Talk of Alaska

for affecting the animals up there. What's the latest on the aid campaigns to get the project before Congress again this year? I don't, basically the ones that were completed were jobs related. They were quite effective. I don't think anything is going to be done for a year or two. The aid campaigns that we had were just getting support from those various organizations, including the unions, where it would affect jobs. Next caller, good morning, you're on the air. Hello. Good morning, governor. Since Alaska depends about 85% for state revenues on oil and since state spending influences or effects about 30% of our economy, I've wondered since you've been governor every year, the oil

prices while legislature in the section seem to be going down and then just about the time the legislature leaves the oil. I wondered, governor, I possibly two years doesn't make a pattern, but is that situation of rising oil prices that's occurred almost on a regular cycle? Has that in any way been included as a major factor in your budget preparation? No, we based it on the price of oil last fall and we had two years where it's gone up. I hope it just stays where it's at and doesn't go down because if it goes down, it's very difficult and so we have a balanced budget and that's what we have to have and I tell you, it's really difficult to cut this budget in a country like Alaska where so much of

it depends on government and so all I can say is our budget is based on posted prices. What happened the last couple of years is kind of unusual and the posted prices for the average will be whatever they are for next year, we'll figure our budget on that. So I guess the idea is you plan with the numbers that you have if they're right or wrong, just hope for the best. That's right, and if they stay to our say also. We were kind of lucky the last couple of years to get a raise toward the end there. I remember years back where they had a tremendous drop in price and it was pretty drastic. I wanted to ask you a question concerning another subject. The subsistence, one of the bills that you've just signed I guess within the last week has

been the one that came out of the special session of the legislature on the subsistence. You have said that you're going to reappoint or appoint a new task force to deal with. Well, it might be the same forth, there might be a few different people on it, but that's the idea. Yes. What is the charge here? What are you hoping to see this task force come up with? Well, the last task force came up with I thought a fairly good solution. The bill that we introduced in my opinion and a lot of people's opinion read it is much better than the one we got. But in a legislative process you have to act on what's presented to you. I'm hoping that somehow maybe this task force could set down and try to solve the two conflicting problems. One subsistence is real. It's something that's necessary. How do you make that fit the constitution or how do you amend the constitution or amend an elke to make it work? It might be possible

to have a legislation and I think our legislation came awful close to that. It wasn't my personal legislation. It was a consensus legislation of the various groups of native people, outdoor council, commercial sports fish, everyone living in Alaska. And so if that legislation would solve the problem, then you could have the generic amendment to our constitution said that this legislation will be treated as a constitutional thing. That you could not be changed by the next legislature without a two-thirds majority. That would be one. And then tie that into an amendment to an elke for an example that would take out the word rural. The word rural in the elke amendments divides the state and conflicts with our constitution. What we're trying to do is make it work. And without that you'll always have this conflict. You either have to amend our constitution and then just let an elke be like it is, which

will divide the state and say this is rural, this isn't. If Bethel grows, it wouldn't no longer be rural and things like that. We took care of that problem. An elke did not solve the problem of the subsistence user that lived in an area that wasn't rural, even if it were in some spot that was over 7,000 people. So we solved that problem in our legislation by that. And that's what I'm hoping we would solve. Has the task force given an indication that they would be ready and will be going back to work out? That was a tough long year and I never missed a meeting and it took a lot of time. And so we're going to try to figure out how we can telescope that time, taking the knowledge we learned in this past year and bring it to some advantage. Okay. You have members of the legislature on at this time perhaps. We gave me their bill. Okay. Our next caller is from Fairbanks. Fairbanks, good morning.

You're on the air. Hello. Good morning, Governor Bill Hager. Yes, Bill. How are you today? Good, great. Well, good. I wanted to give you a little, just to add a boy in encouragement to budget decisions you made as far as Fairbanks. Generally, his concern is very good decisions. And we wanted you know there's a lot of support out there for your attempt to look at it in the proper perspective. Thank you. And the subsistence legislation is just stepping in the right direction and we remain quite supportive of that and look for your direction to help continue during the next legislature or whatever is required. The current whole quote, quote, Luhan litigation. I believe that Sherry Jacobus is handling that is we're very much in support of that and the current wetlands decision by the US Supreme Court parallels your statement to the federal government as a taking and helps reaffirm your

position on that and gives us a great deal of encouragement on a fair shake on what they're doing on the wetlands issue. And the question on the current unit 13 problem, you know, we would like you to look into that sum and see if our state Supreme Court, the current decision they made on allowing the board of game to use, they may in lieu of the term shall use rural preference on the, you know, the state subsistence law is kind of a mini test of the current subsistence litigation that our legislation that we just passed. If you look into that, we'll have attorney general look at that. Certainly appreciate it and you're quite an inspiration and come visit us off the nation can. Well, I got a lot of questions. I'll, I'll sure like to do that. Okay. Well, keep up the good work

