The following Q&A was conducted with Gov. Bill Walker on Dec. 23, 2015, at the Juneau Empire. This is part three of the interview. Read parts one and two by clicking on this story at juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n
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Do you think some of the leaders in the Legislature have gotten over the fact that you don\u2019t have an \u201cR\u201d behind your name any more? There seemed to be a lot of conflict during the last session.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, there was, and I\u2019ll certainly acknowledge that I\u2019m … looking for every way I can to make sure we don\u2019t have that again. I can say … meetings I\u2019ve had getting ready for this upcoming session have been very positive with the leadership. So, I\u2019m looking for ways of making sure from my standpoint that it\u2019s as smooth as possible.<\/p>\n I remember the morning after the (1964) earthquake, …I remember hearing somebody saying to my dad, \u201cI wish we had yesterday\u2019s problems.\u201d We\u2019re kind of that way right now in some respect because of where we are, (and) what we could argue about five years ago, I won\u2019t have that argument now because now we\u2019ve got about a few inches of free board left before water comes over the side \u2014 we need to figure this out.<\/p>\n Someone said, \u201cJust come out and just show one piece at a time as far as how you fix this. Just show the sovereign wealth and don\u2019t show all the rest.\u201d I said Alaska needs to see the whole picture. …We show them, here\u2019s all the pieces, all the tools out there that we have selected from about 35. We\u2019ve laid these out and said these nine will resolve the problem. If someone takes one away, we hope that they\u2019ll put something else back in…<\/p>\n You know, a lot of the discussion is about a sales tax versus an income tax \u2014 that solves $200 million of a $3.5 billion problem. We went with income tax for a couple of reasons: One, is we wanted to welcome to the solution out-of-state workers that come up and commute back and forth. There\u2019s a significant amount of revenue that leaves Alaska that they get a pretty good deal on. We wanted to have that. We were sensitive to local governments that already had a sales tax, we didn\u2019t want to stack our sales tax on top of their sales tax and make that particular community less competitive as a result. We want to be careful about that. We want to make sure it was deductible from the federal tax. And also for ease of collection \u2014 we have so many different communities that are spread out all over this great sate. I can\u2019t imagine trying to force sales tax collection in some of the more remote areas. It would be very difficult to do. …So that\u2019s how we landed on income tax.<\/p>\n Would we just absolutely draw the line? No we wouldn\u2019t. … Logically, it makes more sense to us to do it that way. …It really brings … balance. I\u2019ve had a number of interviews nationally, of course their angle on it is a bit different. There like, \u201cThere\u2019s a state that doesn\u2019t have an income tax or a state sales tax? We didn\u2019t know there was one like that left.\u201d That\u2019s a little bit of a different message on the national (scene).<\/p>\n Of course, anytime I\u2019m on national (media), whether I\u2019m testifying for the Senate Energy Committee, which was a few weeks ago, or I\u2019m on any sort of national TV or radio or publication at all \u2014 I always talk about access to our resources. Whether it\u2019s timber, whether it\u2019s mining, whether there\u2019s oil in an empty oil pipeline, I always use that opportunity to talk about the statehood compact, the deal we didn\u2019t get, how the federal government has not upheld its end of the deal when we became a state. Every challenge has a silver lining, I guess from our standpoint.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The road out of Juneau has been parked for a while, but it\u2019s a shovel-ready project. We\u2019ve spoken with labor unions that have come in here and talked to us about the kind of economic activity that something like that would generate, whether people drive it or not. Have your feelings changed on the road and whether or not this is something that you\u2019d like to see move forward?<\/strong><\/p>\n We haven\u2019t completely parked it, it\u2019s still going through a process. …We\u2019re not really at a decision point right now because of the permitting process it\u2019s going through, so we\u2019ll see. I believe the next level of permitting comes from the Corps of Engineers… We\u2019re not really at a decision point right now. Our capital budget is tied directly to federal funds. We haven\u2019t said no to any federal funds and so we will have to address that when it\u2019s appropriate (and) when we get to the permitting process.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Would you be willing release the funds to get the federal match? The project just needs a few million more from the state for full funding.<\/strong><\/p>\n We would have to make that decision when we get there. First things first, and first is we\u2019ve allowed to continue to put money in to allow for the permitting process to go through. We\u2019ve used your analogy quite a bit, as far as moving some of these over into a parking lot at the appropriate time, not just be stalled in the middle of the road, and that\u2019s kind of what we didn\u2019t want to do so we\u2019ve done that with the Ambler Road, allowed that to sort of continue on through a permitting process. Things that are tied to federal funding, it\u2019s pretty hard to say no, because you don\u2019t know how long that match rate is going to be around.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When do you expect to have a permanent replacement for the Department of Corrections commissioner, and do you think it will be the acting commissioner, Walt Monegan?