Gov. Bill Walker is planning to analyze three big state-owned corporations with an eye toward combining some of their operations or even consolidating them.<\/p>\n
On Thursday morning, Walker held a press conference to announce that the state will begin considering whether to merge aspects of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation and the Alaska Energy Authority.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the process, we can\u2019t say what it\u2019s going to look like with the three agencies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Walker said the state\u2019s goal is to find efficiency and determine whether the state-backed corporations could be doing more to support economic development.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlaska does not need to be an economic downturn, and as governor of this state, I will do everything in my power to ensure that does not happen,\u201d the governor said.<\/p>\n
The state study begun by Thursday\u2019s executive order is expected to be complete in time for next year\u2019s session of the Alaska Legislature.<\/p>\n
In a press conference Thursday morning, Rep. Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski and Speaker of the House, said that in conversations with the governor, \u201cthe governor did ask for probably half a million dollars\u201d to conduct the study.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re willing to work with the administration on that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Both the governor and Chenault said that if the study did find a merger warranted, it would require legislative approval.<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s order follows a suggestion from some legislators that the state consider a merger between the AEA and AIDEA. The suggestion was contained within the budget for the Alaska Department of Commerce and overseen by Rep. Lance Pruitt, R-Anchorage, who was enthusiastic about the governor\u2019s idea on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually applaud him for following what the Legislature has indicated with our intent language,\u201d Pruitt said. \u201cRight now, we should be thinking about government differently.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter James Brooks at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Bill Walker is planning to analyze three big state-owned corporations with an eye toward combining some of their operations or even consolidating them. On Thursday morning, Walker held a press conference to announce that the state will begin considering whether to merge aspects of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the Alaska Housing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":15524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15523"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}