayor of Juneau before becoming the executive director of the Alaska Permanent Fund. He was the CEO of Sealaska Corp, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, and has served on the board of many corporations, including Alaska Airlines and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He’s clan leader of the KwaashKiKwaan clan of the Raven tribe of Yakutat. His wife Toni is a retired elementary school teacher.

While Mallott is accomplished, he also has a reputation of being volatile. But if that’s true, he kept that tendency at bay during his understated and humble announcement speech, the theme of which was about unifying the state.

Mallott said he wants a place where future generations can say that it “reached out to the least amongst us,” a state where its citizens worked to turn it into a “laboratory to those things that were unique to it,” a place that helped every child born into it.

After his speech, Mallott, in contrast to Dan Sullivan’s Senate announcement on Tuesday, spent some time with the media answering questions. Mallott’s nothing if not adept at wrapping answers in platitudes. However, when asked directly if he would personally vote to repeal SB 21, the controversial oil tax bill passed last legislative session, he said he would.

He pointed to the more than 50,000 Alaskans who signed the petition to repeal the bill as evidence that something isn’t right with the new tax law, and that if it weren’t rewritten, it would “color everything.”

“We still need to work for the best balance,” he said, noting how important oil is to the state’s economy and how he would work with the companies and the citizens to create that balance.

The repeal effort is likely to take center-stage in the upcoming race. The oil companies and companies which depend on oil industry revenue—including some Alaska Native Corporations– will likely spend millions of dollars to make sure that the repeal doesn’t happen, and will likely try to make sure that a candidate who supports the repeal isn’t elected.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com