Citizens for Ethical Government

May 2005

If enough Alaskan’s do nothing while Ben Stevens raids the Permanent Fund, Alaska’s Dividend distribution program will soon be history.

The need to stop Ben Stevens from raiding the permanent fund and the need to repeal ELF go hand in hand.

ELF refers to an endlessly increasing series of tax breaks that our Legislature approved for oil producers many years ago.

ELF is a mathematical formula that increases its tax cuts for oil more and more every year. Since the original pre-pipeline severance tax agreement Elf thus far has cut Alaska’s percent of take from North Slope Oil in half.

Our original 15% severance tax on North Slope Oil was the lowest tax of any major oil producer in the world when it started and it has now been lowered to 7%.

If ELF is not repealed, over the next five years, the automatic increases of ELF’s tax cuts will cut our severance tax on North Slope Oil to one-fourth of the pre-pipeline agreement, cutting our severance tax to an unheard world record low of 3%.

The oil companies cannot sustain their automatically and endlessly increasing tax breaks over the next five years, without persuading the Legislature to raid the Permanent Fund and take your dividend to make up for the difference in funding required to cover the costs of services we all demand.

Ben Stevens is the guy the oil companies have hired, to the tune of about $50,000 per year, to make sure the Legislature raids the fund rather than repeal ELF. While pretending to represent you, Ben Stevens in fact doing the oil companies business. He and the oil companies who bought his loyalty are using his position in our Legislature to rob us blind.

If Ben and his buddies get away with what they are up to, they will use the Permanent Fund to clear our roads and patch our potholes until the Fund runs empty. It will run empty just about the same time BP sucks the last drop of oil out Alaska and splits, leaving Alaska about as poor as the coal companies left the hillbillies in Appalachia.

Ray Metcalfe
rayinak@aol.com

This entry was posted on Monday, May 16th, 2005 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Investigations, Timeline. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.