How Do I Sign Alaska Banking Word

Industry sign banking alaska permission slip simple

you you you you you you you we're live now I'm going to share my screen I can there's the participant so I guess we'll let folks in now and get this show on the road a there'd be yep feelin okay all right hello everybody welcome all right I think most of the folks who are in the waiting room have been added now thank you all for joining us today this is the plug the leak declining oil in the future of Alaska's economy webinar my name's Ryan Marsh I will be just given a couple introductory remarks here and then passing it over to get things started so I'm Arctic program manager for the northern Alaska environmental center and our organization along with green star Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition Alaska Peace Center have been working for several months to put together the Fairbanks Earth Week events so this is one in a series of webinars and all week long some of you may have seen some of the poetry and art walk that got put up at creamers field that's gonna stay up an extra week I think now so through next week if you haven't been out there yet go on out and check that out and just wanted to UM plug a couple more events coming up before we get started here tomorrow we have two webinars as well at noon Phil white and Cathy walling with their manes Climate Action Coalition are going to be doing a webinar on gve a and the the power of member ownership and how you can use your power in that upcoming elections um and then from Florida six Alaska Center will be hosting another webinar on climate policy in the Alaska Legislature and having some question and answer there on that with Alyssa Quinton and louise flora so those are coming up and then on Saturday from 11 to 11:30 we're having a virtual March I'll make a sign get on to that register for that zoom event and then check out all of the signs that other folks have made and then we'll sing together and have a quick moment of camaraderie celebrating our planet and and moving towards action so to sign up for any of those go to Fairbanks Earth Week on Facebook or go to the website the address is right here somebody can drop it in the chat fifthly slash Fairbanks Earth Week and you can register for any of those still coming up before I pass it on over to Sara Furman just want to say thank you to Mount McKinley bank gve a ABR as well as would way for sponsoring all of the Earth Day events couldn't do it without you so thanks again welcome everybody and Sara you can take it away thanks Ryan and welcome everyone I'm super glad that you're here with us today if you take a moment and introduce yourself in the chat let us know where you're joining us from if you know the traditional land on which you're sitting right now it'd be great to hear that I just want to acknowledge then we're on the unseated territories of the indigenous Alaskan people some I personally my house I'm on land that so the lower Tanana Danae people's so I just want to take a moment and acknowledge that reality and I also just want to say thanks to Ryan and Sarah and everybody else who has done all the behind-the-scenes and tech work to make these webinars happen and that's not something that is my forte so it couldn't do it without them my name is Sarah Furman I live here in Fairbanks and I just started at the beginning of this month as a campaigner for the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition working specifically with the keep it in the ground group who have been volunteering with for several months and we organized with the goal of having a just transition to a regenerative economy and specifically we've been looking at the oil tax structure and how our state has basically been funding this extractive industry for decades and ways that we can change that I think this concept is maybe particularly scary right now because the oil industry is in crisis and our state is dependent on that money currently but we really see this as an as a moment an opportunity to change to change our economy to move it in the direction of a more just and equitable economic system so without further ado I want to introduce Larry so the way this is going to work is that Larry is going to talk for about 15 minutes and he is a wealth of knowledge as you will soon hear and then stick and Nick's gonna talk for about 15 minutes and we'll have time at the end for Question and Answer if while they're talking you have a question please just put it in the chat box we'll get to as many questions as we can at the end so Larry personally has been writing about and working on oil and gas and state fiscal issues in Alaska for more than 40 years he served as deputy commissioner at the Alaska Department of Revenue worked on oil and gas issues in the governor's Washington DC office and served as a legislative staffer for the house finance committee co-chair before his career in public policy work he reported for several news organizations in Alaska including petroleum news the Anchorage Times Anchorage Daily News Juneau Empire and The Associated Press he is now teaching journalism as a visiting chair at the University of Alaska Anchorage so uh take it away Larry thank you I'm honored to see so many people online I haven't talked to this many people in two months so I'm gonna keep it to 15 minutes I really had promised and I guess I'd like to title my presentation the Pitts and the pendulum and that's because look we know the state's economy the oil industry is definitely in the pits but as you think about all taxes it's been this pendulum that's just swung back and forth between one extreme or another and we've never quite figured out I think the right answer or sustainable answer so I want to try to quickly go through some history on all taxes because to understand the debate today I think it's important to understand how he got into this mess so back in the 70s and 80s the state's production tax on oil had nothing to do with price price was not a factor the rates stayed the same no matter how high or low the price went that really wasn't very good in fact as fields aged the tax rate again wasn't based on the price or the profit it was just based on the