Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Anyone paying attention will have noticed a general decline in Alaskan’s quality of life since Mike Dunleavy took office. Funding for education has been slashed by 41%. Cuts to public assistance and staffing of local government offices necessitated expensive and inconvenient travel to larger cities - that’s IF the ferries were running. A headline from 2020 reads: “Steep budget cuts left Alaska with only one operating mainline ferry. Then it broke down.” Imagine how reading this might affect tourism, let alone Southeast towns that depend heavily on the ferry system.

It’s no accident that a 30% budget cut imposed on the ferry system, poor maintenance, mismanagement and the sale of two newer ferries (at a loss of 67 million dollars), put a primary method of transportation, visitation and revenue in jeopardy, along with a decline in population. The timing of the pandemic also played into Dunleavy’s devious strategy of empowering and funding resource extraction, while enriching the corporate welfare swamp and himself. Incredulously, as a climate denier, Dunleavy said global warming of the arctic could be good for Alaska, inadvertently revealing his ravage/reward intentions. What’s best for most Alaskans – and the planet – is to DUMP DUNLEAVY IN NOVEMBER.

Larry Larson