It is time for an Alaska Marshall Plan to transform rural Alaska.
After World War II, the Marshall Plan invested billions to help rebuild a devastated European subcontinent. That visionary program jump-started an era of world prosperity. I do not liken rural Alaska to a war-torn Europe, but visionary, massive and strategic investment is required to prevent rural Alaska from sliding into irreversible decline.
It is time for an Alaska Marshall Plan to invest $1 billion dollars of Alaska Permanent Fund earnings in rural Alaska over the next five years. Alaska can afford it and will reap huge economic and social benefits.
More than 200 communities, spanning 95 percent of Alaska, must be freed from Third-World conditions and brought into the 21st century. Were it not for federal spending on critical infrastructure and programs, rural communities would be far more desperate today.
State spending levels even on basic constitutionally mandated services leave most rural institutions struggling and facing an uncertain future. Outnumbered rural elected officials must struggle for every dollar. Permanent Fund dividends help marginally and benefit urban Alaska hugely as most rural dollars are spent in urban Alaska.
Current high fuel costs only serve to highlight the real, ongoing crisis. In many rural Alaska communities, all costs are double or triple that of urban Alaska, while the Alaskans who pay those high costs have fewer employment options and lower income levels.
Bold, visionary decisions must be made soon or we may find rural Alaska at a tipping point from which it cannot recover. Out-migration is already a growing issue. The economic and human costs of doing only what we are doing now will be borne by all Alaskans for generations to come.
An Alaska Marshall Plan can work if begun with passionate vision and implemented with clear strategic goals, strict financial discipline and sophisticated oversight.
Done right, it will stimulate the development of services, technologies and skills exportable to worldwide markets. It will foster new discovery and intellectual capital in our university and scientific community. It will create incentive for profitable private-sector investment. It will provide government with the resources to do its job right. It will give support to philanthropy and nongovernment initiative. It will reward entrepreneurship. It will build a sustainable and vibrant rural Alaska able to meet its obligations and help build a rich Alaska future. An Alaska Marshall Plan will attract capital and ideas from around the world.
There is already success to build upon. The Alaska Federation of Natives, in partnership with the private sector, awards financial and technical support to the best rural entrepreneurial ideas in an annual competition. The Rasmuson Foundation continues to strengthen its rural philanthropy.
Tribal and rural nonprofit entities are incubators of new ideas and leadership. Native health organizations are second to none in the world. The rural private sector has much to teach. ANCSA corporation scholarships over the years have educated a new generation primed for the task. And many institutions in urban Alaska have vast experience with rural Alaska that can be focused and strengthened.
Alaska's oil wealth and its Permanent Fund are the envy of much of the world. Others should not envy our wealth, but respect and applaud how we use it to make a better Alaska. The Permanent Fund must be used wisely to leverage our financial power and create opportunity for all Alaskans that will make us a model for the rest of humanity.
An Alaska society with urban and rural Alaskans together nurturing and sharing this great land will cement Alaska's place as one of the world's great places. Make no mistake, if nothing more is done for rural Alaska than is now being considered all of Alaska will suffer both economically and as a society. It is time for the Alaska Marshall Plan.
Byron I. Mallott is a former president of the Alaska Federation of Natives and is currently a director of Sealaska Corp. in Juneau.
By BYRON MALLOTT