Running; Gubernatorial Interviews: Alaska Independence Party

You Good evening, I'm Dave Hammock, and welcome to Running. This is the third of our series of interviews with the tickets of the parties who have candidates running for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, and this fall is General Election. Tonight I have with me in the studio, gubernatorial candidate Walter Hickel, former Secretary of the Interior, and a former Governor, and Senator Jack Coghill, who is the Lieutenant gubernatorial candidate to gentlemen on the ticket as the Alaska Independence Party. Welcome to Running, and thank you for taking the time to join us. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Dave. I'd like to start this

by giving you each just a couple of minutes to talk about where you are in the campaign, and what do you see as the issues that your campaign is focusing on, and Wally will start with you. Well, Dave, basically, the reason I'm running is because Jack finally pulled out of the Republican Party, came on over there. He didn't leave the Republican Party. He basically supports this, but I think the state of Alaska needs some help. It doesn't mean that we're going to solve all the problem, Jack and I, but we have to bring this decision-making process back. In the last 10 years or about, too many of the decisions are coming from the federal government, from outside economic interest, and I think I find that throughout the state that, hey, we want to be involved in that decision-making process. They're talking about jobs. They're talking about family. They're talking about government intrusion to where they don't have a voice. I think that we can give them that voice. We're not afraid to fight. We're not afraid to go down there and work with that government. We think that

there is some savings can be done. It doesn't mean that you're against what's going on as much as give them a decision, give them a direction. We're ready to do that. Thank you very much, Wally Hickle. Jack Coghill, you have moved on the ticket from the Republican Party to the Alaska Independence Party. You've certainly created some of the most interesting turns in this campaign. What's your comment about what's happening now in the direction you're headed? Dave, the election of the 90s means the agenda for the next decade, and we need some changes. We need changes in the process. We need to stop the flow of things, the natural flow of things, the people of Alaska are nervous about the size of their government. They're nervous about the direction that their children are going. They're nervous about some of the services that are being performed. That the health and social services at division

is out of control, that the Department of Education has more people in the administrative side of it. We see that there's no agenda for reinvesting our wealth, for taking the wealth stream that we're selling our assets, we're doing is building bigger government. I left the Sturgie-Lusky ticket because she said no. She said no, we're not going to make those changes. Now, she might change her mind now, but at that time she said no. The thing is that I went looking for two things. I either had to get her into the center of the fold, and that's where I went to a Walla Hickle. Then when she pulled the Washington D.C. scene and when the White House called and said, you can't do this, you shouldn't do this, you're and put the directions. I seen Walla Hickle's jugular vein go up to about the size of my finger and he says, that's it, let's go. That's why we're in it. Well, thanks. I do want to follow up on the decisions and the reasons you all have chosen

to take this action. But before we get into the specifics of what you're standing for and where you're going, I want with the campaign and with those decisions, I want to give you an opportunity to clarify your agenda and issues. Everyone has themes and slogans. What are the candidacies about? I'd like to say this. We want to bring the decision making back to the people of Alaska. We want to bring the government under control. How do you do that? You do that by attrition. I talked about that 10 years ago. You can do it by better management in the middle section of that government. You have government that sets the bureaucracy that sets the policy on top. You have the guys down below that make it happen the hands-on people and in between there's a bureaucracy of government that I think can be strengthened, can be more efficient and I think less people. When I talk about attrition, you can probably not have to get the figures exactly come down about 1200 a year in an

average just by people leaving, retiring and things like that. Bring that budget under control. With good management, I think there's more money in that budget and there could be in raising taxes and you don't have to raise taxes. Then finally, give the people of agenda for the future. The problem you have today, the young can't see out what's going to happen. The government of Alaska is a different government than any state in the union. Generally, it's an adversarial government because the private sector runs everything. You go to Massachusetts or Kansas for Oklahoma. You and I might do something. The government will see to it. We follow a certain system so we don't take advantage of jack or somebody. So it's adversarial. In Alaska, if you just have an adversarial government, it doesn't work and that's the political arm and that's where they were taught. But all the exons and archos and DPs in the world or mining inter-surfishing can't do anything in Alaska unless some government says yes. We went to Pluto Bay because we said yes. We didn't tell them how to do it. Yes,

we're going to help you. So the attitude and atmosphere up here as an owner state for the government owns nearly everything. You have to have that both a political and economic arm. We're comfortable with that. That's what will give them the future and that's what give them hope. That's where we're going. Jack Cargo, any other comments on the campaign or identifying the issues that you want to be identified with in the voters minds? I think that the main issue that we have to identify is that we're going to set an agenda for the decade of the 90s and that agenda is going to be jobs in the private sector. In the decade of the 80s, the emphasis was on government, was on government services and creating larger government. We need to reorganize that government so that when the flow of the asset base on the slope declines that we're not found with such a large, massive government that we cannot manage and we've got to get that management tool under control. The best person to do that is my running

