Whose gospel can you trust?

To the editor:

Lots of voices claiming the gospel of oil taxes. By August, voters’ decisions are likely to boil down to whose gospel voters trust.

In an April 11, 2013, Anchorage Daily News Compass column, former Gov. Frank Murkowski bragged that Gov. Sean Parnell’s tax cuts are nearly identical to legislation he pushed through in 2006.

Has Alaska forgotten that five legislators were found guilty of charges related to exchanging bribes for “yes” votes on Murkowski’s bill? Has Alaska forgotten that Murkowski’s chief of staff, Jim Clark, who lobbied Murkowski’s bill through, pleaded guilty to conspiring with VECO owner Bill Allen to channel $68,550 in illegal contributions to Murkowski’s campaign?

Conversely, in an article appearing June 21, 2004, in the Juneau Empire, and again in an Anchorage Daily News Compass column, more than two years before the FBI raided the offices of several legislators suspected of bribery, I warned every Alaskan that VECO executives were bribing your legislators to keep Alaska’s taxes below what other societies get for their oil.

A look behind the curtain reveals the same forces at it again. ACES, the tax Senate Bill 21 replaced, was already low compared to the rest of the world. According to the Oct. 2, 2011, Petroleum News, it also contained incentives that were successfully attracting new explorers to Alaska. SB 21 removed those incentives, reinstated the monopolistic stranglehold of the big three and, by a huge margin, has left Alaska with the lowest tax of any major producing state or country in the world.

If you want more oil, vote for repeal to help break the big three monopoly. If you want dividends to continue, if you don’t want an income tax, if you want an Alaska Permanent Fund sufficient to sustain a viable economy when the oil runs out, trust me and vote yes to repeal SB 21 in August.

Ray Metcalfe

Anchorage