per well production so his older fields produced less per well the tax rate went down that really wasn't very good to the state in fact at one point cap Ark which was the second-largest field or still is the second-largest field on our slope their tax rate was headed to zero under this formula so after many many years of fighting in 1989 the legislature changed it and really it was the exxon valdez that gave the political I guess cover or the impetus imperative to get enough votes in the legislature to change that it brought the park back up to where should be raised the rate at Prudhoe so it that 1989 vote boosted state revenues from those two biggest fields but it also set up a structure where the tax rate would be smaller on new oil so we got ourselves I think into this mess where as old oil which is paying a high tax rate was declining in production all the new oil was coming in at a very low or no tax rate so you lose a barrel of old oil you got a barrel of new oil but your revenues go down even if you're holding the same so for about fifteen years B I guess I would say the political muscle of the legislature held that structure even though many people realize this has to change it's not sustainable the legislature wasn't able to put together an oppose to change it governor Knowles also and he was in there opposed to any change and actually it was governor Frank Murkowski who changed it I know that's shocking to a lot of people but back in 2005 Murkowski told the industry hey I need to talk to you about oil taxes it's we got to have a talk this isn't working and the industry said there's nothing to talk about governor and that pissed him off and say what you want about Frank Murkowski he didn't like being told no when you've been a u.s. senator for 25 years you're not used to someone saying though so the Murkowski administration with the governor's consent the Department of Revenue changed how the satellite fields of Prudhoe Bay were taxed and that one administrative change which lumped these no tax satellite fields into the height Prudhoe Bay tax bracket brought in a couple hundred million dollars a year more to the state and I think it's only important to look back that Murkowski sort of broke that that's sealing a little bit the industry wasn't happy it wasn't what their governor supposed to do then the next year his last year Murkowski was trying to get a gas line built and under something called the stranded gas Development Act Murkowski negotiated a deal with the producers they would build a North Slope gas project the state would promise not to raise taxes for 30 years and in return the industry would agree to doubling the production tax on oil well we didn't get the gas line the legislature rejected the 30-year locked down on taxes the one thing out of those three that the industry got was the doubling of production taxes the one thing they didn't really want but that's what came out so then Palin comes in takes Murkowski stacks structure where we had doubled the production tax and she doubled that so in a couple years you had more than a quadrupling of the state take under production taxes from the oil industry and Palin also put in a very steep progressivity factor when prices went up the tax rate went up very steeply very fast very high and we got lucky because that's when oil prices went up to 120 140 a barrel I think on some days and to explain how this work it's not like your personal income tax where if you make nothing your rates zero make a little bit your rates 15% you make some more and the rate on the next dollar is 25 percent under Palin's tax structure every time and tax returns your monthly with our production taxes every time the value of the oil went up a dollar the tax rate went up a dollar but not for that next dollar that higher rate applied to every dollar back to one so it got to the point where that steep curve when oil was at a taxable $90 a barrel and Plus every time it went another dollar that month the state got 95% of that $1 because that higher rate applied to all the dollars of course look the industry didn't like it prices were high we made a lot of money with the state investment by the industry they scaled it back because they said hey we need you're taking away all the upside of high prices so they cut investment but the state was rolling in money Pernell came in 2013 pushed through a new tax bill that eliminated progressivity just wiped it out as kind of a plural compromise he said well hey the Palin tax rate was 25% of net and pernell said my bills gonna have a 35 percent so we're eliminating progressivity but it's a higher rate well it was sort of a bit of funniness is the nice nice word because they put in a per barrel deduction so between 80 and $150 a barrel the producers are allowed to deduct somewhere between $1 and 8 dollars a barrel off the tax check that they send to the state now you wonder well between 80 and 150 well back then oil was 108 dollars a barrel so they thought 80 to 150 seemed like a reasonable range for this extra deduction and I guess to me that sort of reminder if you can have a good tax structure it's got to be one that fits a wide range don't write a tax for what the situation is that year so it's kind of functions well I guess and a good analogy is I doubt there's any corporation in this country that pays the full corporate tax rate under the IRS code they find ways deductions and such so even though the rate may be 35% because they're allowed to deduct at a $1 to $8 a barrel but it's really been $8 because it hasn't been up to 150 because they're allowed to deduct 8 dollars a barrel from what they send the check the effective rate fiscal year 19 the one we finished last year oil was $69 a barrel the effective production tax rate was about 15% because of the deductions the credits are allowed to take just real quickly on the side the law also says when prices are really low forget the net just pay 4 percent of your gross and obviously we're in that situation now in 2014 initiative tried to overturn the Pernell roll back to where it was that failed they only got well he got 47% the industry got 53% the fair share initiative before you are before Alaskans and this year's ballot would