mate, Wally Hickel. He knows how to manage. He knows how to stand up to the federal government and say we're going to manage our fish and wildlife resources. We're going to manage our lands. We're going to manage our fisheries. We're going to make sure that there's a balance. So we're going to do that ourselves and bring that decision-making process back to Alaska. I think that the bottom line, the bottom line to the whole campaign for the 90s is jobs for the young people, jobs in the private sector, jobs in value added to our resource base. Not ship logs out to Japan in the realm, but to do something with them. Create a pulp mill, create these things, create and start reinvesting that wealth structure that we're getting off of the slope into that system. Right. You could follow up on that. David, you want to ask questions? Well, I wanted to bring up an issue that I'd like your perspective on because you do have

a lot of perspective. You were governor when I moved to Alaska. But you were also a proponent of statehood for Alaska. And now we have a situation where we say that the federal government is in too much control. Was statehood where do we go wrong? Did we not get what we should've had under statehood? Why is this still a problem? We fought the battle in territorial days because we didn't like that federal intervention. We didn't like that absentee ownership. That time the canned salmon industry was a strong one. And so we went for statehood and the people should understand that was a compact. And Congress can't change that compact without our okaying it. This wasn't a legislative act. Everything worked fine until we became quite wealthy in the mid 70s. And they started to eat away at us. The D2 lands took a little bit of that. Then they passed the law stating that we could only ship our oil to a certain place. And we have a free market system. And supposedly passed the law that cans can only sell

its wheat to a certain area, certain states or whatever. It wouldn't fly. But they'll tell that to Alaska. Now I don't have any problem shipping our oil down there for an example. But they ought to pay us for what it costs us. Or we ought to protest that. The 90-10 is a compact. Now are we going to give it up? That's the royalty share of federal lands. That's right. We got that on a kind of reclamation act. We didn't get any of those monies in those days. So they said you could have 90-10. At that time was 90% of nothing. And so these decisions and this compact can only be protected. With a governor that stands there and said, wait a minute. We're going to fight our battle for the people of Alaska. We can't just roll over and play dead. And while they'll tell us like they did on the on the subsistence thing. The three senators, the governor, Arliszer Zalowski, Tim Kelly, all the leaders said, we need a constitutional convention. I hadn't given it any thought to go down to Juneau. It was sort of a runaway train there. It was going. I said, wait, we don't need

a constitutional convention. We need a governor to say this is how you do it. And so why give that up? We went down and testified. Jack called me. I went and saw the governor and told him how he could do it by executive order. The runaway train was stopped. But it didn't have to start. It would have been stopped with the decision in the governor's office. We're going to manage the resource and not the people. Subcistence is an issue. But we should do it here. Don't let them keep eating away at us. And that's one reason I'm running. I have no fear of it. Let's do it. We'll come back to subsistence for sure. The issue of the state exercising its rights versus the federal government and not being under the domination of the federal government. That's not a new political rhetoric. We've heard governors for the last 10 years or so talking about the need to get fulfillment of the state issues. And so my question is, in a Hickle Calcula administration, what will be different? How will you be able to achieve this more of a control of Alaska's destiny

when other governors in recent times or not? Well, I'd have to go back and say, not this is what I'm going to do. You'd have to know this is the way he did it or this is the way he thinks. It's his whole life. Four days after I became governor, the government put a federal government put a land freeze on. It broke the compact. I had him in court in a week. Not that I was saying right or wrong, I said, you're broke, you broke the compact. Another one was on the, what a governor can do. We had a ferry system that ran from Prince Rupert of Vancouver. I may not remember that. Our ferry system ended at Prince Rupert. One day, British Columbia, Premier Bennett just took off that ferry. We had 500 miles in O'Ferry. We stopped at Prince Rupert. I said, we have to get to Seattle. I let the White House know that we had a problem, a real problem getting those people out of there. We're going to sail on a Monday at noon and the boat was ready. I also advised that this could be done and I was advised legally that the president could declare those waters inland

waters to make our boats legal because our boats were not ocean-going parrots. Ten minutes to 12, the all a matter of fact. Admiral Scullion was in the mansion. General Recrast was there with him. A call came in the White House. The president just declared all those waters inland waters. Today, to this day to day, those are all inland waters, but how easy it would have been for me to do nothing. That's just another case. And in that same case, we needed another ferry then because we had to take it out of the system to put it down there. The only ocean-going ferries in the world were foreign. We finally bought the Wickersham and it was legal to run it from Prince Rupert to Seattle, foreign port to American port. But the Laskins wanted to see it. They wanted to get on it. How do you do that to go between port to port? I knew the Jones Act was a problem. I flew to Wrangel and never told anybody anything. Get on that ferry boat. He docked in Juneau and I walked off. And it was kind of a frightening thing. And inside, I said to myself,

it had to be done and they can't put a whole state in jail. I got a call, received a call from Senator Magnuson. Could I meet him in Seattle at seven o'clock Sunday morning this the end of the week at the airport? I flew down seven o'clock. I met him. He knew what happened. He said President Johnson said, you have a waiver at the Jones Act. Now how easy it'd be not to do anything. But you have to fight those things. I don't have any problem doing that. It's not malice of forethought. It says doing what comes naturally. And those are some of the things you do. You do them today if they came up just like you did at then. Or you do it whenever. Whether you're in office or not. And that's the way it works. Jack, did you have any comment about the role of the governor in helping the state to exercise its rights under state? Well, Dave, you know that I was the chairman of the statehood commission. A 1980, 80, 182 and we gave our report in 183. And we went through a litany of the things that had to happen. We have to assert our sovereignty.

