Alaska editorials

Here is a sampling of Alaska editorials:

May 22, 2017

Ketchikan Daily News: Moonlighting

Common sense is a prerequisite for serving in Alaska law enforcement.

Alaska likes to see it, and in most cases does. But, apparently, not in all cases. Or potentially not in all cases.

The Alaska Police Standards Council received word of police officers thinking about moonlighting with marijuana shops and cultivation facilities.

The council’s guidance was sought by its executive director.

This became an issue only because marijuana shops started opening in October after a November 2014 election in which voters passed an initiative legalizing commercial marijuana.

But the marijuana industry is off limits to Alaska’s law enforcement, according to the council that oversees police.

All marijuana conduct is incompatible with the law enforcement profession, the council has clarified. Alaska statute prohibits law enforcement from using, possessing, transporting and/or manufacturing marijuana.

Alaska officers also are expected to follow the law, and federal law regards marijuana as an illegal controlled substance.

When a new business opportunity opens up, it isn’t unusual for people to consider it as a way of making a living. Police officers, too, but if they’re serious about their current profession it seems unlikely they would seriously consider delving into the marijuana industry.

They are asked to deal too frequently with the consequences of drug abuse.

___

May 18, 2017

Peninsula Clarion: Lawmaker’s lack of compassion a cause for concern

Rep. David Eastman, a Republican from Wasilla, this week introduced a measure that would legally define abortion as murder.

In addition to criminalizing abortion, the measure, titled the Alaska Life at Conception Act, would forbid a woman from traveling outside of Alaska to obtain an abortion, remove the right to privacy for a woman seeking an abortion, and limit challenges to the measure should it become law, according to reporting from the Juneau Empire. The bill faces significant legal obstacles and, with little support in House, appears to be more a political statement than an attempt to pass meaningful legislation.

Rep. Eastman’s bill comes less than two weeks after his censure by the House of Representatives for remarks he made suggesting that women in rural communities would deliberately become pregnant for the “free trip” to Anchorage or Seattle to receive an abortion.

Rep. Eastman certainly isn’t the only lawmaker in Juneau to be staunchly opposed to abortion. Indeed, many people across Alaska would prefer to see the practice further restricted.

But our concern with Rep. Eastman’s words and actions has more to do with his apparent lack of compassion, understanding or empathy for the people he was elected to govern. Following his censure, Rep. Eastman apologized for his remarks, and said he would like to meet with people who were hurt by them.

Quite frankly, those are the conversations he should have had before drafting any legislation or proposing amendments on the topic - and certainly before making assumptions about the reasons for which a woman would seek an abortion.

Had Rep. Eastman had those conversations, perhaps he would have suggested any number of proactive steps the Legislature could take to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, such as allocating resources for more comprehensive education and more extensive public health services, including women’s health services. In some ways, Rep. Eastman misses his own point that women must travel to Anchorage or Seattle for medical procedures due to a lack of access in many places around the state.

What’s more, should abortion access be further restricted, state agencies need to be prepared for the additional demand for services - legislation for which never seems to accompany bills calling for more restrictions.

Rep. Eastman seems more interested in sparking outrage than in providing leadership. With the start of the special session - and its more focused agenda - controversial social issues are off the table for now. We hope that in the future, Rep. Eastman will do more to understand the challenges faced by people around Alaska - and to consider whether the legislation he proposes provides a solution or simply adds another burden to overcome.

___

May 18, 2017

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner:

Legislature in overtime again

For most of us, 121 days is a decent length of time. It’s about the length of an Interior summer, for instance, which most of us would like to see longer but which is nonetheless sufficient to tide us through the winter. It’s more days than President Donald Trump has been in office. But for Alaska’s Legislature, it hasn’t been enough time to come to a budget solution, despite two previous years to come to grips with the problem. The stances of the House and Senate, in fact, haven’t changed appreciably since about the first month of the session. And although Alaska’s multibillion-dollar budget deficit is a big, serious problem that requires substantial time and effort to fix, it’s hard to make the argument that all the time in the past 121 days has been productively spent.

The philosophical difference between the budget approaches of the House and Senate majority caucuses has been apparent for months. In the House, a Democrat-led bipartisan majority caucus aims to bring the budget close to balance and preserve current levels of state services. To do so, they have two revenue planks. One would institute a restructuring of the Alaska Permanent Fund’s earnings, diverting a portion to pay for state services and using the rest to pay out dividend checks to residents. The other would institute an income tax that would aim to defray costs of some of Alaska’s biggest state-funded services, such as K-12 education and the University of Alaska. A state ban on dedicated funds would prevent the tax receipts from being legally bound to a particular purpose, but it stands to reason that tax revenue would take pressure off other areas of the budget.

The Republican Senate majority caucus, by comparison, isn’t interested in revenue solutions beyond what would be generated by the permanent fund earnings restructuring plan. Its plan for the budget, promoted by caucus leaders such as Senate President Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, would spend considerably more from savings while pushing for substantial cuts in state spending, most of which would necessarily come from the big-ticket expenses the House plan would fund via a tax: K-12 education and the University of Alaska. There’s no question the planned cuts would be viewed negatively by many Alaskans. The education cuts in this year’s pending budget have been met with stiff opposition, as were proposed changes to university sports and aspects of the budget-conscious Strategic Pathways plan developed by UA President Jim Johnsen.

These positions have been public knowledge for months. Yet there has been no substantial progress toward agreement on a budget, with legislators in both chambers choosing to instead exchange salvos in public statements to persuade Alaskans that theirs is the more responsible plan. Real progress toward any kind of compromise or joint solution has been scant.

For three years running, the voter-approved 90-day session - which, admittedly, is a brief amount of time to deal with a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall - has been entirely ignored as the Legislature squeezes out every day of the 121-day allowance under the Alaska Constitution and more. As legislators once again prepare to go into overtime, they should work not only with urgency but also with the knowledge that the state cannot afford further delay in passing a fiscal plan that incorporates new revenue and charts a course to a balanced budget. The public should press them to act in the state’s best interest.