and a holler when you need help. Thank you. You bet. Okay. Our next caller is from Nome. Nome. Good morning. Good morning, Nome. Good morning. My name is Mike Rossman. I work for Department of Transportation. I happen to work in the designing construction section. We recently heard that there's talk of combining the Nome and Valdeez designing construction sections with Fairbanks. And I'm sure I'm concerned and a lot of other people are as to what's going to happen when this does happen. Is it simply going to transfer positions to Fairbanks or cut a bunch of positions in the process? Well, probably they're trying to come up with getting it as efficient as possible and still trying to get the job done. That's what they're looking at. I know that they're talking about that around the state whether whether they're going to combine Nome with Fairbanks or not. I haven't

been appraised of that. But if it if it is done now, it's going to be for that reason. I'd hate to see the the person move out of Nome. But let me find out where that's at. The consolidation of Fairbanks Nome and what was the other thing? Valdeez. That's a whole long way. That's a big district there. We've got house districts that are that big. That's right. Well, it might be that they're trying to just cut down expenses and trying to do it out of Fairbanks which would sort of be halfway between Nome and Valdeez. That's the only thing I can understand. There's a lot of reorganization like that, whether it's for efficiency or simplicity, saving many cutting back on management type people. Are those pretty well left up to the department heads to the commissioners to come up with their own plan? Yes. As long as within the law, it's something that you don't either know

where you would get involved in it only if there's a problem that develops from that. That's right. Because it's no way one person. In fact, is Commissioner Terprin's talked about the difficulty of managing those 3,600 people? Well, if I tried to micromanage 15, 16, 20,000, you'd have that problem. So you give them the latitude of how can you serve the public better and have more money left to do what you have to do and not have so much in management? It's difficult. You can only cut government so far. Government was never meant to be efficient. It's just necessary. And in a country like Alaska, government is more important than it isn't any other state in the union because of its obligation of ownership. So they are trying to meet the criteria of how efficient they can be. And by the end of the year, I think while we'll keep watching that, we're going to get on down

the road to see how we can deliver better service, more service for the money. And the key is how to enhance revenue. I'd just like to make a point here if I might. People talk about, I want you to just cut $500 million out of the operating budget. Well, the operating budget is roughly $2.3 roughly. If we lay... Billion and we're talking. Billion. Do I say million? Billion. I'll make it clear. Okay. Yes. If we laid off every employee in the state had no employees, you'd save about $894 million roughly. The rest of that pertinured a billion, a billion and a half just goes to the things that need to be done. And so you can't just say cut off half the employees. You cut them all off. You still have that much money expenditure in that operating budget. So it's hard to explain. I don't think we have that many too many people in government might be some. But government in the state of

Alaska has to do an awful lot of things. Everybody, as the callers come in, they want something in government. That has to be managed by someone. Even if you just hand out a grant, it has to be looked at. It has to be followed through. And so I've just mentioned that because the state of Alaska has to work hard and enhance and get revenue. That's why we're going after Ann War. That's why we're going after the gas line. That's why I went to Pluto Bay in 66. There's no way you can run this state just with Texas. It's 85% royalty. And while the money was coming in, nobody watches. Nobody cares. Nobody says, hey, 10 years were in trouble. And a lot of these big projects are 10 years in coming. So that's where we're headed. We may not be that successful, but we're pointing out the problem and trying to point toward the opportunity. Okay, our next caller is from Katsubu. Katsubu, good morning. Hello, Katsubu. Yes, good morning, governor. I would like to know if you are cutting the

budget. Why was the per diem of the efficient wildlife raised to between 100 to 120 dollars on top of their already original 150 dollars per diem? I don't have any idea. I don't have any idea that that was even raised. Well, it was in the paper just about a week or so ago. Well, there's four of them. Yes. The immediate is that it is 120 dollars more than it was before, which we'd bring it up to 200. So it was raised $20 a $20. I'm sorry, I misunderstood. 100 to 120 dollars is quoted in the paper plus the original, which they do get, I believe, $150 per diem. And also, perhaps, the controversy over the military receiving the bonus is the fact that most of the military personnel receive their transportation home when they are retired or leaving the service. So they keep that within the state.