Because if we leave a vacuum, the federal government takes it away from us. Such things as the wetlands, the wetlands is a national issue. But Alaska is all wetlands. And there has to be some differences and some variances. The people in Alaska are different than they are in the Everglades in Florida. We're different than California as well as we're different than Montana. We have to say we are one of the 50 states. And when the federal government starts to do their legislation on the ban of export of our oil on the high sea fisheries and all of the rest of it. We have to be standing up there and standing tall for our people in Alaska and for the compact and for our constitution. Instead of every time there's an issue, while we hunker down and try to sleaze away from it. We back away from it. The last two administrations, the last four administrations have done that. And we need to get bold.

And we need to say there's time for a change. And the change is that Alaska should stand tall. We are a sub-artic nation. We're not just a state. We're a nation. We're a nation. And we have different temperance zones. We have different time zones. We have different ecologies in the areas that need to be taken care of. And you can't treat us as one. Because we're not one. We're an Arctic nation. And we should take our universities and we should lead the world in Arctic research. And we should lead the world in Arctic technology. And where better can you do it than the development of the coal and the oil fields in the Arctic? Such a program is going to require more than interfacing with the federal government. You also have a legislature of some legislature of some 60 members. He may be more or less recalcitrant to follow your vision. What would you see, Willy Hickola, Zura? How would you deal with getting your agenda and your vision enacted by the Alaska legislature?

I think you talked to them. And there are people I've worked with them before. In and out of government, I worked with them on this, on the subsistence thing. You show them a plan. You give it to them to get them on your side and do it. The most important thing is to show them how to do it. And I think there hasn't been enough, in my opinion, leadership of what to do. Has there been a real plan to say where we're going? I like what we did to a degree with the foreign fisheries. They worked with the federal government. They helped us. And so we phased out the foreign boats. But literally all they've done is transferred theirself from foreign to Seattle in Portland. And so we'll have to take a strong stand because not that we want to fight a sister state, but we're not contiguous like the Columbia River Basin of the Gulf of Mexico. We're up here by ourselves. And if a boat comes 1,500 miles and is doing those things, not touching the shores,

fishing falls, passes, a bearing sea, never coming in, it's putting it in a foreign boat. That takes a decision in fishing game. That takes a restructuring. That takes a fighting for what we really think is right. And there's other issues there. I'd like to talk about this whole environmental issue and where it's going. It's on our list. It's on our list. And we'll, right now I want to ask, we've talked a bit about the governor and the governor's role. Jack Cargill and our interviews during the primary, you talked a bit about the role of the lieutenant governor. And at that time, considering a field of potential running mates that didn't include Wally Hickle, what do you see as the job, your job description if your ticket is elected? Well, my job description is to help the program to feel good about the chemistry that there is between the governor and the lieutenant governor. You can't have two programs. You can't polarize yourself. You have to go forward with the program, a program to reorganize government,

a program to reinvest our resource wealth, a program to get our educational process and our health and social service programs together. Those are all things that we can do and the lieutenant governor will work side by side hand and hand. And like Wally Hickle has said, he does, he's not going down there with two hands, he's going down there with four hands. We understand that. And the thing is we need to have open cabinet meetings. We need to show the public that we're not going to have deals in the back room or that we're going to have a palace guard where that the people, the public cannot see what the public policy is going to be. The lieutenant governor should do that. He should take those burdens off of the shoulders of the governor. And I plan on doing that. And you can ask Wally Hickle, I'm sure that that's where he has me slated. Well, I was just going to ask Wally Hickle, are you going to let him do all those things? That's absolutely right. And ten more. Another advantage. Yes, we're running as independence,

independent Republicans. In some ways that could be a balance because you can walk between the Democrats and Republicans quite easily and we're comfortable with that. But more than that, Jack and I have been in this battlefield since 52 or 3. And there's one thing we've always said. We come to the same basic philosophy, but we always put Alaska first and the party second. You have to do that. And if you all you have to look at the figures, there's 162,000 plus registered independence or no party. There's about 60,000 registered Republicans, 55,000 registered Democrats. What happened in this young state in the last 10, 12 years, and that's when it broke, was they were tired of what was happening down there, this regimented little thing, just government playing around. Jack and I can broaden that out and bring 162,000 other people into that coalition of Republicans and Democrats. And where Alaska is first, that's the battle. That's what we're going to do. And Jack will be there with his two hands and his experience.

And Jack doesn't have to call me, and I didn't have to call Jack. I know how you think. Jack, I go, you mentioned in the talking about the role of the cabinet. This is a question I'll all certainly appreciate comments from both of you on. And speaking in terms of the open cabinet meetings and open public meetings and public process, the decision that you all made to jump into the race in this fashion was accompanied by a lot of political maneuvering and phone calls and things happening and meetings. What would you say to reassure viewers that this is not the way the government's going to be run by meeting a banker's house or a call in the middle of the night from a lawyer or whatnot. If open public meetings is your goal, how are we going to reassure us that this is the way it's going to be? Let me talk on that just a minute. I had no plans to get in this race. They talked to me last fall about. They talked to me this spring.

