I am voting “yes” on Proposition 1 next week to repeal the Alaska Legislature’s $2 billion Senate Bill 21 (SB 21) giveaway to the oil industry. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Witnessing the over-the-top, multi-million dollar ad campaign by the oil industry, methinks they protest too much.
The oil industry was making record profits from our Alaskan oil before the SB 21 giveaway, but their greed apparently has no limits. We Alaskans collected $8 billion more in oil taxes in the seven years before SB 21 than we would have collected under the SB 21 scheme. That’s $8 billion more for education, for roads, for harbors, for infrastructure, for jobs and for permanent fund dividends.
Norway has a 78 percent tax on oil extraction and their oil industry is rock solid. Norway and Alaska have extracted about the same amount of oil over the same period of time, yet Norway’s permanent fund is worth $780 billion compared to Alaska’s $51 billion permanent fund. That’s 15 times more money for Norway’s residents.
SB 21 is a sweetheart deal for the oil companies that barely passed (11-9) because of the deciding votes of two state senators employed by ConocoPhillips (methinks conflict of interest). It was then signed into law by Gov. Sean Parnell, himself a former ConocoPhillips lobbyist. Methinks SB 21 stinks.
Please join me in repealing SB 21 by voting “yes” on Prop 1 on Aug. 19.
Tim June