Category Archives: Published Commentaries

The following ran as a My Turn piece in both the online and print editions of the Juneau Empire under the headline “Time to complete Governor Hammond’s vision” (Tuesday, May 12, 2015), as a Community Perspective piece in both the online and print editions of the Fairbanks News-Miner under the same headline (Thursday, May 21, 2015), and as a Commentary in both the online (Friday, May 22, 2015) and print (Saturday, May 23, 2015) editions of the Alaska Dispatch News under the headline “It’s time to use Permanent Fund earnings for government services.”

Former Governor Jay Hammond said this when later describing the reasons he and others created the Permanent Fund:  “I wanted to transform oil wells pumping oil for a finite period into money wells pumping money for infinity.”  Once the money wells were pumping, “[e]ach year one-half of the account’s earnings would be dispersed among Alaska residents …. The other half of the earnings could be used for essential government services.”

The two-sentence constitutional provision establishing the Permanent Fund (Art. 9, Section 15) implements that vision.  The first sentence locks away the “the principal” of the Permanent Fund, creating the “money wells pumping money for infinity.”

The second sentence provides the vehicle for using the resulting “production,” by directing that “[a]ll income from the permanent fund shall be deposited in the general fund unless otherwise provided by law.” Four years after voters established the Permanent Fund the legislature solidified the direction, providing that that the income stream is to be used for three purposes:  to pay dividends, to protect the principal from inflation and to fund a reserve account, available when needed to pay for essential government services. Continue reading →

My appreciation to the Alaska Dispatch News for running the following op-ed piece in both its online and print editions (Tuesday, November 18, p. B4), and to the Fairbanks News-Miner for doing the same in both its online and print editions (Wednesday, November 26, p. A8). The piece ran under the headline “Governor-elect will have to cut deep to keep Alaska budget sustainable” (ADN online), “Walker must cut deep to make budget sustainable” (ADN print), and “State entering bleak budget times” (FNM online and print).

Sometimes the buzz created by election campaigns tends to mask what is going on in the “real world.” The most recent Alaska election cycle is a good example. While the Walker and Parnell campaigns debated through the fall about whether the state budget should be cut in the next year by 5 percent, 16 percent or something in between, in the real world state revenues have been plummeting to levels that make those numbers seem like artifacts of ancient history. Continue reading →

My appreciation to the Anchorage Daily News and Fairbanks News-Miner for running an op-ed piece I wrote.  The links to the online versions are  here (ADN) and here (News-Miner).   I titled the piece “The Legislature should rethink the Governor’s LNG proposal.”  The ADN ran it as “Governor’s plan the wrong way for the state to get a gas line.” 

BY BRAD KEITHLEY

As someone who long has argued in favor of state co-investment in the development of Alaska’s oil and gas resources, I was hopeful last fall when the state released the “Alaska North Slope LNG Royalty Study.”

With references to the need for “alignment” between the state and the industry and analyses of successful projects elsewhere in the world involving state participation, I believed that the Governor potentially was positioning Alaska to play a more active role in the development of its own resources, much in the same way as do some large landholders in the Lower 48 states and other governments that are resource owners.

The “Heads of Agreement” and related legislation (Senate Bill 138) that the Governor introduced at the start of the session, however, fall well short of the mark.  Instead of adopting global best practices taken from successful LNG projects, the Governor’s proposal is a confusing patchwork that is fraught with risk and even if it works perfectly, would not advance the goal of enabling the state to help drive increased activity where Alaska needs it most – in the upstream development of its oil and gas resources. Continue reading →