<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know that it\u2019ll be him, but … in about three months, we\u2019ll know who that\u2019s going to be. We\u2019re actively going through our search process right now. The issue with the Department of Corrections, it\u2019s much bigger than replacing one person, it\u2019s much, much bigger than that.<\/p>\n We have made the investigation … public. We have gone to each of the families, gone out to the villages where the family members are of two of the individuals who died in prison. My decision was we\u2019ll make those videos public, but the decision was up to the family members. We can go through years of litigation, back and forth, trying to keep it confidential, and I thought I don\u2019t want to do that. But I don\u2019t want a family member to say \u201cWe don\u2019t appreciate that.\u201d So we have sent Dean Williams out to Beaver and he met with family members and then he went to Saint Michaels, met with family members and they really, really appreciated that. I stopped in on one of the groups of family members in Anchorage that came in to view the video. They were just so touched that we were doing that, that we were sensitive about that and pretty much have all said if this will preclude it from happening to somebody else, then we\u2019re fine with that. It was a painful process to go through, for them to view this, but we have made the determination that we\u2019re making them public.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The media tried looking into a situation at Lemon Creek, and every time we would go to DOC we were told no. We were even told once, \u201cDon\u2019t even bother asking us, you know you\u2019re not going to get it.\u201d What can Alaska do in order to have better transparency into different government agencies like this so it doesn\u2019t require the governor to make these videos public?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think I set the tone, and I have set the tone on that. I\u2019ve made some people uncomfortable. I\u2019ve heard from some folks that are uncomfortable, not families, but people in the system and I think that when you release videos unedited, it makes some people uncomfortable. But it made me uncomfortable watching the video, and we\u2019re talking about a death, we\u2019re talking about somebody who lost their life.<\/p>\n …The culture has to change at the top and that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing with corrections and that\u2019s why we\u2019re still working on it. There\u2019s a ways to go, there\u2019s quite a ways to go on a cultural shift on what is acceptable, what is not. It\u2019s far beyond one person at the top to say, \u201cWe checked off the box, we fixed corrections.\u201d We didn\u2019t fix corrections, we acknowledged a systemic problem that we have. We do try to be as transparent as we can.<\/p>\n It drives me crazy that I\u2019ve inherited a gas line process where every fourth word is \u201cconfidential\u201d in the language that was put in. It just drives me crazy. We\u2019re trying to change that on the tax credits so Alaskans know. I said if we\u2019re going to reach into their pocket they need to know how the money is being spent. It\u2019s really a cultural thing. We went into a lot of resistance, and that\u2019s OK, because we want to be more transparent.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What can the media do assist in this?<\/strong><\/p>\n When you see things that are done differently than you\u2019ve seen in the past, acknowledge that. It might not be where you like it to be \u2014 I think we\u2019re going to get pretty close to where you want it to be, quite honestly, because I think we suffer from way too much confidentiality.<\/p>\n Confidentiality sometimes protects the state as much as it does who you\u2019re negotiating with, and sometimes it\u2019s been used … as \u201cdon\u2019t look at what we\u2019re doing because it\u2019s not very good.\u201d So we want to change that, and we want people to know that we\u2019re going to make things available, and not as a result of losing a piece of litigation with a member of the media. We\u2019re going to sit down and have that discussion.<\/p>\n It\u2019s … sometimes a … heated discussion around my conference table about what gets released or not. People talk about the fiduciary obligation that I have to Alaska as far as in my role to protect them from litigation, and I say I fully understand that, but what\u2019s right is right. If we\u2019re making mistakes, if our system is making mistakes \u2014 and it was \u2014 the light of day is the best way. People will think differently when they\u2019re making some decisions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In South Dakota, the governor put together a committee of different media and government agency members to come up with ways to create transparency. Would you be open to that, because we score low in every category of transparency.<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ll look at what he\u2019s done. I\u2019m a big fan of seeing what\u2019s done elsewhere, if they\u2019re doing something better than we are I\u2019m happy to give them all the credit in the world. By bringing somebody in from the media \u2014 Grace Jang, she is a fierce advocate for transparency \u2014 I just hear her voice ring to my ear sometimes, \u201cGovernor, this will be the most transparent thing that we need to do.\u201d And I like that a lot. She is a very strong advocate for transparency \u2014 she never has left her role from the media. She was the best investigative reporter in Anchorage, by far. That\u2019s not why I selected her, but she still has that passion and she\u2019s just all about being transparent. If there\u2019s a way of blending that together, I\u2019d certainly be open to that.<\/p>\n \u2022 Paula Ann Solis contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The following Q&A was conducted with Gov. Bill Walker on Dec. 23, 2015, at the Juneau Empire. This is part three of the interview. Read parts one and two by clicking on this story at juneauempire.com. 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