On Tuesday it appeared that Gov. Mike Dunleavy was going to be nominated to be the next Secretary of the Interior. It didn’t happen. But he may still be in the running to take over the Department of Energy. That would give him the opportunity to continue his crusade to open up more of Alaska to oil development.
On the surface, he looked like a good candidate for either of those positions. The fact that he’s the first Alaskan governor to win reelection in more than 20 years implies he’s been successful in the job.
But anyone interested in examining Dunleavy’s real record will find a trail of embarrassing incompetence.
The Secretary of Energy workforce is about the same size as the state government that he’s been running. But being responsible for a budget that’s double the state’s will be especially challenging for Dunleavy.
While campaigning in 2018 he promised to balance the state budget without raising taxes. And give Alaskans a Permanent Fund Dividend based on the 1982 formula that had been used until 2016, plus issue supplement checks for the three years it wasn’t. The trick was combining minimal spending cuts with improved government efficiencies.
It was an across-the-board failure. To balance the budget every year, funds have been withdrawn from the state’s reserves. And he never delivered the PFD checks he promised.
The first year he vetoed about 10% of the operating budget passed by the Legislature. Dig a little deeper and you’ll learn that half the problem was he had banked on a $200 million pot of money that never existed.
I could describe how he crippled the Alaska Marine Highway System, his food stamp and state payroll fiascos, and more. But then I wouldn’t have space to mention how he violated the Constitution on his first day in office.
Just hours after being sworn in, he fired two psychiatrists at the Alaska Psychiatric Institute “for failing to endorse or pledge allegiance” to his political agenda. That finding was made by U.S. District Judge John Sedwick. He ruled that Dunleavy may be held personally liable for damages because “the First Amendment violation in these circumstances was clearly established and would have been known to any reasonable government official.”
But our governor who promised to “restore public trust in government and elected officials” escaped accountability for that illegal act when his attorney general negotiated a settlement in which the state assumed the financial liability.
The psychiatrists weren’t the only state employees whose freedom of speech Dunleavy violated. An attorney in the Department of Law also successfully sued him. And we don’t know how many of the other 800 at-will state employees who he put in the same position resigned instead of signing the pledge.
As a cabinet member in Trump’s administration, he’ll be expected to do it all over again.
“I will immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats,” Trump said in September, with rogue being defined as anyone not loyal to him and his agenda.
If the courts find that unconstitutional, he’ll follow the advice Vice President-elect J.D. Vance offered a few years ago.
“Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”
And the U.S. Supreme Court ruling giving the president near-absolute immunity lets Trump know he’ll get away with doing that.
He won’t face court challenges over his fiscal plan. But it’ll fail in more spectacular fashion than Dunleavy’s did.
The projected revenue from the new tariffs he plans to levy will fall way short of offsetting the tax cuts he wants to enact. The annual federal deficit will increase, as will the national debt he thinks he’ll be paying down. Plus, the cost of the tariffs paid by the domestic companies which import the goods will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
None of that matters though. Trump will run the country based on his universe of alterative facts. And Dunleavy has the prerequisite incompetence to play a role in that kind of administration.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Here’s how to submit a My Turn or letter.