eliminate that $8 per barrel factor that they're allowed to deduct from their taxes it would double or triple the floor instead of 4% at a minimum would be 10 to 15% if oil were $60 a barrel and that initiative were to pass the state would get billion billion point to a year in additional production tax revenue to kind of give you up I guess to explain why the industry is fighting it's so much certainly at $30 a barrel which is double what L is today you're not getting a billion extra dollars out of this if the initiative were to pass yeah maybe I'm in 50 million dollars here additional at low prices there's just not much there no matter what the the rate is so in terms of credits which gets very controversial there's two kind of credits the kind that Exxon BP and Conoco are allowed to use to deduct from the amount they send the state every month for their production taxes then and just to let you know between 2010 and 2050 years that decade the producers used that deductible credit against their tax liability to reduce the checks they sent in by about 6 billion dollars over the 10 years so it's a substantial amount of money but like I say it was kind of a political that legislators put through with Parnell - we're gonna raise the rate but we're gonna find a way out of it by putting in these credits these deductions on their liability so that saved the three big producers six billion dollars in many ways I think they still paid us they just paid us less okay I think in many ways myself the stupider credits were the ones where we actually cut checks to people and these were the ones where companies like Armstrong and Kahless on the North Slope and blue crest and Fury and Cook Inlet and others they weren't producing any oil so they had nothing to debate ache their credits and the doctors against their tax liability weren't producing they were enticed they were encouraged to come up here and explore and develop and maybe there'd be some oil so their credits weren't a function of how many barrels they produced their credits were a function of how much they invested exploration seismic development drilling you get a credit back and the way would work is let's say companies say I got a hundred million dollar plan to do some exploration in Alaska bound have 100 million dollars but I'm gonna get 60 million back from the state as a credit because those credits were structured by the legislature basically as cash back in advance of any production so I have a 100 million dollar plan I only got ten million dollars but the state's gonna give me 60 when it's done as a credit of refund back on the work I go to Bank of America and say hey I got a piece of paper from the state they're gonna give me 60 million at the end of the year and Bank of America said well I'll give you 50 cash signed that credit slip over to me so I raise 50 million from the bank and I raise hell anyway that's how I would fund my exploration when the credits came through the state essentially would give Bank of America they were making 10% or whatever on their investments and in the ten years between fiscal year 10 and 19 Estate Road checks actual checks out of the general fund to pay off those exploration credits about 3.5 billion money out of the Treasury and the idea was if we incentivize if we encourage if we promote people come up here and explore they'll find oil and over 20 or 30 years will get production tax royalty property tax income tax from the oil will make back a profit on the 3.5 billion yeah that's not gonna happen I think that was wishful thinking last point on that we still owe 800 million more on top of the the money we've paid out because we were paying it back as expected every year until 2016 at that point the states start getting broker than it had been for the previous 30 years and we stopped paying those credits back in full and they just accumulated so the state owes 750 800 million dollars on t ose credits where we've essentially stiffed the company and their bank and it's in court and I don't know how the hell it's gonna settle but anyway you add that in it's about four point three billion dollars that we will have paid to those companies of course when the state stopped reimbursing them under this credit program for their exploration they stopped because they didn't have enough money on their own so I one of those unfortunate things some people thought was a great idea but it has not worked very well so I guess I'm closing the last point I'd like to make is as you think about the state's economy our over reliance on oil dollars for decades there's something called the Alaska disconnect enough people a heard of it but what it means is you can talk about economic diversification all you want and new business up here but unless that diversification less that new business produces a barrel of oil a state doesn't get anything out of it you entice or incentivize to use those those words which I hate someone opens up an aluminum smelter or a new business in in Alaska there's no production tax there's no royalty they may have a lot of employees which means the state's gotta fund schools and roads and more troopers and all the services but because the state doesn't make money off that economic activity without a sales tax without income tax small corporations are exempt from corporate income tax any economic activity and new employees and services you got to provide our loser for the state general fund we're disconnected from reality with that so unless it's a barrel of oil we don't get anything essentially and I think that's something the states gotta correct as we go ahead otherwise why would you want a new business in Alaska great for jobs does nothing to pay for public services on the state level and with that hopefully I kept it to 15 minutes I think you did thanks Larry for trying to make sense of decades of confusing tax legislation and just opening our eyes to the current situation and and hopefully sparking some ideas about what we may need to do to move forward I'll get sick and make her chance to talk sickness Malkin is a new black Italian and Irish she is a community organizer with native movement and co-founder of sovereign Inupiat for a living Karthik she is a talented