And yet, they're still living here in Alaska. So that may be one of the reasons for the controversy. And I've never heard anyone bring this subject up. So perhaps if they did look into this, this may alleviate a lot of the problems you have. We've had the military thing. We've looked at it. We've investigated. There's been some lawsuits filed on it. And we have another question on that earlier. And so we are falling through on that one. To per diem thing, I'm not aware. It may be if the bill didn't cost a living union conflict thing. I'm not real sure that. Okay. Next caller is from Douglas. Douglas, good morning. You're on the air. Good morning, Douglas. You stated earlier that through regulation, you had already made the decision not to publicly fund abortion. So could you explain to me what the purpose of the statewide public hearings

that are scheduled for July 27th on this regulation? Well, I said yes. You've already made your decision. And I guess I guess I want to know what the purpose of the hearings are and if the public opinion matters. Well, yes, the public opinion matter. We just put the regulations out that way. Now we're going to hold the public hearings I think next week. And we'll find out what the public thinks about it. Sure, the public lab would input on that. Right. But will it make any difference since you've already said you've made the decision? Well, we made the decision to public the regulations. Then you get the hearings on that. Basically, we're against the public funding of abortions. And we'll see what the hearings says. The decision was made. We're going to we're going to get the public input. I think the idea is that if it comes out 10 to 1 people at those public hearings, you would look at it again if there was an overwhelming response against it. We'd have to take another look at that. And I'm sure it was 10 to 1. The

legislature would take a hard look at that too. Okay. All right. Next caller is from Homer. Homer. Good morning. You're on the air. Hello, Homer. Good morning, a governing vehicle. Yes. Yes. This is Julie said serenity at the rainbow hemp farm. Stead and Homer. And my question this morning maybe is pertains to later on. But I would like a question about ethics in the permanent fund and our financial situation. Now, I have not been able to find out to my layman's understanding how our permanent fund is invested. I know it's a rotating fund and there's some financial group that invests here or there or whatever, however the wind blows. But I'm concerned that we are investing it in things that are detrimental to our environment and to our social justice. That is in diamond mines in South Africa or if you get my drift there. And I also would like to know if there's a possibility if

you could refer me to a member of your cabinet that we could find out if we could with popular education take part of that permanent fund and invest it in our young people, our colleges, our bad financial situations and our social services. Our environment of clean up. Is this something that you could explain briefly on the radio or? No, I don't think I could because I'm trying to think it's run by the trustees. They manage it. There are no legislators for executive influence in that. Where they invested, I think it's basically their decision. As I recall, you said South African diamond mines, I'm not sure that that would be on a public record and you've probably checked that as to investing in social service, I don't think they can legally do that. For example, grants to children

going to school, if that's what you might have had in mind, that would have to be done through the general fund and not through the permanent fund. You're suggesting that the permanent fund should be used probably as a broader tool to help the people of Alaska. The people of Alaska is going to have to decide that themselves by a boat and so it's pretty well structured what they can and cannot do. I think that as far as clear as I could make it, it could be changed but it have to be by a complete vote of the people. There is a list or it's available as to what the investments are. I have seen the list so as to matter of environmentally responsible companies or ethical considerations that people will be concerned in and that list is available at any given time, at least once a year that

it's published. There's the possibility that properties and so forth in Alaska. Are there statutory limitations on what they can actually invest in the state? That's exactly right. There it is. Too many people, a lot of people take the permanent fund for granted and just sort of let it go whereas in fact it's their money. If they're money, it has to be invested in very basic things. Even the trustees can't decide, well, let's give $100 million to the university. They just can't do that and so that's one of the real problems. One of the real opportunities is probably one of the protections of the permanent fund. Our next caller is from Sand Point. Sand Point, good morning. You're on the air. Sand Point. Good morning. Good morning. You're. Yes. I have a question here on the social services. I heard false past talking to you saying that we're going to be cut off on our social

worker here and that seems like every time we get something going, they always take it away and I just called and talked to Gladys Langen and Anchorage about it and now I asked her why they were taking it away from us and she said that they will be servicing us out of knack because of funding wise and if you take a look at it, overall Governor Hickal of all the villages up in the Bristol Bay area and the villages here and what it would cost to have the social worker working out of there trying to service the chain and trying to serve that area, it would be much more because every time it seems like it gets something going here, it's taken away. If you think about all the duplicates you

have in the state and cut down on some of the other duplicate programs that you have in social services and give us a little more. You're right. It's one of those difficult things of commission rest to make. I'm not aware of that until you tell me that he's trying to make cuts and what he has to do, make things more efficient and I'll tell you it's a very, very difficult thing I talked about that a little bit a few minutes back and we'll take a look at it but when there's, when the revenue start coming down, they always try to see where they can become more efficient. I agree with you just looking at from the outside and it seems to be probably less costly to do it the way it is but that decision is made by the commissioner and his organization. Some of that money comes through federal

pass-throughs and they do things to fit certain regulations there but you make a good point and we'll take a look. Okay, next caller. We've got time for another caller. So, Fair Banks. Fair Banks, good morning. Hello. Hello, Fair Banks. Yes, here. Governor, I just wanted to say that we think you're doing a great job down there. You ran on a pro-development platform to create jobs and you've been doing that and we're hoping you don't spend too much time worrying about those negative special interest groups. There's two points I'd like to make. One is the news media. They never seem to get around to the important issues and there's a couple very important that they've never mentioned and one is 44 million acres that the natives got for their subsistence hunting and fishing which was supposed to do away with all of their aboriginal rights and that's in law. You never hear that in the news media though. Another one is a NOCA. That's not the state's problem. That's Senator

