EDITOR'S COLUMN: Time to put your mouth where your money is

After all the bellyaching, all the cliché vows to belt-tighten-till-it-hurts, all the town halls sugar sprinkled with cheers to roll-up-our-sleeves-and-do-the-people’s-business, things have finally gotten real.

They’ve only gotten real because the House Majority had the chutzpah last week to introduce an income tax that would come directly out of each Alaskan’s PFD payout to help mitigate the state’s looming, yawning chasm of a financial crisis that $4 billion in singles couldn’t fill.

On its face, I like the idea of HB115, at least as a starting point. I especially like paying the income tax out of the PFD, which is kind of like paying the waitress for your drink at the blackjack table with poker chips. It’d be silly to pay her with cash because once you’ve converted your money to chips, it’s money you’ve got to treat as lost already, a bill you’ve already paid — house money, basically.

The PFD sum each year remains a mystery right up until payout time anyway for a reason. It’s so that you won’t view it as anything but a windfall. All you know before then is that you’re going to get some stack of chips to play with so enjoy it for however long it lasts.

But whatever your starting point on the issue of the dawn of taxation in Alaska — whether you view any taxation as downright unAlaskan, or whether you think taxes are merely the price we pay for civilization — you have to admit that nothing was going to get done until somebody took a serious and controversial position that would force a real conversation and real bargaining — a measure that would finally put the ball in play.

Before HB115, all we were getting from legislators were silly, go-nowhere plans like raising taxes on studded tires by 1,500 percent, or taxing the bejeezus out of oil companies, even as those companies can’t cap wells and lay off Slopers fast enough, despite rising oil prices.

HB115 does indeed put the ball in play, and forces the cut-our-way-out-of-this crowd to field the ball and respond in kind; to do more than just chatter from the dugout about particular excesses of state government.

On Friday, starting at 1:30 p.m., in-session legislators in Juneau will take statewide public testimony on the bill and you can participate via teleconference.

Rules are: 2 minutes per speaker, call in a good 15 minutes before the hearing, and when done giving testimony, hang-up immediately to allow the next caller to step up.

To get the phone number you’ll need to call in, contact Rep. Cathy Tilton, who represents District 12, the corridor between Butte and Chugiak at (907) 465-2199 or (907) 373-6298 and her staff will be glad to help get you set up.

Meanwhile, back here in the Valley, freshman representative from District 7, Colleen Sullivan-Leonard will be at her LIO office in Wasilla at 600 E. Railroad Avenue, #1, eager to visit with constituents and help them give their testimony remotely.

You can call her and her staff at (907) 373-6285 in Wasilla or (907) 465-4833 in Juneau.

In her invitation to participate, Sullivan-Leonard, a former Wasilla City Council member, wrote in opposition to HB115: “We have lost 90% of our revenue due to low oil prices. Instead of pushing new taxes we need to legislate a spending cap, continue to tighten our belts, cut waste (travel), trim non-essential and services not mandated by the Constitution.”

That all sounds fine and dandy, but her first sentence contradicts her second — there’s no way those cuts can come anywhere close to covering what’s been lost in oil revenue. What’s more, if you care one scintilla about things like child abuse, public health and public safety, there’s no way in good conscience you can cut the state budget a whole lot more than it’s already been cut.

It’s time for everyone to start thinking more broadly and more bigly.

If we just keep shouting ‘cut, cut, cut!’ at the ball lying fair on the infield grass, the taxman will just keep on rounding the bases until the plan we end up with is so severe it makes HB115’s 15 percent sound downright reasonable.

The taxman will win because the taxman is the only one actually playing the game.

The rest are just cranks.

It’s what happened after Gov. Walker’s vetoes of everything including the PFD. They were widely and wildly unpopular, but without an alternative plan, all the opposition did was boo and hiss and threaten lawsuits and recalls.

Wonder of wonders, Walker’s cuts stood and if they stand much longer, they’ll be permanent.

Field the ball, Alaskans.

Field the ball and make a play.