A lawsuit seeking to maintain full Permanent Fund dividends this year was filed Friday – and Governor Bill Walker blasted the arguments in the lawsuit.
Anchorage Democratic Senator Bill Wielechowski and two retired lawmakers – Clem Tillion and Rick Halford – filed the lawsuit. They want to reverse Walker’s veto of roughly $670 million in dividend funds. The veto cut the dividends in half, from a projection of more than $2,000 to about $1,000.
Walker said Wielechowski failed to work toward a solution. He noted the lawsuit was filed with eight weeks ahead of an election Wielechowski’s hopes to win.
“I’m disappointed in the lawsuit, there’s no question about that,” Walker said. “At a time when we all need to sort of be working in the same direction to address the fiscal gap — $4 billion dollar gap – I would hope we were all working in that same, you know, forward direction.”
Walker said the state can’t rely on rising oil prices to close a $4 billion fiscal gap.
“Alaska’s not been here before,” Walker said. “In prior times when we had downturns in the price of oil, the throughput in the oil pipeline was over two billion barrels a day. We’re under 500,000 barrels a day right now.”
Wielechowski said the state should eliminate oil and gas tax credits first. And he said the Legislature should pass other changes to close the fiscal gap.
“You know, (I’m) disappointed to see him taking the low road on this,” Wielechowski said. “But, you know, I understand he’s frustrated. We’re all frustrated. I can’t tell you how many times I advised him to take different courses of action.”
Walker said the lawsuit will stretch into next year, and it’s unlikely to be resolved before dividends are sent on October 6th.
Andrew Kitchenman is the state government and politics reporter for Alaska Public Media and KTOO in Juneau. Reach him at akitchenman@alaskapublic.org.
