Alaskans shouldn’t believe revisionist history from Walker

It smells like election season. Fundraisers are popping up around the state, talk radio is full of wannabe legislators and governors, and Bill Walker has been granted open access to the opinion pages of the Daily News.

Walker’s recent piece attacking Gov. Mike Dunleavy was filled with the type of misinformation and campaigning that has been his calling card for the past 10 years. It’s very clear: Bill Walker will say, write, and do anything to convince the voting public he is worth being sent back as governor.

The opinion piece by Walker was a stunning example of revised history to suit his needs. Walker made veiled accusations about the Permanent Fund Corporation, implying there was “possible political interference” when its chief executive was fired earlier this month.

I don’t know what happened at the Permanent Fund Corporation. But for Walker to imply the board was stacked in favor of doing the bidding of Gov. Mike Dunleavy is ridiculous. Walker failed to mention the fact that the current chair of the Permanent Fund board was his former law partner, former attorney general, and was appointed by him to the Permanent Fund’s board. Another board member appointed by Dunleavy was a public Walker supporter in 2014 and called for recalling Dunleavy in 2019. Does that sounds like a stacked board?

The irony of this whole Permanent Fund staffing issue is that the person at the center of it, Angela Rodell, was fired as Commissioner of Revenue by Walker when he became governor in 2014. When Rodell was considered for the position of leading the Permanent Fund a year later, Walker campaigned to the board to instead hire former lawmaker Brian Rogers. In 2015, Walker overhauled the state owned gas line corporation’s board and management, including highly respected CEO Dan Fauske. Political interference came naturally to Walker’s administration and still does.

What’s more, Walker set off a fight over the Permanent Fund dividend by, for the first time in state history, vetoing Alaskans annual checks. After a three-year battle to settle on rules for touching the Permanent Fund’s Earnings, the best Walker and the Legislature could do was set a spending limit from the fund, without answering the most important question: How much of that money should go to the people, and how much should be spent by the government?

Here we are six years later, and the dividend fight Walker started has paralyzed the political process in Juneau. Any attempts to solve the Permanent Fund problem are now met by lawmakers, some of who are campaign co-chairs for Walker, demanding the dividend be smaller so government programs get most of Alaskans’ collective resource wealth.

Walker cut public safety and trooper positions by more than almost any other governor in history, and championed the revolving-door crime bill called Senate Bill 91. His officials acted shocked when the inevitable jump in crime had Alaskans howling for change. It took Gov. Dunleavy’s leadership to repeal Walker’s catch-and-release bill to end the tide of crime, and to get trooper levels higher than before Walker’s devastating cuts.

One in five Alaskans today is on Medicaid, and it’s costing the state billions of state dollars. This happened in part because Walker, on his own and without legislative support, expanded Medicaid to include able-bodied men. Seniors on Medicare in Alaska today struggle to find a provider, but those under Walker’s Medicaid expansion population get to the front of the line to see a doctor.

What matters now more than ever is that Alaskans have information that is correct and relevant. The public deserves to know the record of the person who was once governor and is asking to run the state again.

I hope voters will be diligent about gathering good information, because if they are only getting their information from op-eds by the Walker campaign, they won’t just be uninformed, they will be grossly misinformed.

Carol Carman is a constitutionally conservative Christian, a lifelong Alaskan and lifelong Republican.

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