If lawmakers need overtime, house them in UAS dorms
A suggestion to our legislators:
Attn: Senate President Meyers, House Speaker Chenault.
Since you don't seem to be able to accomplish your primary responsibility of passing a balanced state budget in the 90 days the voters have allowed for you to finish your task at hand, I would like to make a suggestion to help save about $10,000 per day.
Instead of spending $235-plus per day per legislator in per diem pay, I say we should cancel per diem pay for any time spent in special sessions. Instead we could contract with the University of Alaska Southeast to provide room and board in their dormitories, at the rate charged students. (There is adequate housing for all 60 legislators on campus at UAS.) That way no extra legislator pay need to be expended during the special session, the UAS campus would receive a small amount of funding for services provided, would increase utilization of UAS facilities, and would require legislators to spend all extra time in Juneau in one, confined living space with all the other members of the Legislature. Oh, and this would happen in a smoke-free campus environment, and legislators would be expected to abide by rules of decorum for staying as a guest on campus. Any extra expenditures for social events would be paid for by the members' own finances, and lobbyists and consultants would be prohibited from contacting legislators in the living facilities.
Should the Legislature need to hold a special session in Anchorage or Fairbanks, a similar contract could be arranged with those on-campus housing facilities. Legislators would get a more personal, first-hand experience with the condition of UA facilities, to help them in future considerations of funding for that part of our state budget.
— J. Kelly Blalock
Palmer
Alaska can't afford regime
Oil and gas production tax credits include the following:
1. Exploration tax credits
2. Credits used against tax liabilities
3. Refundable credits
4. Transferable credits
5. Net operating loss credits
6. Drilling credits
7. Small producer credits
All of these credits are costly to Alaskans and collectively may soon bypass education as the No. 1 single line-item expense to our state. Yet, "according to the 2015 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, Alaska's oil and gas reserves represent a full third of the reserves in the U.S." (April 18, commentary by Marleana Hall). So why are we giving so much away with so little transparency? Small producers may need some incentives, but Alaska cannot afford the present oil and gas regime. We will see which boardroom our legislators are representing, the state of Alaska or the oil industry.
— Laura Bonner
Anchorage
Like any tool, a firearm should be used properly
I don't know Jim Patras (Letters, April 28). Guns were and are created to kill. There is no argument there. Guns are useful. They are tools. The proper and successful use of said tool is dependent on the critical thinking skills and training of the user.
The article on April 22 was not about a counter argument or one point of view or about the weak defending themselves. It was about the proper use of the tool. The firearm. It is sad that you missed this point and wish to diagnose the article as another attempt by someone who doesn't embrace the Second Amendment. Very sad.
I embrace the Second Amendment. By doing so, I have, and so do you, the responsibility to use the tool in a manner not reckless or without thought.
"Do you know your neighbor?" has something deeper in meaning. It doesn't refer to the weak or an armed society being a polite society. It is about awareness of your surroundings and those you come into contact with. Specifically your neighbors, who you should have some ability to communicate with in a positive and productive manner rather than a destructive one. That requires use of another tool. The brain.
— Craig Walker
Anchorage
Don't enact barbaric bill
Why is it that my Legislature, in the midst of our state's financial straits, continues insisting on enactment of spurious — with often inflationary operational costs — bills like HB 156 contrarily outlawing education funding from unbudgeted benefaction? Pushing for passage of their private vindications, vilifying public endowments even as our culture (as it must) turns away from my state's nearly 50-year endowment?
These obstinate attacks on the welfare of my Alaska brethren has no place in a civilized society. The maker, or makers, of this illegitimate attempt to invoke Sharia-like laws through secular governance is not only treasonous but is an act of terrorism.
Please, Gov. Walker, I don't care if its inclusion is riding on any other bill critical to the financial health of Alaska, do not sign on to this barbarism!
— John S. Sonin
Juneau
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