• Why are you running?

    I’ve been working on state’s budget issues for several years now, and I’ve really watched how the process gets bogged down and debates devolve into name calling and finger pointing, and nothing really gets done. So I’ve been really disappointed with the lack of progress that we’ve seen in the legislature for the last several years. I decided I’d take it upon myself to offer my services as a legislator, rather than as a professional economist as I have been for the last several years. Hopefully I can bring the parties together and get something accomplished so we can stop arguing about what to do and actually start getting something done.

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  • COVID-19

    Has the Alaska Legislature done enough to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic? Why or why not?

    The COVID pandemic has been really challenging to deal with the across the board at every level of government. I think the municipality has done a great job doing what it can do dealing with the issue. I think the federal government has done a tremendous job, providing assistance to the community. Unfortunately, the state legislature really hasn’t. They didn’t really do a whole lot. They didn’t provide any kind of economic relief. They didn’t provide any kind of substantial assistance to small businesses … All they did really was put a pause on evictions, and allowed the federal money to pass through the state government. But no, I don’t think that the state legislature has done enough.
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  • State budget shortfalls

    How do you think the Alaska Legislature should address state budget shortfalls in the upcoming legislative session?

    It’s a big challenge. There’s about a $2.5 billion deficit that we have to address somehow. I think that personally, I think that we haven’t really started the budget process correctly. I think that’s where we need to start, is fixing the budget process. Start with determining what it is that we need as a society and then figuring out how we’re going to pay for it. But we kind of do that backwards by trying to match our spending to our revenues, rather than raising the revenues to meet our needs. That’s what I think we need to do first. And then yeah, we’re gonna have to have really serious conversations around the services that we’re providing, around the PFD, around education, around health care, around taxes. It’s going to be a really challenging session. No, I don’t think anyone’s going to have a lot of fun next year dealing with the massive problems that we have to face. But it’s time that we actually face them and do something about it.
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  • Education

    How can Alaska hope to improve education for students amid ongoing budget cuts?

    Education is so critically important as just a society. We don’t all get born into the same situations and we don’t all have the same opportunities, whether that’s from parents that are able to educate us or from a financial background that provides us with the ability to get educated. So a publicly funded education system is one of the critical components to the American dream and allowing us to be successful, or least have the opportunity to be successful. So we can’t just go down the road of cutting the budget, but we also can’t write a blank check to the school board. We need to really have conversations around what we are trying to achieve and make sure that we’re achieving it in the most cost-effective way possible. We also need to think about being flexible with all of the experience that we’ve had over the last several months, we’ve kind of adapted to a new delivery system for education. So I think maybe we need to kind of think about how we do deliver education, and maybe if we can do it a little differently.

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  • Most critical district issue?

    What do you believe is the most critical issue facing your district and how do you plan to address it if elected?

    So right now, we have record high unemployment. I think that’s got to be the most critical thing facing us and we have to figure out a way that we can make people comfortable enough to go out and support small businesses. We have to figure out a way we can make tourists feel comfortable enough to come back on cruise ships. We need to figure out ways we can grow the economy. One of those ways that we need to do that is by creating stability in our financial system as well. We can’t have this conversation around taxes just looming over our heads, scaring away investors … and professionals as well. We need to resolve the issue about what we’re trying to accomplish, how we’re going to address our budget issue, and then create stability and sustainability in our economy. That’s absolutely the most critical thing that we can do as a legislature right now is protect our economy, make sure that it has what it needs to be successful and then help it grow from there.

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