A Citizen’s Guide

To the editor:

Yippee! We will finally get to see what is in the gas line agreement that has been touted, pushed and kept secret by Gov. Murkowski. He was loath to disclose any details until he was ordered to do so by the courts. And then, he tried to backpedal by saying that the agreement was not really agreed to by anyone. What? I thought this was an “agreement!”

It just gets more and more curious. Does anyone think that the state of Alaska will benefit from this so-called agreement/ nonagreement? With the support shown by the oil industry for the apparently required tax restructuring, the oil companies are virtually guaranteed to benefit in a big way.

If this is supposed to be so beneficial to Alaskans, why did it take a court order to get the governor to release the details? I would say that Alaskans will see little, if any, benefit from this agreement at all.

The only sectors of the economy to benefit from all of this grandstanding are the advertising and media outlets. The oil industry has certainly paid big money to put their whining in front of the public.

Notice how you never heard them talking about their massive and record setting profits and the rapidly rising costs of fuel to the public.

No, all you heard from them is that they are no longer going to spend any money in the state of Alaska.

They are not going to hire Alaskans (and their record on this is suspicious as well) any longer. They will abandon all the possibilities of more profits here because Alaska has the resource they want—but don’t want to pay for. And our governor seems more than willing to accommodate big oil.

If all of the whining sounds disingenuous and fatuous to you—well, it does to me too. I think Alaska and Alaskans deserve better treatment from the governor.

Charlotte Cannon

Fairbanks