Far as June 1, I said, if we get past that date, I'm safe. I was supporting Jack Cogill all the way. He's running for Luke and Governor. I wanted Jack to run for Governor. The reasons he couldn't, I understand. I supported Rick Helford and Jim Campbell is a thought. The primary was over and it was Arles and Tony and Jack is a Lieutenant Governor and Willie. I said, Jack, I'm supporting you. Let's, whatever happens. But there was a, there was a, a funny thing out in the countryside. People of all sides, Republicans, Democrats, labor, business, miners said, we don't have a choice. And I said, yes, I'm, let's go. And this kept going. I finally went to Switzerland to give a major speech at an international energy conference. It's 10th September. I came back to 12th and it was still there. Nothing was going to be done. There were no plans for anything. When Jack had his meetings, as far as I was concerned, I was just downtown at the packet at a function. Went home, the whole story is there. It came just like that the midnight call. The next morning we met, Rick Helford was there, Jack was there, Robin Taylor was there,

family was there. No decision was made. I told my wife once, we get by five o'clock, we have it. And then we received the call from Sanuno, at the White House. That's told many people. He didn't call to congratulate me. And, you know, he shouldn't have told me what I shouldn't do or what I could do. For all my life, I've been tired of getting those phone calls from Washington, even for state of telling us what to do. Why tell us what to do? Let's make some decision. That was the catalyst. That's how it happened. There was no backroom deals, no malice of forethought. It was there. I feel comfortable with it. That's what it is. I'm clean here. And that's why we're running. And I think that Dave, you want to take into account that we were trying to bring the ticket into the middle ground. We were trying to get the liberal ticket back into halfway into the conservative side. This meeting that was put together was an open meeting. It was public.

It was open as invitation by Mr. Cuddy to several of his friends and to a cross-section of people, both in the fiscally conservative side of the political spectrum and to some of my supporters were there because they were anxious to find out from the head of the ticket as to where I would fit in this. I didn't get even one-hundredth of the concession of what I would be doing in government as to what Wally Hickle just told you. The thing is that I don't need to go down there to sit at the end of the hall and to be a figurehead. I'm going down there because Dave, we need change. Our kids need change. I don't need change as much as the state of Alaska needs change. I put this above the party label. I put it above the party organization. I'm a Republican. Wally Hickle and I can support the Republican ticket. The people that are on the Republican ticket

cannot support the platform of the Republican party. And the thing is that we did not do anything sleazy in the back room like Arles and Tim Kelly did when they put their coalition together two years ago. Before the public, we didn't cut a deal where they had to take it or leave it. Our ticket is the ticket that's going to make a difference for the people of Alaska. And that's the reason why I did it because under the other ticket it would have been just businesses usual and go along with the flow of things. There wouldn't have been the change that's necessary as far as the state's concern. How did the primary process result? How do you think in a situation where the Republican party, as you feel, is represented by someone who doesn't represent the Republican party? Well, I think that the open primary system is such as it is. I think that one of the problems that we have in our open primary

is that we had two conservatives. The reason why I did not run for governor was a personal reason, but I would have just split that conservative side just a little bit more and Arles still would have won. Because the thing is that she's picking, she's taking from the liberal side of the ledger. Now, with our ticket, with the Wally Hickle-Jack Coghill ticket, we're on the conservative side on the pro-business, pro-pro-development side of the issues of the state, and we're going to be able to take that margin. We're going to take a margin of the independence. We're going to take a margin of the Democrats, and we're going to take a margin of the Republicans with us, and we're going to win this race. And I'm feel confident because we give the people a choice. On the other side, you've got the Green Party, you've got the Knowles Party, and you've got the Sturgilist Party, and they're all liberals. They're all liberals. The 57% of the people in the

state of Alaska are conservative. They're going to vote for us, Dave. That is the real choice, Dave. That's the choice because that's the thing that came out of the woodwork when Jack and I filed. That enthusiasm and the people that came around and said, we weren't going to vote this year. We haven't voted for the last two elections because there isn't anything, any choice. And so I don't know a lot of these people. We've met a lot of them since then, and they're not saying as much what do you stand for as we want to change? We're going to go with you. This question of the open and closed primary. I suppose if there's anyone who can take the most credit or blame depending on your perspective for the primary we have now. I've always heard it was Wally here. Jack wrote it. Ted Stevens was with us. It was the first bill we passed. We passed it in both houses. I think it's seven days and open primary because we had a sort of a closed system and we wanted to broaden it out. It was a different

situation than it worked. It was right. It gave people a choice. I'm glad of it then, but it's a different thing now. As I was going to say, my question was going to be is that what would you change about that now as far as elections? Is there a amendment you would propose if you're elected as the governor? I think that we would leave it the way it is. There's a Supreme Court ruling saying that there's an invasion of the right to make choice that may come down in the next year and change things. But I think that if we're talking about conservatives and we're talking about liberals, maybe the best thing for us to do would be to have party nomination through another process. Maybe it's through a closed primary, maybe it's through a convention system. I don't think that that right now is an issue in this campaign as much as Dave, the big issue in this campaign is reapportionment, is to make sure that we have a one man, one vote system that we don't have gerrymandering in order to protect people. And Wally and I are firm