Steven's Murkowski and Young and I think the news media is very remiss in not telling the people that. Very true. A NOCA is a federal thing and it was a NOCA that really basically by putting the word rule in there came in conflict with our Constitution and the court case on that might win. Can they pass a legislative act like they did just to conflict with our Constitution? That's basically the problem and I talked about that sooner. I appreciate your thoughts but you hit the nail on the head on that one and we're trying to bring it to some kind of a conclusion. Okay, let's go for another caller here from Homer. Homer, good morning. Hello, Homer. Hello, good morning, Governor. This is Brian Springer gone from Homer. I feel real important that you need to realize that we feel betrayed down here with this catch-and-backed state park situation and we feel the people of Southern

Peninsula feel pretty violated. The Indians feel as though we got the shots once again and you're telling us that we're going to take care of this next year. The Timber Company has just had it. They're going to get their permits and they're going to cut and I don't see how taking it again to the next year we feel it's exhausted because we've been working at this for so many years and I just feel it important that you understand down here that we're so upset and so dissatisfied and we just don't understand that. You know, if we catch Mac Bay is unique, we're going to face that but we face that all over the state. Cordova came in one time and said they won't they won 150 million to buy back some Timber. So when we buy this stuff back we have to set it right. We had to set the right precedent because we can't buy it all back and catch Mac Bay is unique it is different. We're just

trying to as I mentioned before trying to arrive at the kind of a contract that we can purchase that with. It's going to be difficult to come up with 20 million or 21 million all at once to do that and that's what the Attorney General is negotiating with now. We took a trip this weekend as part of the week through South East down to Angoon, Petersburg. I'm not sure where all you went. I went to Angoon Cake, Petersburg, Wrangle, Pluck Wall and Craig. Was this sightseeing or did you have what happened there? We had in fact is Dave we had 21 appearances in those six places starting Friday morning and finishing Saturday evening. We had public meetings. We had dinners. We had news media things. We had all kinds of thing. Average a little over three per village. Listen to what they had to say. Their concern is basically timber and fish and things related to that.

They have an economy based on that. Their concerns or can we get more processing and fish on shore. Petersburg does an excellent job on that. It's probably the biggest fish processing port in the state. But the smaller villages were talking about it. Talking about supplies of timber on the limited amounts they have. Can they have it on a sort of a long term continuity basis so they can keep their economy going? We talked about the ferry system. We talked about a lot of things. It was interesting. Do you plan to make these sort of trips into other areas intensive? We did last year. We covered five or six in the Arctic. We're going to cover the Arctic again. I think about the middle of August. I think we're looking at, I'm not sure, Arctic village, Dan and I. Great. Point Barrow, Point Hope,

Wainwright, St. Lawrence Island, St. Paul Island, no. That's fun. That's all the time we have this morning. As always, we appreciate you taking part in the program, Governor. And thanks also to all of you who called us. You made it happen. Thanks to John Greeley, our producer, Jeff Brown, our engineer, staff of KTOO Radio in Juno. For the Alaska Public Radio Network, I'm Dave Donaldson. Have a good day. Thank you. This special program is made possible by Alaska. Celebrating 20 years of service to Alaska. This is APRN, the Alaska Public Radio Network. This special program is made possible by Alaska. Celebrating 20 years of service to Alaska.

Good morning. Welcome to the Alaska Public Radio Network's statewide call-in program. I'm Dave Donaldson. And our guest today is Governor Hickle. Good morning, sir. Good morning. How are you Dave? Fine, fine. We want to hear from you, our listeners. Give us a call at 1-800-478-TALK. That's 1-800-478-8255. And ask the Governor whatever is on your mind. That's what he's here for. Before we go to the phones, and I see a couple of them starting to light up here, but I have a question to ask. You've finished signing or dealing with vetoing everything now that's come out of the legislature. I think that it's the legislative package is all over. You've approved most of it. The few vetoes, a few of them, however, have kind of come as surprises. I wanted to ask you about perhaps the biggest surprise to a lot of people was the early retirement bill that was that you

