Our better angels win

The Permanent Fund dividend program somehow tends to bring out our better angels every year.

I may be sticking my neck out to mention that while this year’s legislative session is still in its final throes, but it has proved to be the case time after time. As an old newspaperman, I find that surprising — to say the least.

At this writing. the final size of this year’s dividend checks is up in the air. But the odds are very long that the checks will be anything like the $3,000 that many of us have been hoping for.

Our governor and legislators are always tempted to go long and make the checks as large as they can possibly be. But the problem is that the state has many other responsibilities and we just can’t do all of them justice while siphoning off enough money for a maximum October check for each of our citizens.

My newsman’s cynicism makes me think that the checks will be the big ones even if some day we have to reimpose an income tax to pay them. That would be the ultimate in silliness and perhaps that is why it has never happened and never been seriously proposed, at least not in the public arena.

Things do happen in public decision-making that cause one to wonder whether this year we will go over the edge and write those too-big dividend checks. But somehow it never happens. Things balance out, our most important public priorities are met. And those better angels sound their victory horns.

This year Governor Mike Dunleavy raised the prospect of a full dividend check on the order of $3,000 for each of us. And at this writing that still is not off the table. But Dunleavy also made it clear that writing those big checks would require unacceptable cuts to things like education, transportation and the state’s other collective responsibilities.

Dunleavy even tested the water by proposing just such cuts, but our better angels screamed and the public collectively took those cuts off the table. We still might face painful reductions in some programs, but right now it looks like better sense will prevail and we will, in fact, meet those responsibilities somehow.

I realize I’m sticking my neck out by coming to such a conclusion with the powers that be still lingering near the government decision-making apparatus. But somehow, each year, those things generally work out.

What seems to happen is that proposals are made for unacceptable decisions like cutting off essential ferry service. Then the downside of such actions brings people out of their corners and into the arena. We are all driven by our consciences to one extent or another and such discussions result in setting things right.

Sometimes that requires revisiting decisions in subsequent sessions of our governing bodies.t But that is just part of the process. Correcting mistakes is an essential aspect of the democratic system. The injured parties must howl, the decision-makers must rethink their decisions and corrective action must be taken when the time is right.

This is not a perfect system, obviously, but fortunately our better angels (what one book describes as “positive attributes of human character”) generally seem to win out in the end.

When the Permanent Fund dividend program began in 1982, the cynic in me kept thinking that it would eventually become the making of dysfunctional government and low-grade leadership decisions.

But somehow our better angels have prevailed and there is no reason to think that won’t be the case for many years to come.