believers in limited terms. If you limit the term of a governor to two terms, then we ought to limit the legislative process to eight years. I was just going to say one thing. The primary process is great. But what the courts are really saying, take the independent party, 162,000 people, they just go on the ballot. They have a process and I like that. And so I don't know whether the closed primary would solve that as much as giving the people a choice. We've talked earlier a little bit about open cabinet meetings and functional cabinet meetings. It's as a reserve of the Juno scene. It seems to me a long time since I've seen a cabinet meeting where 17 people, 17 departments and a lieutenant governor set around a table and made a decision. How would our commissioners, are they managers of administrators or are they policy makers in the cabinet? Let me talk about that. You can only do what you have done. I would take a group of people down there and say, I need you at least two years or maybe four. Men that really didn't need a job,

but wanted it. We did that last time. We do it again. There are men out there concerned, I'd say, come on down and do it. Then you give them a direction. You put them in that bureaucracy to set the tone at the top. Now it's not going to be easy. I have no qualms about what the difficult is going to be, but you have to go with that attitude, give those men and the right kind of men that opportunity in that direction and then you hold your meetings once a week or whenever and sort of give them a direction and then have gotten to it and it can work. Chicago. Dave, my vision, I've been back in the system now six years. I'm in my second term of the Senate and I've watched the constitutional system go completely haywire. It's dysfunctional and it went dysfunctional in my estimation during the Hammond administration and I'm not blame on him. That was his way of doing things is that he kind of created a parliamentary system where that each department was kind of had its own little autonomy. That's wrong. That's not

what you have when you have a strong chief executive system. What we need to do is that we need to have the cabinet meetings open so that you can bring your cameras down there and you can listen to the policy being made. Now when it comes to the nitty-gritty everyday churn of government, those are going to be done between the commissioners and their staff because you have three layers in government. You have your policy people, you have your providers of service which is the bottom side. Those are the ones that are the hands on. That's the greater operator and that's the trooper and those people and in the middle you have what you call the pass-through of government which passes from the policy to the worker and the thing is that the cabinet level you will talk about coordinating. We're going to go down there with an agenda and that agenda, Dave, is to straighten out the process of government, to streamline the process of government and not

cut the services to people but to broaden it and to give them some kind of an input into it. And how you do that is with open cabinet discussion and so that they can turn on the evening news or on Ratnet or on your program and they can see that we're talking about a situation where the Department of Labor, Department of Environmental Conservation, the Department of Administration are all interrelating to what the policy is for the state. You got the picture then now as to how the details are put together but we're going to reform all of the rules and all of the regulations that have been handed down because so many of them far reach out beyond the legislative intent. That will be one of the discussions that will be used in this process. The next question I have is a bit of a sensitive one and I'll admit it going into it and I'm asking this of everybody, who are these people going to be? What kind of people and who are going to be

end up on these commissioner charges? They'll be the kind. I think they'll be decision-makers, they'll be people that were in the executive branch of the private sector, maybe the executive branch of Governor of Government. We have to take the so-called legislative mind out of that executive branch. That executive branch sort of has a legislative mind to a degree. You put that back and those group of commissioners you come down are going to have the managers. They need managers but they also have to have political sense. They have to know worse going and above all this is important. It's not so much what you do at the moment is how you set the attitude and atmosphere by what you want done. There's one thing to say, well, we're down here fellas, go over there and do the best you can in Department of Commerce and the other one is say, hey, this is the plan, go over Department of Commerce and try to make this happen and the difference of that is day and night. Those government employees are good people basically. I've been

Governor and Secretary at 80,000 Washington or in my private life. If you just don't set an agenda in my private business, this thing just doesn't, nothing happens. You set an agenda and let them know what needs to be done and they'll get it done without an agenda, without direction, then it's go sideways and that's the problem with government. The kind of people, kind like Jack and I, only different people. Well, I want a question I have and we'll follow up. This is in 1990s. Is there a commitment in a Hickle-Coggle administration to include women and minorities in the cabinet? Absolutely. Voice had them. There's no problem there. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's more women in my life than there are men. I can inform you that day and I want to tell you one thing to add to what Wally say it is that we are the stewards of government. We are not the owners of government. So our cabinet with one of the first thing that we're going to tell them when they go down there is don't unpack your bags.

Don't buy a house. Don't settle in for an eight-year stint because you're only here temporary. You're only here to do a job for the people of Alaska. You're not here to create yourself a political career. Well, the, thank you. That's mainly important. All right. I want to get on to what the agenda is. We talked about reducing government and that, or using the cost and that's a critical issue, obviously. We've got revenue projections that, from everybody on the all, look bad in the mid-90s unless there are some changes made. Do you have a budget goal for like the next fiscal year will be FY92, the one that you'll have the first impact. You won't be totally the new governor's budget. We're not going to set it out there now. It's going to be cut, like I said, with management. It's about two million eight this year, Jack. Yeah. Two billion eight. I'm at two billion eight. I think, I think you can get that down to two billion three. Now, I would, I would separate something. I would separate the capital from the operation. Now, 75% of the money we get now goes into government operation. 25% goes in the permanent fund it should. Now, part of that 75%