vetoed. That had seemed to have been supported by the administration all the way through the legislature and the idea was to save money on salaries of some people who've been around for quite a while and putting some new people to work in the state, giving some employment there. But you rejected that. I'm just going to hear it's why. Basically, the administration came to conclusion. It didn't save money. In some cases, it could cost money. You're putting people on retirement, which comes out of the retirement fund. And then you're adding new people, but bringing in replacements. And they showed me some figures where we weren't really saving money by doing that. And so we finally decided collectively to veto that. It was a tough decision, but that's basically how it was made. Now, I like the idea when I first thought about it that people could take early retirement. It would

help us with this downsizing of government somewhat. That has worked a little bit, but it didn't work quite like we thought. And so that's why it's done. It's been done in the previous administrations. It seems to have had some effect as far as saving money. And that's why I was curious as to the reason for where it was going to cost money. That was the real question as to what was the expense involved in it. Yes. Okay. Another of the vetoes was in the capitol right, the Exxon money, the $50 million criminal final that Exxon paid, the legislature spent it all on timber buyouts and various projects. And you vetoed the entire thing. And what a way to that. Yes. I'm for the catchback bay buyout. I would like to see that happen sometime. The problem with legislation that we received, Attorney General told both houses that many

things they were doing in that bill was unlawful. And the courts have already decided what we can do and can't do. And I think now at 41 items in that bill, 21 were unlawful as I recall it. And I wanted and administration wanted basically to see that going to a trust fund and to have the earnings by this take care of what had to be done. And so when you looked at the numbers of items, everything they wanted and where they were located. And what our intent was on that bill, it was just we thought the best thing to veto the whole thing and start over. We could have taken for an example, I can't remember the exact number of millions of dollars to buy out catchback bay that they was in there. We thought of just appropriating money that would be the equivalent of that would be earned in a trust fund, which would be four and a half, five million dollars maybe. And so rather

than get into that, we just vetoed the whole thing. We're going to come back next year with the program we hope is more acceptable. It was a tough decision. You mean more acceptable on the 50 million dollars and what to do with that? Yes. But basically what you're saying is the attorney general has decided that the purchase of catchback bay would have been illegal. No, that wasn't one. I don't have the number of items. The catchback bay thing I think was legal, I think. But it has to do with what the court decided had to be done it with this money. And I think the catch back bay one was legal, but the amount of money in there would have exceeded what we thought the attorney would be. That's what he's trying to do. Okay, our number 1-800-478-TALK. That's 1-800-478-8255. Our first caller is from Fairbanks. Fairbanks, good morning. You're on the air. Hello, Fairbanks. Good morning, Governor. I

guess I coincidentally want to follow up on catchback bay. Given your public propensity to do things like the Cordova road, which is, I guess in some circles, has questionable legality. I'm just very surprised that despite campaign promises you made and repeated assurances you gave to people about the catchback bay buyback, that you would veto something that was such an unprecedented consensus agreement between the timber industry, fishing interests, native interests, citizens all across the state, and both houses of the legislature. And I'm just, I find it sort of incredible that you can go on. Well, let me talk about that. It's not that incredible. First, the price was 21 million. They've been negotiating on that for a long time. And so we didn't want to get set on a price until they had an exact agreement on what the buyout would be and what the state would be willing to pay. And so the 21 million figure was arrived at, but it hadn't been

agreed upon. And so if we would have paid, and if it would have been acceptable to pay half down, you'd have been stuck with the total consensus of 21 million. Now, I vetoed that when I campaigned on yes, I like the catchback bay buyout. It would have been, in my opinion, better not tied to a bill like the 411. The 411 just came out like a Christmas tree bill. I don't know if you've seen the bill and the number items that were hung on there or not. It was a difficult decision, as I said before. Don't compare it to, I hope you wouldn't compare it to the court over road. The court over road was there was no edict of my part that they should break any rule or regulation. DOT went in there with a fully understanding that they thought they were, what was doing was exactly right. And some lawsuits came a result of that. That's being settled now. But that's the reason I vetoed that. We're still looking at that. We'd like to do it. Now, people say that catcher

mack bay buyback is state park land. You wouldn't want them to cut in state park. It's not state park land. It's private land that we're trying to acquire to protect. Our next caller is from false pass. False pass. Hello, false pass. Good morning. You're on the air. Good morning. I'd like to ask a question about why I have found out recently that the position of social worker who serves in 10 point is no longer to be funded. I feel that if this is indeed true and it's going to happen, I feel that this is going to be a detriment to our whole area because it's already hard enough to get the social worker who was positioned in 10 point to come and take care of the problems which exist in our village and nearby villages. And now I'm told that this person, well, we will be served

