Publisher's Notebook: Our Governor of the Valley

In the summer of 2016, then-Frontiersman editor Matt Hickman and I were summoned to meet then-State Senator, now Governor-elect Mike Dunleavy at his office. Dunleavy brought us in to give us — his hometown newspaper — a heads-up on a major announcement he was to make the next day. He had crafted a bill that would pay back the remaining Permanent Fund Dividend dollars due to the qualifying people of Alaska, the funds Gov. Bill Walker held back from paying the full amount. Hickman and I walked out of Dunleavy’s office convinced of two things. First, the bill would never grow legs (it didn’t), and second, Dunleavy was going to be a candidate for governor in the next election.

We were both newcomers to the state, but you didn’t have to be an Alaska political insider to draw those two conclusions. The next day Dunleavy, at a press conference in a Fred Meyer parking lot in Anchorage, announced his bill. From then to now, Dunleavy calculated every move that culminated, ultimately into a successful bid for governor.

So now what? How significant is this for the Valley? The Friday before the election the newly-elected governor granted an interview to the Frontiersman editorial team.

The Governor’s office and the Mat-Su Delegation

It’s no secret that the Mat-Su delegation has felt a disconnect with the current administration. For members of the House, that frustration is compounded by the fact they have been in the minority in their own body. I vividly remember a town hall at the Mat-Su Resort in which Rep. Cathy Tilton and Rep. David Eastman both declared it an almost impossible situation to get anything done. In an interview with the Frontiersman editorial board, Dunleavy acknowledged the difficulty he had as a state senator working with Walker’s administration. He believes the relationship will be different.

“I know these guys, first of all — I’m from the Valley; I know these people on a personal level,” Dunleavy said. “There’s not a lot of relationship-building that has to occur; it’s already there. I understand the issues in the Valley.”

Infrastructure in the valley as a priority

“I travel these roads,” Dunleavy said. “I deal with the infrastructure, or the lack there of — surviving Knik-Goose Bay road, for example, if you’re pulling out of Three Bears and you’re trying to get back on. When it comes to life issues, it’s not something I’m going to politicize and KGB is a road that needs work. It needs work sooner than later.”

I pointed out to Dunleavy that five people have died on KGB just this year.

“Yes I know, it’s very unfortunate,” he said. “This will be a focus right away, not only in the Valley but in other parts of Alaska that have life safety issues.”

There has been an outcry of problems from the citizens of the Valley concerning the current road design for KGB and the Parks Highway.

“We have to interject the human element into these road projects. Sometimes they are based upon computer models and divorced of human beings,” he said. “We’ve had discussions with the Department of Transportation over the years, whether it’s the Parks Highway expansion, which was my district when I was senator... Simple decisions made by those at state government may look good on a computer screen, but how do they actually impact the people living there? For example, we had some businesses on the Parks Highway who were basically going to go out of business because too large of a portion was going to be shaved off for the right-of-way. As governor, one of the things I’m going to do is hire the right people and make sure that they understand that we are a service to people and not the other way around. We serve the people of Alaska. We serve the people of the Valley, Fairbanks, Anchorage and et cetera. I want to interject that customer service into everything we do. We have the moral imperative to serve the people of Alaska as servants and we should never forget that. We are not an enterprise to make money but an enterprise to provide good service. The way we will know we are providing good service will be the feedback from the people. ‘Thank you for building the road in a expeditious manner.’ ‘Thank you for taking our feedback into consideration.’ Too often we will have the good folks who are engineers or other technicians that are focused on the computer program or the algorithm. You have to make sure to continue to remind them there is a human element to this and that’s what this administration is going to do.”

Don’t forget who brought you to the dance.

Often times a candidate will get elected and when they take an office that has a larger scope than just their home area they tend to want to make sure that it doesn’t look like they are playing favorites for their home district. Of the 125,217 votes for Governor-elect Dunleavy, 22 percent came from Mat-Su Valley voters. That accounts for over 27,000 of the votes. Valley support for Dunleavy was significant, not only in votes but fundraising as well for his campaign, not including the PACs that supported him. How will he handle the perception of favoritism?

“It’s the fastest growing area of the state,” Dunleavy said. “It’s suffering infrastructure issues. As we mentioned, five people killed on KGB. I haven’t heard from anybody in the state of Alaska that doesn’t feel KGB shouldn’t be addressed. When it comes to a road like that, you fix it. People want to look out for other Alaskans when it comes to health and safety issues. I don’t think we’re going to have an issue with other infrastructure issues in the Valley because of the rapid growth.”

Protecting the Valley

Another pressing issue for the Mat-Su Valley is police protection. We’ve all heard the cries to repeal SB-91, but regardless of what happens with that, increased police protection is the immediate need. Town hall meetings on crime have drawn vocal citizens who are tired of talking and want to see solutions.

“There’s a lot of different options. How can we come up with a comprehensive plan to solve this issue?” Dunleavy said. “We’re a small state in terms of population.”

Dunleavy likened Alaska’s crime clean-up situation to New York City in the 1990s, under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in which a crime-infested community was able to clean up its act and move from one the worst crime cities in America to being recognized as one of the safest. Dunleavy believes Alaska can do the same.

“If you really want something to change and you focus on it,” Dunleavy said. “It can happen. New York City did. I’m looking forward to having discussions with the Mat-Su Borough and the cities. We may be able to partner where, instead of the borough having a full-blown police force, maybe we co-fund troopers and we agree there will be ‘X amount’ of troopers in this area. Maybe we work with the cities of Wasilla and Palmer to potentially contract officers so their police can cover a wider area. There is so many things that could happen. This is a management issue. There are multiple solutions to this issue; we just have to make it priority number one.”

Yes, we are a small state in terms of population, but the vastness of our state geographically, and the logistics of dealing with smaller populated areas creates its own headaches.

There is a larger question for those who have doubt campaign promises can be delivered, like a fully funded PFD payout or even a payback of the PFD that was reduced in recent years. Where will the funds come from to pay for these services and payouts? How can the new administration pay for all of this and still cut the budget?

And how will Alaska diversify its economy?

Don’t look now, but the price of oil has dropped to $60 a barrel as of last Friday.

It will be interesting to see what Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy, the Republican majority Senate and the Republican majority House can accomplish in the next two years. As I told then-Republican Chair Tuckerman Babcock and now the Governor-elect’s Chief of Staff at the Republican election central party on election night as the numbers began to favor his party, “Everything went your way, now you have to deliver. The Republicans have no excuses.”

He took a deep breath as that fact hit him and replied, “Yes. Yes we do.”

The newly elected governor has to deliver solutions to the Valley voters in which a significant majority has placed their trust in him. He must take advantage of his perceived good relationship with the other bodies of our state government.

At the moment, we should all be cautiously optimistic that he can. Hope and faith now turns to accountability for our Governor from the Valley.