that we get, it can't all go to operation. It's an owner state. It comes from resource. It has to go back so you can create more things. And you have to, in my opinion, get resource development going. You have to get some kind of base other than just the oil and gas. And what you do have an oil and gas, be sure you keep it going. I think more than that, if you don't have an agenda like that, you're going to run out. And so you just set that attitude and atmosphere. It isn't so much how you go to Prutal Bay or how do you go to Anwar? Everybody says they're for Anwar. Well, I've been for Anwar for 20 years, you know. It is the attitude of yes, we want to make it happen. Not we're going to Anwar, but we've got to be careful. We've got to do this. It doesn't work. It's difficult enough when you make that commitment down here. It's tough enough to make it happen then, but you have to make it there and say this is what we're going to do. Now, of that 2.6 or 8 billion current FY 91 budget, half of that 50% is pass through. Is the foundation K through 12,

it's municipal revenue sharing, it's Medicaid. If we're looking at hopefully a reduction in the neighborhood of, you know, three or four hundred million dollars, let come from equally or partially from both the pass through half of the state budget or from the operating half of the overhead administration. How would you see that being distributed? Let me answer that. Let me answer that. First of all, you've got to establish the criteria of income and what Wally is talking about is correct. You don't include in the income your asset base sale. In other words, the royalty monies is not government money. That's people's money. That belongs, that belongs to reinvesting. The reason why we did that when we had the beginning of statehood, you know, was we were being drained of all of our wealth because our wealth was going out of the state and nothing was being reinvested. The founders of the statehood and we were both involved in it was not, not to create

a big massive government, but to reinvest that. So the first thing you have to do is that you have to set that aside, then take a look at what are the funds that you're having. So that would amount to about a billion eight under the mid-barrel scenario that we had before we went. Then you take a look at your pass-throughs and you take a look at your government. Your government services is about $800 million. If you look at government, just in government. So you basically have that pass-through. Is follow what I'm saying? Is that what you need to do? Is that you need to be able to shrink that 40% in the middle, which is the middle management of government. And we can't answer and give you exact things. But the thing is that pass-throughs like forward funding of education, we should take some of this windfall and forward fund it because the local governments, not only the villages,

but also Anchorage and Fairbanks, depend upon that money, critically depend upon that money to run the schools, critically depend upon that money to run the feeder roads that they have in the area. So all of those pass-throughs are very important. And we're not going to say chop 10% here, chop 10% there. That was the problem with the legislature. If we chop 10%, they'd go down and chop the greater operator because they knew darn well that Dave would be on the phone next week or the next day calling his legislators, so what are you doing? And there's other things too. You have so much revenue. But the value added is vitally important. Where is the intent of the value added? I hate to talk about things in the past, but I remember well when we added the value added on the first 20,000 barrels of oil the state ever had. That's all they had. And no state in the union ever did this. I took the 20,000 barrels. I said, keep your money,

I'm taking the oil. We put it out for bid and said the highest bidder had to build a refinery and keen eye. We not only got more money for that oil than we were getting, we received, we got the refinery and keen eye. Now how easy to be just say, well, let it go, let it go, let the refineries be built outside or whatever has happened. It isn't, it isn't just everything, but you have to think value added because that's an economic base for this, for this state. And that's the thing that the young see. They don't see any opportunity for the jobs in the future. I think while this quality of life we haven't talked about is, is a given here. That's why we're here for the quality of life basically starts with a job. Because if you don't have a job, you're not going to make it out, you're not going to make out. On the subject of jobs, I think that everyone is, even those who are inside our current state government recognize that we've got a lot of it. I mean, I'd be able to afford it as the revenue stream from Prudo to Clients. But there's a downside in downsizing.

The State Economist from Department of Labor figure that every time you cut two state positions, you lose one job. You lose another clerk at cars or a gas station attendant. If that works, then you just put everybody to work for the government. And listen, and money isn't well. The wealth is an infrastructure we pass on to our kids. The Alaska Railroad, if that money would have gone into a permanent fund in 1915, there'd be no anchors, there'd be no fairbanks, there'd be no progress. And so it's vitally important that you think out there like that. Well, I guess my point is we'll take it. My question was along the lines of how in the short term, how do we manage the impact of the government reduction? Because they're going to be more conduits on the market. It's privatization as part of it. You're engineering staffs in DOT. The good people would fall right over into the private sector. They would become a part of the institution within

the private sector for design and for all of the rest of it. We're going to have to put a different road system together. We can't go out and have the large engineering federally mandated programs when we want to develop this country. I've authored a resolution last year, which was Senate Joint Resolution 47. Anybody can go down to LIO and get it. And it established a whole new system of roads in Alaska. Because we need to have ice roads. We need to have trails, resource roads. And then once the economy picks up in there and the demand for that road becomes greater, then we upgrade it to the point where that you have the secondary system. But you have to get a value out of it. Bellingham, the refinery and bellingham is a good example. That refinery and bellingham is all Alaska crude. There's about 2600 jobs in each one of those refineries. That should be here in the state. If we put in at some kind of an incentive a refinery and valedies

to break down the crude into the industrial oils, then we could export it to the world. It's only the natural crude that we can't export. Those are just some of the things and we could, you know, an hour is not long enough for Dave to be able to go into all of the program. It's the attitude. It's the will to make it happen. This question is coming to you and we follow up on that. Well, this will be part of that because I spend a lot of time in Valdez and the work around the legislature before that. And I've heard nothing but everybody wants to build a refinery in Valdez at the end of the pipeline for 15 years and nobody's been able to do it. How will you be different? Well, I told you how we did it down there. We just took the crude. It's possible. But there's more than that. Everybody just looks to crude oil. They think that's it. There's a lot of other things. Caporic and West Sack. They need some, they need some incentive factors. They're probably more crude there than crude obey. And ultimately, that will come on the market. I don't see it running out for the next 20 or 25 years.