by somebody out of King Salmon. And I think that that's a badly neglected area of the state government. Yes, it sounds like it's something that shouldn't have been done. The social worker, what, one of what department that was in? Was that in, oh, that must have been in Ted Moly's department where I probably was. Well, I don't know exactly why, why that happened. But I know they're trying to put efficiency in government now and then and everybody's keeps demanding at the budget be cut. They surely shouldn't cut just the social worker. Let us find out which one that is and see if we can get an answer to it. Okay. Best thing I can say. We'll take another one. Next caller is from Anchorage. Anchorage, good morning. You're on the air. Yes, good morning. Good morning. This is Chad Whitaker. I'm President Ruth. I'd like to thank Governor Hickle for leaving money

in the budget for the free fish giveaway tomorrow at noon at the Fairview Rexon area in Anchorage. We're going to give away the first of many loads of pink salmon, which will come from the Salmon Gulch Hat free and Valdez. And I'd like to extend an invitation to the governor to hand out the first fish. I realize a very busy man. When will this be tomorrow? Tomorrow at noon, yeah, at the Fairview Rexon. I won't be here. I'll be there at Thursday at about 11 o'clock, but not tomorrow. Okay. Well, maybe one of these loads of fish you can come by and help hand out fish to folks. Hey, that sounds like a lot of fun. I can't promise that for sure. I have to take my schedule. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Sure. Thank you. Okay. Our number is 1-800-478-TALK. It's 1-800-478-8255, and we're ready to hear from anywhere in the state. We're live statewide here. Caller from Anchorage. Another one from Anchorage. Good morning. You're on the air. Yeah. Hello, Anchorage. I also complement the

governor for not vetoing that $30,000 to distribute that fish to people rather than throwing it away. Anyway, I'm particularly concerned about illegal military residency and these people are voting in our elections and drawing permanent fund checks, and no one can identify up to 50,000 military families living out of the state of Alaska. No one has the governor done about it. Are you referring to 50,000 people who live out of Alaska as military, but still claim Alaska citizenship? Is that what you're talking about? And our residents of Alaska, and no one knows who they are, where they're at, there's no computer checks of them. That's not true. They cannot get dividends or anything like that without knowing exactly where they are. I know that Department of Revenue is

vigorously pursuing this. We've had various lawsuits from people who live outside of Alaska who are trying to prove that they are residents and they're out there now on a short-term aduty on some military base. So the $50,000, $50,000 number, I think, is very astronomically high, but I know they're pursuing it, and it's the case of just we have to be legal that we don't discriminate against the residents. The court has already ruled on that. That's a tough one. There are people who are military who do qualify for it as an issue. That's right. People, for example, someone who grew up here and is awful in a way you're hitching the army. And then if you, the courts have ruled, and this is kind of a difficult one, they did it on a whole longevity bonus and everything. Your residence is where you declare it to be. And so that makes it a pretty difficult

thing. It used to be. We had to be a pioneer for 30 years and to cut down. And finally, the court says you can be a pioneer after one year. And so then the residency is where you're declared to be. And that's what's a difficult thing. And let me check on that. Hi, the caller has a good point, but he says there's $50,000. Let's check. I don't know how many there is. Pardon? I got the figure from the Department of Defense. Why don't you call them up? And they'll, they'll tell you the same thing. $50,000. Are getting, are getting checks outside of Alaska? Yeah. Well, that's an awful lot of money. Well, if they're residents, there might be $50,000. I don't know. We'll check. We will do that. I'll, I'll check. We'll do that. I'll, you say there's $50,000. Residents outside of the states receiving dividend

checks. Okay. I think we've lost that call. But yeah, you had a certain area of defense chainy was up here the other day. That might, might be worth giving a call on that. That's where the numbers coming from. Sounds like, sounds like we found, that's a lot of, sounds like we found more work for you to do. Next caller at 1-800-478-TALK is from Fairbanks. Fairbanks, good morning. You're on the air. Hello, Fairbanks. Hello, how are you? Good. Governor, I wanted to ask you, there's been a lot of budget cuts happening and as a result of that, I'm, I'm really worried about how much money the state is going to be spending in lawsuits. We're going to be in lawsuits over the cordover road and disputes with the federal government over mining in a near-denali park and the mental health trust controversies and so forth. And these kinds of things, you know, could possibly be people's in the courts for, you know, years. What's your question? I want to know if the state has a fund reserved to pay for litigation, litigation like this and so how much

is it? And how much does the state spend yearly on lawsuits? Well, we don't have a fund for it. The state has been collecting over a billion since we've been in office just on the lawsuits we've won. We have others right now that are up in the hundreds of millions. So they collect it probably, I don't know, a hundred times more than they spend. And so yes, there are lawsuits we have to defend. You mentioned the cordover road. That's, that's a regulatory thing that they're getting straightened out now. We spend between probably 20 and 30 million annually on the whole Attorney General's office. And so they, I would, we will probably have to even increase that because we're going after some of this litigation. It's been, been on the books for 12 to 14 years. And we're settling them. We're bringing them up and getting them a settle now. We have another one that they're working on today

