Chief of Staff

It’s hard not to notice that Governor Murkowski’s Chief of Staff has quickly assumed one of the highest public profiles of any chief of staff in recent Alaskan political history. He’s been a dominant figure at press conferences and his opinion pieces, defending the Governor’s actions, have been published in newspapers from Fairbanks to Juneau.

It’s almost like Ed McMahon has stepped in front of Johnny Carson.

Curious about the traditional role of the chief of staff, I enquired with a few former Governors’ on their experience. One former Governor said, “The chief of staff is your inside person. They have enormous responsibility to keep all departments on mission”. So consequently, a chief of staff normally doesn’t have time to be the outside person.

Who is the outside person? It’s usually the Governor or Department Commissioners; they communicate the administrations vision to the public. “I was always the primary person responsible for advocating policies and answering questions”, said another former Governor.

However for the last six months, the inside person for Governor Murkowski has been performing more and more outside duties. But if the Governor continues to allow his inside person to be his outside person, he might want to verify the message that is being put out.

On June 11, the Governor’s chief of staff published a statewide opinion piece entitled “Governor living up to his promises”. In it he defends the administrations progress and revisits the Governor’s fiscal plan laid out during the campaign on October 14, 2002.
Nowhere in the entire opinion piece are there any financial details relating to a legitimate fiscal plan.

In it, he explains the administration strategy in deciding the withdrawal would be no more than $400 million dollars a year from our savings account. “$2 billion in the cbr when Governor Murkowski was elected. We figured it would take five years for natural resource development start providing revenues to the state. Thus we divided $2 billion by five years”.

But with public policy, the key is always asking more questions. How much revenue will be generated in five years? What happens if it takes longer than five years for revenues kick in? What if the price of oil drops and the cbr draw increases? What will happen to the economy if our savings account goes empty?

Unfortunately, the administration has no answers for most of these questions. It’s partially because the legislature passed one of the cornerstone tax credits in a brisk thirteen days. There was very little economic analysis actually completed; subsequently the only revenue projections are based on hope.

Last Sunday, the chief of staff was back in the press with a scathing letter to the editor accusing editorial writers of misrepresenting how Governor Murkowski pledged to balance the budget during the campaign.

“The editorial writers have created a straw man version of the 2002 campaign, claiming the governor promised no new taxes”. He then went on to close with “Stop insulting the voters intelligence. Alaskans would not have elected Governor Murkowski or anyone else based on the hokum straw man set out above”.

So what do you think? Did the Governor say no new taxes during the campaign or just no new income tax?

While the Governor’s chief of staff seems to remember the October 14th campaign propaganda, he seems to forget the October 16th gubernatorial debate sponsored by Commonwealth North.

At that memorable event, which featured the debate via transcontinental teleconference, candidate Murkowski was asked about a sales tax. “Now you talk about sales tax”, he answered. “No broad based taxes. I think it’s bad for the economy, bad for families and bad for the small communities that depend on it.”

Today, Alaskan communities both small and large are not only facing a statewide sales tax proposal but also the economic uncertainty of an additional $250 million dollars in cuts to state services.

I think we’ve heard enough spin from Ed Mc Mahon.

It’s time for Alaskans to hear clear specifics about the new plan, and this time we want to hear them directly from Johnny.