artist and mother of two lovely girls and she is a wealth of knowledge so we're excited to hear what you have to say sickening you and myself oh hey sorry I was having some technical issues there with the mute button but popular leave see everyone just welcoming you and a new pack and I'll start with my in it back introduction well a second app running I ran out would ya big me off of a Harriet mopping-up Raymond Maupin ha Lena to hook book Simmons ha ha ape Simmons jr. piscina so my name is second F I was born in Newton Catholic formerly known as Barrow I was raised between Fairbanks and Anchorage my mother is Harriet Maupin my father is Raymond Maupin and my grandmother is the late Lena Huck Buck Simmons and my grandfather is a late ape Simmons jr. piscina so doing my introductions is just really important and thinking a lot about what I'm going to be discussing today I don't know as many technical things that was really interesting Thank You Larry I'm always really curious because seeing some of the Alaska Constitution and laws around this it's so confusing and big and long it's really nice to have it broken down and what I'm going to be covering today is what's happening in the Arctic slope who is primarily dependent on the oil economy and what is happening now that the oil prices are actually the negative which has never been seen before we are in an economy compared to the Great Depression and on top of that we have a virus that can hit our communities disproportionately I am on the unceded territory of the lower Tanana Danai people working out of what's known as Fairbanks but my family is originally from milk set energy advic and there's about eight communities on the North Slope that uh and one hub city and to start I will go ahead and go to a presentation that I have sorry if you I couldn't really screen share without anyways I'll start the presentation are you not able to share your screen satanic I am sorry I was trying to play the presentation but then it kicks me out of the zoom so I was confusing myself and I'm looking for my presentation right now it's not showing up on my screen share the one that I wanted to present maybe it's right here yeah okay alright I'm okay great I'm gonna go ahead and play the presentation now thanks for being so patient I'm also not a super tech-savvy person so it's been an adjustment all right I wanted to start with I'm a collection of pictures this was me working in the North Slope and each one of these visits wasn't just work for me as you can see I'm in the corner of the left-hand side at the top those are my daughters we were on a work trip for a conference in each keahak and were invited to put an elk set for a camping trip which my work allowed as a way to gain knowledge in the work that I'm doing so we went and hunted caribou and these are my daughter's hunting and caribou for the first time in our language it's close to two and they were eating the ends of the antlers and at the bottom corner on the left hand side is which end leader burnt Bernadette demented who has worked relentlessly with the glitchin steering committee to protect the Arctic refuge and the other side of me is Martha who is the native village of Nelson tribal administrator and this picture was taken in Oklahoma at a conference for frontline oil and gas communities and the reason I think this is such an important picture is in this economy in this oil boom and bust economy there has been tactics to pin indigenous communities and people against each other and that's been very prominent and publicly known for the kitchen and a new back especially with the Arctic refuge and just showing that unity and that we are here and that we are not just going along with the oil and gas industry that's happening and has been happening but there have been people speaking out not just community members but people in leadership positions and the other pictures was me presenting a toxic report toxic sand pollutants and the effects on the community of Nelson at the top and I was dancing with my aunt because the community had invited us to Nelly a dance and that was the first time I was able to dance with her and when you go on trips especially as an indigenous person you don't just go there I do your work and go home you're visiting with your aunt your cousins you're talking about very hard subjects about cancer asthma with your family members who are directly affected by this and going into what's happening right now during this Kovan 19 is very scary milk's it currently has 70% of its community members on medication to help them breathe and as we most of us know Kovac attacks the lungs and this is the respiratory illness has risen across the North Slope milk set is directly impacted by oil and gas because they're actually surrounded by oil and gas but each keahak has a natural gas field there as well that does a lot of flaring fracking in the tundra and it's been a particularly scary time because of the lack of access to medication clinical care hospitals and so going on to my next slide and just reading you know this is our family our communities and I put our family's sorry about that so in the last three months the pandemic has changed our lives around the globe forever the economy and oil prices comparable to the Great Depression all points of entry to the North Slope are guarded similar to the 1918 flu epidemic raven air largest rural alaska airlines shuts down all operation and lays off all employees disaster declared by a nor so pearl mayor and all non-essential flights prohibited now this the biggest part of that I think out of all of these really shocking news that really were all going through together Raven Air pulling out and not being able to deliver food medication supplies and flights for people that either need to get to a bigger city with access to a hospital as many community members that have asthma would like to do and just getting basic necessities has been very scary and unsure right now in the North Slope and the disasters are then there has been seven disasters declared by the narsil borough and the Arctic slope regional corporation as well which is the largest anxia corporation so of the settlement act for the indigenous people