Daily Sitka Sentinel

Walker Says He's Best for Hard Decisions

By SHANNON HAUGLAND

Sentinel Staff Writer

Former governor Bill Walker, who’s running for another term as governor, says he’s shown an ability to make tough decisions in difficult times, which is a leadership quality needed right now in an Alaska governor.

Walker was in Sitka Wednesday and Thursday during a campaign swing through Southeast.

“We’ve got a lot of blinking lights on the dashboard and we need to take care of that right away,” he said in an interview with the Sentinel.

Bill Walker. (Sentinel photo)

Walker, with running mate Heidi Drygas, is one of ten candidates, including Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, in the Tuesday primary election for governor. The top four finishers, regardless of party, will be in the November ranked choice election for governor.

While in Sitka, Walker attended the Alaska Municipal League summer legislative conference, met with Sitka city leaders and talked to various groups about some of their concerns. Walker was mayor of Valdez in the mid 1990s and served one term as governor 2014-2018.

“I’ve always felt people closest to the problem are closest to the solutions, so I want to listen for those solutions,” he said. “I love to hear local officials discuss – not their challenges – local officials have to solve their problems. They don’t have a $20 billion rainy day fund to draw from. They have to make hard decisions and move on.”

Among some of the problems he said that need to be addressed in the state include the childcare shortage and affordable housing, which is hurting people’s ability to get back into the working world. He said some 25,000 left the state last year and there’s a shortage of workers everywhere. There is a shortage of 1,000 teachers in the state, with some districts wondering how they will open in the fall.

“All the focus of the current governor is on how big a dividend he can talk about – he doesn’t have a checkbook,” Walker said.

Walker said as governor he would address issues related to the permanent fund in a different way.

“We need to resolve the permanent fund dividend so that it’s predictable, it’s sustainable and people understand how much it’s going to be, and when it’s going to be so it doesn’t become all the political gimmickry that goes on,” he said. “We need to get beyond that. ... We’ve gone through $18 (billion) – almost $20 billion of savings trying to come up with a fiscal plan.”

Walker said during his four years as governor he showed he had the ability to make hard decisions for the good of the state when faced with an up to $4.3 billion deficit when the price of oil dropped to $26 per barrel.

“We had to do some hard things,” he said. “We had to close 40 state facilities, We had to lay off employees through attrition, we had to eliminate 100 different programs, we reduced spending by 44 percent.” 

Walker said the Senate approved a bill to reduce the dividend, but the House couldn’t get it to the floor for a vote.

“And so they came to me and that’s what I did. In my state of the state, I said ‘I ran for the job to do the job not to keep the job. And the day I make decisions that are good for me, shame on me.’” Walker said. “So it wasn’t about my political future. It was Alaska’s generational future that I was concerned about. So that enabled us to pass Senate Bill 26, which provided for a percent of market value draw from the permanent fund earnings to fund 70 percent of the cost of governmental services: education, public safety, healthcare, all those kinds of things. We couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t done what I did as far as a sustainable dividend that year ... I want the highest dividend possible but not at the expense of high taxes and a weakened government services. There has to be a balance.”

Asked about passing on funding responsibilities to the municipalities for such services as jails and school bond debt, Walker said the state needs to decide what its values and priorities are, and how to pay for them.

“We’ve been doing it the other way around,” he said. “If we watch a shrinking pot of money, and then ‘what less will we do this year? I know – let’s push it off to local governments to cover this and cover that.’ And that just doesn’t work.”

Walker, who was a municipal attorney for communities around the state, said local governments deserve a place at the table, and to be considered when it comes to spending and policy decisions that affect them. During his time as governor, he remembers local governments weighing in on how a possible statewide sales tax would affect them.

He said he would like to grow the permanent fund to around $120 billion, at which point the state could fully fund services based with a sustainable draw of 4.5 to 5 percent.