But another thing, the state of Alaska owns the gas and the producers own the gas. Bill Egan and I got together eight years ago and said, this isn't going to work. That gas has to go to market. We don't own any gas. All we were being is a convener. You know that you own the gas and jack owns the gas. The public owns the gas. We're just like an employee saying, let's get this thing together. Like in my company, if I had a guy said, coming around saying, hey, I have an idea. This could help make $400, $500 million a year. And that's what it means to the state. And if he went to work on that, and if he made it work, I'd probably give him a bonus. And so what I'm trying to say is the state of Alaska hasn't really led to say, this is what we should do. They should be trying to get that gas to the market. That gas never went to the market even during the OPEC crisis. And it's a valuable resource for the state. I've been doing that privately. I want to see it go. It means four, five hundred million depending on the price to the state of Alaska for the next

25 years. It means 10,000 jobs during the construction season. It means five, six hundred jobs year-round. You have the value added to all the liquids for the whole of fleeing petrochemical plastics. If you don't think that way, the only thing we're going to exports are young. And that bothers me because a civilization that doesn't take care of its young and give them an opportunity is not going to be a civilization. And I resent it. And Dave, I'd like to add to that. Oil and gas is not the only resource that we need to be thinking about. We need to bolster our commercial fisheries. We need to bolster our sports fisheries. We need to bolster our mining, our agriculture. We've got one of the finest potentials for agriculture in the country, but you've got to set the policy and then turn them loose. That's been the problem in the last 10, 15 years. Government wants to control everything that you do, including to the size of your glass frames. You know, the thing is that what you need to do, farmers, the agricultural community failed in Alaska and why did it fail is because for every farmer we had seven bureaucrats.

And the thing is that those bureaucrats meant well, but that was the sense of direction that they got from the governor's office or from the people that made the policy. We want to march down and say, the opportunity is here, be a good neighbor, be kind to the earth, be kind to the air, be kind to the water. We're going to set the policy and the standards that you take, but I am probably more of a conservationist and I believe in the wise use of the resource. Wally's a little bit heavier on the environmental controls and together we make a balance. We make a balance, but we need to get the miners back in the cricks. We don't need to talk about this natural pollutants that come off of the dirt. But we have to have, we have to have the water quality in those cricks have got to be kept in mind that they're the neighbor with fish that go up those cricks, but we don't take it over and above the other. But when you talk about multiple use, you don't say

two uses, you say all uses because that's where you get what we talk about wealth. Wealth doesn't come from the investment of money. Wealth comes from producing something new and producing something new with the last good jobs. And you know, local hire is a good issue, good issue to bring into that. How do you take local hire? What you do is it's an attitude and it's an attitude that when somebody's on state land, Wally's going to say, how many local people are you going to hire? That's going to be a criteria as to how quick and how fast they can get that process going. But you can't have pocket local hire. You can't say we're going to do something on the Lucian Islands for processing and say only people that can be hired are people from the Lucian Islands. That's crazy. We're running to the end of our hour. We've had a long list of things yet to do. We're not going to get to them all. But I want to direct you on a couple of questions.

One, and this, we've talked, you've talked just recently now about environment. I think that is a I think there's a great concern. There's a lot of concern in Alaska and particularly with the events the last couple of years. What is the, in a nutshell, the environmental policy of environmental policies? You don't degrade anything. I think the perfect example is Pluto Bay. You know what it is. You set regulations by how to do it and then follow those. And the quality of life appears, I mentioned, is it given? That's why we're here. But you still have to have economic development to have a job. And why I'd like to mention, when it was first put together, if I have time, was only nine and a half million acres. That shouldn't be touched. I've been there as secretaries, governors of private citizens. I've walked it. I've been there with helicopter. It's beautiful. So they've got this image of Anwar. And the nine and a half million acres now is 19 million acres. It's way out there in the coastal plain. I remember going to Pluto Bay when we opened it. And you looked east to there. That wasn't Anwar. It was a perfect extension of what's

happening. I asked the question, if Pluto Bay wasn't there, would Anwar be clear over there? Now, when you go to do that, you're not going to touch those very fine places like the heart of Anwar. You're not going to do that. That coastal plain area is different. We can set that. And I don't care if it's a road. We need more national scenic highways. I like the one going to sew it. It's well done. It's not completed. So let's don't think too small and this don't think that man is the enemy of the environment. I've said many times. The color of the environment is not just green. It's real. And a man who's cold and hungry and unemployed is in an ugly environment. I don't care what his natural surroundings are. I'd like to move on to a couple of important statewide topics. We've touched on most of these. But specifically, issue facing the Alaska's government, Governor and Legislature in January will be the resolution of what has become the subsistence crisis. The state didn't pass a constitutional amendment to create a preference. What's your solution? What do you think we should do? Jack knows that very well. I asked the

