Brennan: Efforts to dump two leaders

With Democrats in the U.S. House trying to kick President Donald Trump out of office and a group of dissatisfied Alaskans trying to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy, change is in the air.

Hopefully both efforts will fail and the two men will be able to complete the terms for which they were elected and then face the voters at their next election. Trump will be on the ballot next Nov. 3 and Dunleavy’s next election will be Nov. 1, 2022.

The actions against Trump seem aimed at soiling his reputation enough and at a perfect time to dim his chances at re-election less than 11 months from now. The impeachment effort seems unlikely to succeed since the Republicans hold 53 Senate seats and the Democrats hold 47, including 45 who are members of the party and two who are independents but generally vote with the Democrats.

The vote may not go exactly along party lines since many senators, including Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, say they want to hear the testimony about President Trump’s threat to withhold U.S. support from Ukraine. Trump reportedly put a hold on the Ukrainian funding and asked the Ukrainians to investigate the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter on behalf of a Ukrainian gas company.

Hunter Biden was for a time a paid member of the Ukrainian gas company’s board of directors. And who knows, perhaps they chose him because of his expertise in selling gas to Ukrainian homeowners and business people. You never can tell. Perhaps his choice had nothing to do with his connection to the American White House and ability to influence decisions there. Yeah, right.

And then we have the effort in Alaska to recall Dunleavy, who really has shaken things up here since he took office at the beginning of last year. When Dunleavy began his term he obviously decided that the state budget needed to be reduced drastically to deal with the problem that revenues are down sharply from the levels of a few years ago — and unlikely to reach those levels anytime soon again.

Dunleavy decided to take a problematic approach to reducing the state budget, what columnist and my old colleague from The Voice of The Times Paul Jenkins refers to as “ripping off the Band Aid.” Dunleavy’s abrupt and painful budget cuts ruffled many feathers and caused some Alaskans to question his approach to governing.

Those who are leading the recall effort say Dunleavy broke the law by refusing to appoint a Palmer Superior Court judge within the required 45 days. He dented the law again by authorizing use of state funds for partisan purposes. And then he broke the law by improper use of a line-item veto and he cost the state $40 million in Medicaid funds by vetoing $18 million more than he told the Legislature he would veto.

Those leading the recall effort seem to be righteously indignant, but it seems to me the appropriate way to get rid of a governor, if that is your mission, is to run a strong candidate against him or her in the next election.

Shortening up the governor’s four-year term by putting a recall measure on the 2020 ballot seems unlikely to succeed. I think it would be an unfair way to deal with whatever the problem might be since Dunleavy has changed his approach and may yet convince the Alaska public that he was doing the right thing.

It is obvious that this state cannot continue with past budget levels without taxing ourselves to pay for the difference. That would mean either an income tax, sales taxes or both.

Those are almost certainly coming sometime in the years ahead, perhaps sooner than later, but the longer we can fend them off the better. And Dunleavy was doing the right thing by cutting the budget to better match revenues.

One can argue that a gentler and more gradual approach would have made the transition less painful, but perhaps that way of making the change would not have been successful.

If not we could be on the road to new taxes already.