in Alaska that's the largest corporation but not just that they're the largest privately owned corporation as well and they have laid off most of their employees they have cut their dividends by 70% and the ramifications you know there's a possibility of bankruptcy people's livelihoods on the North Slope many people depend on those dividends to get by to pay their rent to pay their bills and it has been reduced very fast so people are scared right now and what is also happening on the North Slope and around Alaska is the Bureau of Land Management is still going forward with right now there's currently a project called the master willow project which has implications of significant reduction and terrible population significant restrictions for subsistence users for sea mammals and land mammals and this is this presentation and sorry if you can hear my kids my puppies in the back the presentation that's been done right now is being done by the Bureau of Land Management who's hosting hearings which would normally be held in a public area and this has been extremely problematic because there's such lack of access to Internet in the rural villages the connections for phones are not very good and going from milk set in macao they have a little bit faster internet connection but the rest of the North Slope does not have that because they're not right next to oil fields and so what we're seeing on these calls is multiple drop calls people are not able to access the internet or it freezes a lot I actually just attended the milk set hearing to the Bureau of Land Management and the person facilitating the meeting was off of the meeting for about five to ten minutes because they had issues and they're located in Fairbanks which is the second largest city in Alaska so it's a very flawed process that's being tested on about people while there's a pandemic and it is a project that will affect people in a negative way for food security and this has kind of been the same rhetoric we've seen since oils been discovered and the reason I'm kind of putting all that out there is in the face of disasters and so much uncertainty and fear the oil companies such as ConocoPhillips which is the company that proposed a little project are still pushing forward for the oil and gas agenda and during a time when the North Slope depends on the taxing the oil companies of course this is not going to be happening very well right now right with negative oil barrels people are really uncertain what's the future is gonna look like for the North Slope and these companies have reassured us that they are here to look out for us they want to be in partnership to both you know I guess prosper off of these oil fields yet in the time where these communities need resources and you know support the most the oil companies have been silent and they have not been there to support but instead take advantage of this time and and we're also seeing that for many many years there's been advocacy to get on to a more sustainable economy just like the permanent fund you know dividend that was never meant to be a ongoing type of income it was supposed to be eventually invested in a more sustainable economy even when oil was discovered we knew this was not going to be forever this was a boom and bust economy and we needed to invest into our futures while we still had the access or we still had access to this big amount of money that was very fast but instead there's been a lack of that investment and we're seeing that now with our top regional corporation within a few months they may be declaring bankruptcy we're seeing with the North Oboro funding for essentials like the hospital the clinic the schools and so many functions housing and all of these are not going to be met because we relied so heavily on the oil taxes this is something you know before my generation and before my mother's generation my grandparents generation had spoken about this time specifically Evan Hopson has so much you know resources out there of his speeches that talked about oil and gas will not last forever we will be in an economy that's going to not be sustainable and if we don't invest now and start to transition away from the oil economy we're going to be in a very hard spot where people aren't going to know if they're able to pay basic bills and get basic needs met and that's what we're seeing today and there has not been a plan B there has not been anything written down for a just transition into a more sustainable economy and what we're seeing today is that on top of the fear of our health people are also in fear of their livelihoods and paying bills and that is what we're seeing throughout all of Alaska and I think the really big lesson is transition is inevitable and but is it going to be just and what we're also seeing up north is that the people hit the hardest are those that were already in a vulnerable spot you know people that relied on these dividends that came from oil people that relied on jobs that were in the oil fields that are being laid off and there's not a lot of support right now for those needs being met so what we hope to do and I'll go ahead and go to the next slide is sovereign and in fact for a living Arctic is a group a grassroots group and community organizing group that has wanted to focus not just on in our slope but in fact communities from Nome to POC tobik and these corporations have really separated us and divided that unity that we always had we share languages we share traditions and we share a relationship to the land and so sovereign Anupa was created and put out into the world last year late last year and since then just getting more awareness and putting it in one spot what's currently happening and um but I think more importantly because we've seen a lot of groups that want to I guess tell and in fact people or just indigenous people in general how to fix their communities how to get better but with sovereign a new back for living Arctic and Sela for short we hope to put that power back through the community's hands the people closest to the problems are the people's closest to the solutions and we work from you know principles and just reading a quick definition of an Inuit plural Inuit literally