that's very, very large and a hundred million dollar category. So it doesn't cost this money. We're making money with those. So you're saying you see a, pursuing a lawsuit like this is an investment. Oh, that's, that's where we're collecting them. That's where we're, that all goes and generally the general fund, a few of those goes and reserve funds. Okay. Okay. Next caller one eight hundred four seven eight talk is from NACNIC. NACNIC. Good morning. Hello, NACNIC. Hi, hi, Governor Hickle. This is Bruce Stanford. I'm a fisherman up here in NACNIC. And the reason why I'm calling is that we've been sitting up here in the NACNIC, we check district waiting for fish to come off season. And the EGG district gets caught over 16 million fish, 15 and a half million fish with one and a half to mean up the river. It is sucked out 60% of the commercial catch of Bristol Bay. And what I want to know was what is your position on salmon interception within Bristol Bay. And we would like you to have your office interview, Mr. Florian, find out just what the

heck he's doing with our fish because the bottom line is that he is a quote with responsibility to ensure that as many fish as possible, the inner Bristol Bay go to their thermal fishing district and we have a terrible mismanagement problem here. Let me check on that. I can't answer that specifically. Let me get a hold of Carl Roser and find out. And let's get back to you. You say it's an escape on the NACNIC river? No, we have a statement on the NACNIC river. What it is, it's an allocation. It's a growth mismanagement problem. They allow the Igigic drift fleet to suck out 60% of the commercial harvest to all the fishermen in the rest of Bristol Bay. I'm talking about harm to the NACNIC weed jacked at Bristol Bay, Burrow, the city of pilot point, Dillingham. It needs to be investigated. We talked several times with Climpsilion this summer. He said he would look into it, but we want to find out just what the heck is going on here. It's really hard. I don't like to find out what's going on. It's really hard to find out when I turn

over a few stones and pull these guys out from under the rock for hiding under. That's great. Thank you. Collar is from, that's when I had not been aware of that one at all in the slightest. Apparently you haven't either. No, I'm not sure. There are so many problems in the fishing industry that going back to the time of civilization, it's always been a difficult thing. We talked about this morning in my office about, you know, they come in, who owns the fish? How do you manage it? Who catch them first? It's an ongoing problem, and that's exactly what we're trying to do with the CDQs. We're bringing some of these fish on shore for community development quotas, trying to limit the size of boats so that more of them will be Alaskan-based, and it's just a difficult thing, but we're trying to solve it. Our next caller is from Juno. Juno, good morning. Hello, Juno.

Hi, Governor. This is a question about your recent veto of the UAS Classical Edition, and as space is very limited out here at the University, I wonder what your rationale was, and how this ties in with your philosophy on higher education and sustainability? Well, basically, we had to make choices. The University of Alaska has an operating budget, it has a maintenance budget. They have a very, very bad problem of deferred maintenance up to $120 million. It's been going for the last 12, 14 years, and so we had to make decisions. We had a pretty good capital program, for an example, and finishing a building in Fairbanks that was built a number of years ago, the budget for fish building. Never was completed, and yet they'd built other buildings. So we put $5 million in the budget for fish building. We put in about $3.5 million in Matsu, and I think that was the two main

ones in the University of Alaska, as I recall. It's always a priority item. That's our goal, and we are meeting with the Regents and the Administration in Fairbanks, trying to figure out how we're going to catch up with that $120 million in the maintenance. We're thinking only thinking, maybe issuing a bond for $60, $70 million to try to bring it up to speed. We cannot do it just a little bit at a time. It's already beyond that point. One of their Regents, Lou Williams, said, are we going to have to wait for the buildings in Fairbanks to fall down before we face the issue? This is something that was brought to their attention 10 years ago, but they went on building new buildings and never took care of the old ones. That's one of the problems. So it had to do it with where we were going to put the money.

The University campus out here at Southeast is a marvelous campus. It's well done. It's in good shape. And so it's just a case of priority. The other projects that were involved there was this involved with the matching grants or anything like that, or this was just struck me that there was not that much that was vetoed out of the. No, there wasn't that one. It kind of stuck out, I think. There wasn't that much vetoed out of the whole budget. We worked with the legislature on this. I think out of 700 and some million total, we vetoed about 65, 70 or something like that. I don't have the exact figures here, but it wasn't that much. Our next caller is from Anchorage. Anchorage, good morning. You're on the air. Hello. It appears to me that the mandated separation of church and state has become more and more blurred in Alaska over the past few years. And I really just wondered how