question when I was down there. Suppose the constitutional amendment failed and I thought it would. Where would you be? You'd be right where you started from. The governor by executive order can manage that resource rather than the people. If there's a shortage of game, for an example, it's St. Murray's. You manage that game. That game stays there for subsistence in that area. It doesn't mean that Jack couldn't go out there and hunted, but he couldn't remove it. And so subsistence is a very basic thing for those people there, and they deserve it. Jack, you want to follow through on that? Yeah. Dave, it reaches beyond the gathering of fish and game. It's a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle, these people. We will guarantee that that lifestyle will be there. You can do it right now under the Constitution. The Constitution says sustain yield of its resources, subject to preferential use ooze. Use ooze, not use ooze. You don't put special privileges for a special class of people into a constitution and have equality.

What you do is you do that by administrative function. You do it by executive order and you make sure that those people have got preferential by doing different game management techniques, by opening seasons for two days, by retaining the the bounty of that hunt in within the management unit, by giving them the right to to go out and to pick their berries. You know, I've maintained that we have to get the villages off of the off of the welfare structure. We have to start natural animal farming. We have to get some innovations out there to make those villages be able to go to to be able to go forward to some kind of an economic structure. Well, a lot of those villages, particularly in southwest Alaska, have become so frustrated with things as they are that there is a growing movement in support of native sovereignty. And the Cooper administration has come out basically with a statement that indicates there's

some recognition from them of some level of sovereignty. What would a Hickle-Coggle administration? How would you tackle that one? I'll make it simple. I think that they have a right for their own kind of local government. Whatever that might be within the structure of a state, I do not think they should have a sovereign nation. This is one country and it has to be unified that way. But the governor of this state and the people must recognize the difference out there and don't try to impose something on that area out there that is not conducive of what they want. They have a right to make their own decisions within the framework of the Constitution. We can do that. The most important thing. Keep it as one. I think it goes beyond local government, Dave. I think it goes into the social service side of it. Some of the traditions of the family unit of the family structure that's within our both the Indians and the Eskimos is very dear to them. We don't want to see that western style structure get into the middle of that and to disrupt it. And I think that that's about 50 percent

of it. The other 50 percent is local control of their lifestyles. I'd like to hit one more issue. I wish we had more time and I apologize for giving this to you at the end under short period of time. But it's one I think that is important because your constituency includes, as you said, both fiscal and social conservatives. Is a Hickle-Coggle administration going to take as one of your agenda items a change in the state laws regarding the access to abortions? I am against abortion by conscience. I was born that way. That's my decision. If someone else has another decision, fine. As far as state funding of abortion, I wouldn't support it. We're coming just about to the end of our time. And as I said before, I'd like to give you each a moment to for closing comment or thought and pressure you want to leave with the viewers. We've covered the waterfront here. Jack Cargill, candidate for Lieutenant Governor. What's the thing you want people to remember about you as a candidate on the Alaska Independence

Party ticket for Lieutenant Governor? Well, first of all, that we're real, that we feel that there has to be compassion. There's many, many items in the structure of government that have to be changed. But for my closing comment, I would like to say that the thing that we have to look at the most is the traditional family. We have to get back to family values. We have to put love and we have to put compassion into the administration. It can't be hard steel dealing with each individual. We have to reestablish the family court system. We have to do all of those things that are necessary in order to preserve that tradition of sitting down to the breakfast table or to the dinner table and to be able to build the ethics, the ethics around the family. And where does that all start? It all starts with jobs. And the family that has a good job, that has a good income is able to carry out those compassion and that love and that foundation.

Alaska, as well as the nation, was made great on the family. And the thing is that we need to create an economic structure. And how do we do that? We don't do that through government jobs. We do that through opportunity. Thank you, Jack Cargill. Wally here go. He said it all. The unit of government where starts and is the best is with the family. That's where I was brought up. That's where it is. We're going to have that in mind. But more than that, Jack and I are going to bring some hope and vision to this country. If the young people don't have it, see an opportunity to stay here, to have a meaningful job, and still have the natural wonders they like. It's not going to work. And so the attitude and atmosphere is going to be, make it for them. Jack and I, and the rest of us, will go through. But if they can stay here and build on this unit, this is the most unique piece of real estate on earth. I wish I had time to tell you why I think it hasn't started. And in the next 50, 100 years, I mean this. I can see a greatness here

because it's the most unique piece of real estate in the free world. It's not in competition with men's living. God put these resources up there. And thank God it's up there not in second and main streets someplace in America because no one's going up to Prudobae and buy a lot and retire. Thank you very much. Wally Hickle and Jack Cargill, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor. That concludes this interview. The ticket, officially on the ballot, is the Alaska Independence Party. They prefer the title independent Republicans. Coming up later this week, we'll have a conversation with candidates from the green party of Alaska and the political party. Tomorrow night, stay tuned for interviews with our candidates for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. I'm Dave Hammock. Thanks for joining us.