possessor or master is a spirit or soul that exists in all people animals lakes mountains and plants for Inuit people human and animals are equal all life has the same kind of soul or life essence in Uwe Salaam in Uwe is a primary component of everything that exists it is also the breath of life sila is believed to control everything that goes on in one's life and this is you know something that is inherently put into a just transition perception and and when we look at the current state of things the resource extraction the very much change in values from my my grandparents generation who had advocated against oil and gas and who had said we are doing this so that our people can get by and get basic needs but we will transition and we will not cause so much destruction to our land that our animals and our water and our you know everything around us will be negatively affected but unfortunately my parents generation had a very different mindset and we can see this by our caribou has signs of starvation we're having these meetings for this master willow project that state clearly this will impact and decline the caribou population our whaling which is a part of our life and speaking of a just transition and being able to equitably support everyone including our relatives with four legs including your relatives in the water that's really gonna be it can't be oil anymore it can't be an extractive industry it has to be something unsustainable for all and that is the impact values I believe I have that was the last slide and I'll go ahead and get myself back here I don't know how do but you guys can just watch that for a second am I about 15 minutes in or yeah you're right about that okay um I'll go ahead and stir no longer sharing oh great thank you I'll go ahead and just close up then and say that I am really excited about going into the future although it seems really scary right now and uncertain what was told for me and for people before me that had been had been saying kind of predicting the state that were in today when we had said we need to transition away we need to get to a more sustainable economy we were told it's impossible there is no way you can shut down the oil fields today everything would collapse we wouldn't know what to do but we're seeing right now the most important things in life is food water health and shelter these are the essentials that we need in life and it has become you know not just locally but globally we're seeing that that is the priorities that we all have to save and and work towards and it's happening much faster than I could have ever really imagined and so I hope this time going forward we'll see this as a way a to our time of change and changing consciousness globally and hopefully going forward we will live by those indigenous person values those indigenous ways and go forward treating everything with respect and learning how to live with it in a in a good way so thank you all again and thanks for having me here Planet well thank you sick and Nick for putting the human face on on the crisis and what's going on right now I really appreciate that just been following probably a lot of you have seen in the chat but I think it's worth just having there's a couple questions posed to Larry this first one Larry if you just want to speak to it scrolling up from Ryan says we no longer have the exploration credits which are those ones you're talking about that the state is paying out the money to these companies that weren't even paying US taxes because they weren't producing but can't companies including the big ones right off transportation and capital expenses from their production tax so for example Conoco can explore in NPR a and drill holes there and write that off from production in Prudhoe know they can write it off their corporate income tax but the deductions on a production tax are limited to expenses on that lease so what you spend somewhere else you cannot deduct from your production taxes at Prudhoe they can accumulate those losses at NPRA and if they ever have production tax oh well they can deduct it only from production with an NPR a production taxes by field corporate income tax is for the entire company okay thank you for clarifying that and then there was one more question about the mining tax folks does mining production provide revenue to the state and if not with new residents of communities working at mines results in the paradoxical mentioned of the state name to fund services right and the state does have a mining license taxes called that raised under 50 million dollars last year a little bit more than the state made off motor fuel taxes or alcohol taxes so if I guess you at figure out how much the state paid to provide services and mining communities and mining families but again without an income tax or sales tax the state doesn't make as much as other states make off economic activity okay and I just invite people again if you have questions feel free to put them in our chat section in the meantime I've got a list of questions that I'd be happy to start asking so I'll go to SiC and Nick since Larry just answered one and Larry you can comment on this too as well so what do we want to consider what do we need to consider in a just transition and you talked some about already who is gonna be impacted by the decline of oil but what are some of those considerations for for particularly the rural communities but all of Alaska hey thanks for asking I think we need to consider that in a just transition we talked about that the word just and what does that mean and and right now some examples are you know the the lack of hospitals and so people are again leaving their communities and needing to be in the city alone children that have been having asthma attacks already are also families are trying to find a way out of the village and so it's just a really scary time right now and this this was this was a system that made this type of disproportional effects happen when we see this the systemic racism this environmental racism when we have extractive industry that are targeting indigenous communities that have lack of resources and lack of some of the you know colleges and these classes about law and what their