Thoughts on Alaska Oil & Gas

Next week (Thursday and Friday), Joe Perkins and I will co-chair a two-day conference on Investment in Alaska (formally known by its longer title as “A comprehensive two-day conference on investment opportunities in Oil & Gas Production and Mineral Mining in Alaska“).

The conference could not be any more timely. Continue reading →

A piece in the Alaska Dispatch Wednesday on PERS (the Public Employee Retirement System) and TRS (the Teacher Retirement System) caught my eye.  The piece seemed to disappear from the “front page” of the Dispatch relatively quickly, but is still available on the back pages.

One of the best recent debates about the state’s current fiscal situation and future occurred at the end of yesterday’s meeting of the House Task Force on Sustainable Education.   I was presenting on the issue, when Andrew Halcro, another member of the Task Force, had a question, that began in the first few sentences with “I don’t agree …”

And then, after awhile, Rep. Charisse Millett jumped in.  By the end all of the Task Force members (with one exception who had to depart early) had weighed in. Continue reading →

As some readers will recall, for some time I have been running a parallel blog — previously named “Observations and Updates” — at which I post shorter pieces reflecting on events as they occur.   The reason is that Continue reading →

Tomorrow (August 28) and Thursday are the first two meetings of the House Task Force on Sustainable Education, established this past legislature by House Resolution 8 and co-chaired by Rep. Lynn Gattis, Chair of the House Education Committee, and Rep. Tammie Wilson, Chair of the House Finance Committee Subcommittee on Education and Early Development.  Andrew Halcro and I are serving as representatives of the business community.

Tomorrow’s meeting starts at 2p; Thursday’s meeting starts at 9a.  The agenda is available Continue reading →

Earlier this week the Alaska Senate Majority was reporting from the Federal Overreach Summit, summarizing some of the key points made during the presentations. At one point during Senator Begich’s presentation they had this to say:

Begich: Federal debt = $46,000 per man, woman and child in US- That is truly irresponsible

It is not clear from the context whether the editorial observation of  “that is truly irresponsible” was the Senator’s or the Alaska Senate Majority’s, but for this purpose it really doesn’t matter. Likely, both agreed on the statement.

The interesting fact that was not added to either Senator Begich’s comment or the summary, however, is the size of Alaska state debt “per [Alaskan] man, woman and child.” Continue reading →