Some stuff in the legislature you just can’t make up. If you haven’t already read about it, I won’t recount what happened, because the professionals – Anchorage Daily News’s Rich Mauer and Alaska Public Radio’s Alexandra Gutierrez – have already done an excellent job.
JUNEAU – Today eight Democratic legislators filed legislation to protect the Permanent Fund Dividend by placing the current dividend formula in the Alaska Constitution. With GOP leaders pushing an oil giveaway that is likely to cost Alaskans upwards of $1 billion or more a year, future legislators are likely to start cutting the Dividend to fund state revenue. To protect against attempts to spend the Dividend in tight economic times, former Governor Jay Hammond proposed an initiative in 2002 that would have enshrined the Dividend in the Constitution, but Lt. Governor Loren Leman rejected it as not able to be done by initiative.