rights are and being held in this economic hostage situation now we're seeing that you know the the housing crisis the and what the housing crisis is the permafrost melting and houses are collapsing in into the ground they're going in the ocean that this could have been predicted and going forward how do we stop when a natural disaster does happen which it will and we've seen it time and time again that when communities of color communities that have been in historically in poverty or hit the hardest going forward how do we protect those people how do we have more equitable access to hospitals respirators and these types of equipment and also how do we protect people that don't necessarily subscribe to this Western economy that haven't been involved in a lot of these processes that just don't really know where to go to now and that's what I would say is keeping at the forefront of your mind is how can we extend those resources to people that have less access to those basic and we you have some questions coming in let's see one of the earlier ones I'm just and I think this is gonna be a really important conversation moving forward trying to figure out how to fund this state with oil declining and likely never returning to the profit levels that we have seen in the past so how do we engage in a conversation about income tax in an in a recession or a depression where do you want to try to take that on you have any ideas on that well you're painfully just entering I think we have to realize we will never I don't think certainly my opinion ever have anything that generated revenue for the state general fund like oil we could have an income taxes sales tax but it would be 1/2 1/3 1/4 of what oil generated so I think Alaskans gonna have to look at which tax they want on a state level income or sales how high they wanted and what we're gonna have to get rid of because we can no longer afford it is that the dividend is that services it's that's gonna be a fundamental remaking of the Alaska economy what level of public services versus the dividend is gonna be I think the first battle if you pay a dividend it just doesn't add up you're gonna have to cut the hell out of services yeah thanks Larry I think I think you know the reality is it's gonna have to be a dynamic response to the situation there's no one there's no one solution correct but hopefully if we're willing to open our minds to a variety of changes we can try to solve this without like going to poorly um so let's see there was a question for sicken ik in here and it was why does you mentioned that 70% of the community members have to be on meds for breathing and why is that so the community is I'll start with the health aide rosemary Otunga Europe has been a really big advocate for health because she saw it increased 50% in respiratory illness when on the oil fields were established closer to no upset and in 2012 rep saw the oil company had a blowout of chemicals that if you visit see letting you it you can actually see a 30-second clip of the worker who caught it on camera and you see this black smog just blowing into Noakes it and there were reports after that of children who had to be rushed or medevacked out of the village for having asthma attacks people have had breathing issues since that although it hasn't been officially acknowledged that that it has directly impacted breathing there's many articles and journals written about that exact time that you know that happened and just in general the toxics and pollutants that are being inhaled every day by community members especially when the wind blows from the oil fields into nel set people have a harder time breathing and so now what we see is 70% of the communities are on medication to help them breathe and some of the the disputes are you know there's tobacco exhaust running in the winters but this is you know unreal to see a 50% rise and then to not acknowledge the information that's been established of the side effects of the pollutants and toxic that these companies are stating that are being put out there benzenes turkey litter you Lowe's I wish I had it in front of me there's very serious chemicals that cause they attack the lungs so I don't think it takes a lot to connect the two I hope that answers the question and I I also wanted to say for the last question um just to pose a question for people to think about it is what are you willing to give up because unfortunately going forward there is no way to get an economy that will support many of the ways that we have been living and that is buying $70,000 vehicles you know $100,000 boats you know I'm half a million dollar homes that are too big for us that are unnecessary I'm having multiple vehicles when you don't really need it these are the type of luxuries that we're gonna have to ask are we willing to give up to have a more just transition into an economy that is sustainable we can't go back and that's including our lifestyles and I think that kovat 19 has really shown us again what is priorities and that we can give those things up but what's most important is the access to clean air food water and shelter and our families yeah thanks sick Anna can a yeah I mean I think it's true there's going to be solutions that are both you know people are gonna have to make personal changes and accept changes and and how they live their lives as well as statewide and nationwide changes in dealing with both the current oil crisis and just the climate crisis as a whole I wanted to go back over to the questions and I think Pamela just asked Larry if you know how much profit in oil worth did the oil companies haul out of Alaska since he began in last year I don't know nobody knows DP and X honor not while companies are not required to break out their profit statements how much they made in Texas how much they made in Alaska how much they made in either by John or the North Sea and Hill Court particularly since their private company doesn't have to report anything Conoco historically is the only one who said this is how much we made in Alaska the summit's we made North America this is how much we've made in Australia Kanako's Alaska operations have always had a higher profit margin than anything else and