Legal Commentary

Alaska governor's position among the most powerful and most challenging, in the U.S.

By Beldar

Given its source, today's article in the NYT entitled The Unusual Challenges Palin Faced in Alaska is remarkably balanced and informative. As PrestoPundit Greg Ransom notes, though, in his post linking the article,

Remember when the Democrat press wouldn't stop telling us about how Texas has a "weak Governor" system, when Bush was running for President? Well, don't expect them to talk much about the fact that Alaska has the most powerful governor in the country.

From the article itself:

That said, by other measures [than budgetary, given its current budget surpluses], Alaska is harder to govern than a smaller, more settled realm in the Lower 48. With vast distances, large numbers of indigenous peoples and a narrowly based extraction economy ? with a handful of giant multinational oil corporations dominating the game ? some economists say a country like Nigeria might be an apter comparison.

"Alaska really is a colonial place," said Stephen Haycox, a professor of history at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. "One third of the economic base is oil; another third is federal spending. The economy is extremely narrow and highly dependent. It?s not to say that Alaska is a beggar state, but it certainly is true that Alaska is dependent on decisions made outside it, and over which Alaskans don?t have great control."

Overlaid across all of that is a distinctly informal Alaskan style. At the annual governor?s picnic, usually held in July, the governor is expected to turn the brats and burgers on the grill ? something Ms. Palin has done with gusto ? with cabinet members in aprons rounding out the kitchen staff.

... [T]he State Constitution concentrates power in the governor?s office more thoroughly than in almost any other state ? a legacy of the late 1950s, historians say, when statehood and a simultaneous trend all over the country toward elevating executive authority coincided.

The NYT misses an important point, though: When exploding revenues lead to budget surpluses, that's when it's toughest to sustain vetoes that have stripped pork-barrel projects from the state budget ? yet that's exactly what Gov. Palin has done. And the NYT displays its reflexive liberal thinking again in this paragraph:

A debate is on now as to whether Ms. Palin?s policies will be wise for the state in the long run. Some economists have questioned, for example, whether the three-quarters of a billion dollars or so given to Alaskans this summer in the oil-bounty checks (a bill passed this summer with Democratic support in the Legislature), might have been better used in the state?s rainy-day fund.

An observer (or a thoroughly observer reporter) might have or responded to those "some economists" (or pointed out to his readers) that fiscal conservatives like Gov. Palin know better than to trust future legislatures and governors with that money. Sure enough, they'll decide that they know better what to do with the people's money than the people do. Alaska already has a permanent fund to which it's regularly contributing to hedge against the day when its fossil fuel resources are no longer filling state coffers, but Gov. Palin's Democratic opponent in the last election was already proposing dipping into it to fund current expenditures. Having instead continued making scheduled payments into the fund, fiscal conservatives like Gov. Palin would have no trouble deciding to return the people's money to the people, per capita, for them to save or invest as they choose.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on September 05, 2008 (boomark / email).