do you as the governor define where church ends and state begins? And I was wondering how you instruct your subordinates on not crossing whatever line you draw. We don't even talk about it. I've never even had that face church and state. I'd have to have you be more specific. There's no talk about stepping across a line church and state-wise in the administration. Do you have a more specific question on that? It just seems to me that and I guess probably a portion would be one issue, although I'm sure if I really sat down and thought about it, there would be others. The lives of issue would. Borschen has nothing to do with that. We made it very simple. We didn't say you couldn't have an abortion. We just said the state isn't going to fund it. Simple as that. And so you can do what you want to, but it has nothing to do with church and state. So it's you are, however, in the announcement that was made on these new regulations,

your statement was that basically as a moral decision instead of as a financial or regulatory decision. That's right. If the decision could be made with the person, she makes it with her own conscience. If she wants to have an abortion, she can have an abortion. The state doesn't say she can't. We just say the state isn't going to fund abortions. I think the reference there was the callers reference was the idea that it was a moral decision based on the morals, the prevailing morals as to whether they would, the state would pay them. It was not based on anything medical or governmental or financial or anything like that. And that was what your statement was. Well, basically, yes, if that was interpreted that way, it was also stated that for medical, we were basically going to leave that to the medical society. We had a psychological problem, a medical problem, the state would fund it, but it wasn't just going to be an elective problem, elective choice.

Have you, there have been threats or talks of lawsuits and attorneys' opinions, both sides, I'm sure of the issue. That's really, I've read the ones that say that this question has come up in similar ways, has come up before and that you can't win this in court. And Alaska, what's the other argument there? Well, no, the Attorney General, we went over this, a great length. It's been something we've looked at for literally a year and a half. And Attorney General thinks this is very defensible in the courts. Next caller, North Pole. North Pole, good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Governor. I wanted to ask a question, and that is hack and non-profits become self-sufficient. If the state doesn't basically want a grant assistance in the last round of cuts, $150,000 was cut from Redline for purchase of a building. And part

of that money was to help Redline become more self-sufficient and not as dependent on the state and the city for block grant funding. We are trying to move into the area of not having to ask the state or the city for money, but to become more of a community based nonprofit to feed people. And the number of people that we feed each day anywhere from 200 plus saves the city and the state money because these persons are not necessarily going out shoplifting or becoming bothersome in certain ways. And they're definitely not incarcerated. And I don't understand a cut in an area that is more lean towards alleviating hunger and some of the problems. And at the same time, I see a $75,000 grant of a river

boat in the Nanna. Well, basically, we're not funding any non-profits. I'm just trying to think, and it was probably taken out of there because it wasn't an appropriate expense for government. Was that that food? It was to purchase a building from the Fairbanks Development Authority and the Fairbanks Development Authority had given a matching portion. Oh, yes. I remember that now. Last year, the Food Bank got $75,000 toward the purchase of their facility. Well, there's only so much you can fund. And there was basically a decision. We didn't, I don't think we funded any building for non-profits because where are you going to stop and where are you going to start? And you'll get this tremendous pressure of wasting government

money. Now, that's not wasting, but it was a decision made that it's not a proper government role. And that's why it was made that way. Well, it must have just changed the decision. Yes, that's the only thing I could think of. This is probably a new year and we had to take a new look because we just can't. It's really a difficult thing. The strong, strong message you get about, you know, a cutting-back government. And you have to know where to start. And it's not acceptable to cut back anything in education. And that's 40% of your budget. And so that's the difficult decision. That's 75,000 here. And there's hundreds of 75,000. And so you have to make a basic

decision. Well, on this thing, we won't fund this kind of stuff this year. And so that's the whole whole thing. Where does the government stop funding? These non-profits are these non-governmental things. I'd like to be able to fund a lot of things like that. But, you know, we spent $26 million in Fairbanks. That's a lot of money. So you just got someone in the buck stops here and that's why we had to do it. Next caller is from Wrangle. Wrangle, good morning. You're on the air. Good morning, Wrangle. Hi. Hey, I was down there for a Saturday. Okay. What's your question? You're on the air with the governor. Okay. Well, I was wondering about, um, and why? Yes. And why are you going to take it away from the Indians up there? Why are we taking it away from the Indians? Yeah. We're not taking it. And where belongs

the federal government? Well, I know that. But why are you going to let them drill in there? Well, the federal government is going to make that decision. We'd like to see them drill there just so because the state of Alaska is to get 90% of that revenue if there's any revenue there. That decision made by Congress and the federal government, not the state of Alaska. Well, if you, if you didn't find any of that sector, then if they're just to hold there, we wouldn't have a lot of, um, animals. What, what, what was that question? If there would be the oil drilling would actually affect the, the, the animals and the, the lifestyle of the people that's in the area. We know, you know, the people that live at the Cotovic there, they're, they're for that. And I'm just trying to think, no, if, if we thought that would harm the environment,