Thank you, I would like to talk about why meaningful reform is important to me and why I choose to be involved.

I have spent time educating myself on both sides of this issue, reviewing presentations, listening to testimony, looking at Dept. of revenue data and outside studies both for and against a change to the state oil tax. I also draw from my personal experience as a member of the Port Lions City council and insight gained from my job on the North Slope.

12 yrs ago I left Siskiyou County (located in Northern Calif.) where my family has resided and worked in the timber industry for the past 100 yrs.

Timber Fueled Our Economy

I was part of a dying industry my work went from harvesting timber to moving it from one bankrupt mill to another on the verge of closing. In 10 short years northern Calif. went from 68 mills to just 28. 10 years later only 16 remain. For years timber provided steady cash flow for infrastructure and schools, payments plummeted as timber harvests declined. Timber brought more than just revenue: it provided jobs that kept families working, children in schools and enrollment afloat. As the timber industry declined so did the number of families. Myself like many of my friends, neighbors and co-workers were leaving for jobs in other areas, thus draining schools of much needed attendance money. Our part of the state and way of life were dying a slow death.

Oil Fuels Our Economy

As I look at my personal and professional life I soon realize similarities to then and now. A lot of the same things are happening in Alaska. To be clear they are happening for different reasons, unfortunately they produce the same outcome. The timber industry was regulated out of business and a casualty of that was our lively hood. The oil industry is not going out of business, but without significant changes to the production tax the State of Alaska is.

As I look around, I see my friends, fellow workers and neighbors leaving Alaska for jobs in other areas, including North Dakota. The rigs that once helped make this state prosperous are cold stacked in empty lots, the experienced workers that ran them are also leaving. Oil prices are at all time highs, our work load is not.

Alaska communities benefit directly from oil production in many ways. One is in the form of state revenue sharing, for my village of Port Lions (on Kodiak Island) that currently amounts to over 20% of our annual budget and is declining each year. Our KIBSD is facing 3.5 million in budget cuts next year.

You see this is not about boosting “Big Oil Profits” This is about preserving our state, our communities and our way of life.

The Good news is this does not have to happen here, we are not out of oil, the catch is, neither is the rest of the world, we just have ours priced a little too high to get the risk takers to invest in producing it. We need long term sustainability for a healthy state, we can do that by working in partnership with those that have the expertise and take the risk to produce our resource as a team. We must recognize the fact that Alaska is competing globally for investment dollars, to do that we need a globally competitive, stable tax structure. Meaningful tax reform will result in more investment and more production, which equals more oil to tax rather than higher taxes on less oil. We can then stop debating the minimum flow required to keep TAPS operational and talk about how we are going to get the next field on line with TAPS flowing at capacity.

I would like to thank you all for coming today and for allowing me the opportunity to share my views.

As you may be able to tell giving public testimony and speaking at events is not what I do for a living It can be intimidating and leaving the comfort zone of what we know is not always easy. But we all have a perspective that is worth listening too and needs to be heard. What lies ahead will affect us all on a state, community and personal level, its time to speak up and be a part of the solution.

Thank you