During his time as governor, he said, “I did what I had to do on the dividend. I adjusted it to the historic average to save the permanent fund, to grow the permanent fund. And that’s the golden goose it was envisioned to be but it only works if you don’t spend it. If you draw down and spend it we’ll go from the lowest taxes in the nation to the highest.”

Walker said wherever he goes in the state he listens to problems communities are facing and possible local solutions. In Juneau he found out about a program to increase wages for childcare workers; in Sitka he was inspired by the Sitka Community Land Trust neighborhood which is adding some affordable housing to the community, using combined resources.

“They’ve found a recipe to finally bring affordable housing, and for it to be sustainable. They’ve created something that is unique to Sitka and unique to Alaska.”

Walker, who is an independent, said he doesn’t really have problems with political parties but sees many issues as nonpartisan. When he was governor, he said, he expanded Medicaid to increase healthcare coverage for 70,000 Alaskans when the Legislature wouldn’t do it.

“Republicans didn’t want that to happen, but to me healthcare is not a partisan issue,” he said. “Education is not a partisan issue, fishing is not a partisan issue, bycatch is not a partisan issue. I don’t think a party owns that stuff. These are Alaskan issues.”

Asked about funding for the marine haulout in Sitka, he sees help through the recently passed bipartisan federal infrastructure bill, saying the state should aggressively go after funding opportunities in the $100 billion to $300 billion available.

“All states will apply for this and we will be extremely aggressive on this because we see this as a transformational opportunity for Alaska to catch up on infrastructure that we are sorely lacking behind,” he said. “So in Sitka, maybe it’s a haulout or a harbor improvement.”

He said he was disappointed Gov. Dunleavy didn’t mention the infrastructure bill in his state of the state.

“I know his pushback has been because it comes from President Biden, and ‘we can’t have any of that,’” Walker said. “My philosophy is that I don’t care what color the money is when it starts in Washington. By the time it gets here it’s all green and spends just fine. I want local governments and tribes to be involved in that process.”

Walker believes the Alaska Marine Highway System should be a priority. “We’ve shifted so far from what we used to be in the Marine Highway,” he said, noting the reports at Alaska Municipal League meeting about the shortage of crew, ships tied up at the dock, and infrequent service.

“We need to bring it back to what it used to be, and then some,” he said.

Walker pulled out of his race for re-election in 2018, but said he was prompted to run again by what he has seen during Dunleavy’s tenure. 

He was disappointed to see Dunleavy leave on vacation two days before the end of the legislative session; that when asked about his fiscal plan in an interview Dunleavy said it was to continue to have special sessions to discuss it; and that he did not meet with President Biden when he was four hours on the tarmac in Anchorage.

“That is leadership malpractice,” Walker said. “You have an opportunity to help educate the president on Alaska ...” 

Walker said he is pleased to have selected Drygas as his running mate. She is Alaskan born, with degrees from University of Alaska Fairbanks, and  Willamette University College of Law, and was commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development in his previous administration.

“We’re the unity ticket – we don’t see eye to eye on every issue,” he said. Addressing the issue of abortion rights and the recent Roe v. Wade ruling, he said, “I am pro-life; she is pro-choice. Our constitution is very clear; it’s a protected right under the state constitution. That doesn’t change. Nothing will change with our constitution and we will defend what’s there. The Legislature can’t change the constitution and if there’s an attempt, we will fight that.”

He is against having a constitution convention, a question that’s put to the voters every ten years, and which will be on the November election ballot this year.

Walker, 71, was born in Fairbanks and graduated from Valdez High School. His undergraduate degree is from Lewis and Clark College, and he earned his law degree from Seattle University.

Polls in the Tuesday election will open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. at Harrigan Centennial Hall. One side of the ballot has the open primary races for governor, U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative, State Senate District A Senator and State Representative for District 2.

The other side of the ballot is the ranked-choice special general election for U.S. Representative to replace the late Rep. Don Young for the remainder of his last term, which ends Jan. 3. 2023.