that's not our tax structure that's a function that Conoco does not produce gas here all they produces oil oil you know other than this past week at $15 a barrel oil historically has been substantially more profitable than natural gas every place else Conoco produces they produce gas with oil and that brings down their profit percentage in Texas or Australia or anyplace else so Alaska higher return for chemical but that's a function of its only oil here and they reject the gas they don't have to sell it at pennies thanks Larry there's a lot of questions coming in and we can't get to all of them there's lots of good ones I actually really like this one that Bryan just posted can we rely on the legislature to do what is necessary to move us into a new economy that works for all of us coming out of the crisis what is the role and responsibility of all of us as Alaska residents and helping to make the changes we need and I think you know historically Larry you spoke to the tax structure just like going back and forth back and forth and it doesn't seem like it was necessarily made for the good of Alaskans over time so it's you know it's an interesting question to say like can we even trust our legislature at this point and if not what do we what can we do and I think answers elect our legislators the legislature has the power to adopt an income tax to structure the Permanent Fund to decide what services are going to provide right now as we know the governor has a solid block of legislators with him that prevent any veto overrides that believe in an unaffordable full dividend that would go to their grave before they vote for income tax so it's gonna come down to November and electing a majority of good legislators did you want to anything sickening yeah so I'm looking at the chat right now and I'm trying to multitask but I think that we can see that many of the people that we've had in governance I'm not I'm be truthful I'm not super familiar with the government structure in terms of trying to get an answer it off the top of my head but a lot of the same people have been in office that are not progressive that are not acknowledging the serious effects we're seeing outside and I think that people power community organizing we see makes a huge difference and when we have a team for example like Larry who has so much knowledge of this technical information and then you have people that are grassroots and they are in the communities and you're getting them together that going up to the legislature or going up to these places that hold these decision-making powers is where you're gonna see a lot of those changes happen so you go out and vote you also get people share knowledge about the candidates and who ever you know that could represent us get them to sign on and run Thanks yeah because I've noticed a shortage of good candidates and a lot of districts people run on a post there's no one good and that's gotta get people willing to endure the hell of social media that's going to come down on them if they run for office but the only way you're going to change some of those seats yeah thanks for that you guys I think there's there's a lot of ways that people can engage in their communities beyond just voting and voting is important or or putting yourself out there and running for a position or an office that's that's a great way to go but there's also I mean there's nonviolent direct action and there's art and there's just all kinds of ways that people can get involved and I'm gonna kind of close on that note and say like we do we need everybody we want policy analysts and we want artists and graphic designers and we we just need everybody in this movement to rise up and and choose the right path for Alaska's future and we want to and I'm going to just ask Ryan to make the chat private because if you want to stay involved and you want more information where I just want to invite you to put your email address in the chat and we can get in contact with you after and King to keep it in the ground working group is just one working group that's part of the FC AC fairings Climate Action Coalition so there's regenerative economy there's a renewable energy there's interfaith there's policy and politics there's all kinds of different groups and we would love to get you connected with the one that matches up with what you want to work on and on that note we also have the general meeting the FC AC general meeting is on May 2nd from 10:00 to 1:00 and that's a great opportunity to show up I will show up on zoom and you can learn about all of our working groups and see what we've been doing and get connected there and there is also some good resources posted in the chat by Jessica and when I think both posted on just transition so if you want to learn more about what a just transition framework actually looks like what we're going for as we move out of an extractive economy those are some great resources so let me see I'm just want to make sure I'm not forgetting to mention anything I don't think so so thank you all for attending again put your email address in the chat if you want more information we can connect you up with different groups or if you want to be involved in our campaign to try to keep the oil in the ground and change our change how our state functions we would love to have you and have a great night enjoy the sunny weather hey uh before we close here I just want to mention one more thing I know that Jessica I think put in the website for the for just transition a k dot org just want to shout out to a bunch of webinars that they're putting on there's a whole group coalition of organizations across the state putting on webinars to discuss a just transition for Alaska and well worth getting plugged into those and and tuning in they had one I think yesterday that was pretty incredible so that's another avenue to get plugged in but if you want to stay in touch with what if CAC is doing put your email down in the chat and only the host here can see it will collate those and and get you plugged in where where your energies most needed where where you want to put it so thanks all and thank you Larry thank you sick anak have a good night everybody thanks everybody you buy you