By Delcenia Cosman

Homer Independent Press

As part of his campaign to become Alaska’s next governor, Democratic candidate Tom Begich has a plan to reshape the state economy and ensure that residents have an affordable future. He spoke with the Homer Independent Press during a campaign stop on July 2 and outlined several aspects of that plan, including diversifying energy, revising corporate taxes and lowering housing costs.

Begich is one of 17 gubernatorial candidates in the August primary election. He’s also one of only two Democratic candidates running — 12 are Republicans, and the remaining three are registered as nonpartisan or undeclared. 

Born in Anchorage, Begich comes from a predominant political family. His father, Nick Begich Sr., was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. His uncle served in the Minnesota House of Representatives for 18 years. His brother Mark is a former U.S. Senator and Anchorage mayor. His nephew, Nick Begich III, currently represents Alaska in the U.S. House.

Begich himself is a former Alaska State Senator. He served for six years — 2017-2023 — in the Legislature and was the Senate Minority Leader for four of those years.

In addition to his legislative work, Begich has an extensive background in justice and education advocacy, having previously held leadership positions on the nationwide Coalition for Juvenile Justice, the Alaska Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee, the statewide Coalition for Education Equity and others. 

He’s also an author and musician and owns a communications consulting firm. 

His tagline for this campaign? “Reviving the Alaska dream” — reestablishing the state’s capacity for self-reliance, creating new opportunities and instilling a sense of optimism in residents.

“If we’re continuing to depend on the federal government for everything from Medicaid funding to whether or not we’re going to be able to pave a road, at some point when they pull that funding back, where are we?” he said. “I want to build that sustainability here.” 

Among Begich’s key priorities to accomplish that goal are increasing state revenue — which in turn will enable the state to fully and forward fund education — and lowering energy and housing costs.

Begich plans to capture additional revenue for the state in three ways: implementing a digital services tax to online businesses that sell to Alaskans but may not be present in the state; closing the “S corp loophole,” which would end oil and gas producer Hilcorp’s exemption from paying corporate income taxes to the state; and reducing oil and gas tax credits currently provided on legacy fields.

“I think those are three areas of revenue that we should be producing now. If we did, the issue over the base student allocation would be over. We’d be able to fully fund education and forward fund it,” he said. 

According to Begich, not implementing those revenue streams represents at least $400 million in income lost to the state.

“That is not a poor state. That is a state not collecting its revenue,” he said. 

He also called for diversification of energy in the state, reducing reliance on oil and gas and using Alaska’s energy resources primarily for Alaskans rather than “exporting out oil and gas and then bringing gas back at the second highest price in the nation.”

“From my perspective, we should be at the forefront of (the) movement toward alternative energy … instead of always being the entity that exports it all, like a third world nation, and then pays a premium to get it back,” he said. 

As part of revolutionizing Alaska’s energy industry, Begich said the state should create a Department of Energy.

“We’ve never had … an energy plan for the state of Alaska that addresses the needs of our local residents and our local communities, and we should,” he said. “What we have instead are a series of silos of various types of energy, and we don’t have a whole lot of communication between them. I want to change that.”

As an energy-producing state, he said, Alaska should create and implement a plan to use that energy not just as an export tool and a revenue maker, but as a tool to lower costs locally.

Capturing income from corporate taxes and diversifying Alaska’s energy portfolio, according to Begich, would open the door to a number of other fixes, such as creating more affordable housing.

“If we accessed what is, I think, our due from our corporate taxes — those are our resources, that’s our future — I think that we would be able to cover our conversion as we diversify from oil and gas,” he said. “I think we could make energy more affordable, and I think we could move forward on a lot of initiatives — everything from health care to housing — but if we don’t tap that resource, it’s really very difficult to see where the state finds a sustainable and thriving future.”

To lower housing costs, Begich said the first thing to do is to lower the cost of land. He referred to a recent project in Sitka as an example of how the state could do this — in 2023, Alaska Mental Health Trust leased about 16 acres of land to the Sitka Homeless Coalition at below-market value to support construction of permanent supportive housing to individuals experiencing homelessness.

The second, he said, is to enable the state and local communities to offer local construction companies “low interest access to cash” to facilitate building. The third is to create opportunities for the state to grant low-interest loans or grants to retrofit or build new, energy-efficient homes that are powered by alternative energy such as solar.

According to Begich, all of this together would reduce the cost of housing upfront by lowering the cost of land and construction and, in the long run, by creating energy efficiency.

“That is one way that you could address housing almost immediately in Alaska,” he said. “It takes a few years to get up to the volume you’ll need to actually lower housing costs, but the more housing you put on the market, the lower the cost of the housing.” 

Begich also discussed expanding health care access using Alaska’s existing medical models like Denali Kid care to provide coverage to residents that don’t qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford private plans under the Affordable Care Act. 

“If you do these two things — health care, along with housing — now you’re attracting people here. Plus, you’ve lowered the cost of doing business up here, and that is a spur to economic growth,” he said.

To fulfill this vision for Alaska, Begich emphasized the need to return to regular and effective communication between the governor, the Legislature and constituents. 

“It’s not about coming in and imposing an idea on people, it’s listening to what the ideas are and learning that those ideas may actually make more sense than anything you thought of,” he said. “Those ideas exist throughout this state, and it’s local people coming up with them.”

Many of the examples Begich provided during the interview of innovation in energy production, housing development and financial sustainability came from conversations with community members or projects that local communities are conducting on their own. New ideas for locally-effective housing initiatives came out of discussions Begich had with a Homer resident. During a visit to Nenana, Begich saw how the community heats its public buildings using biomass. It’s those kinds of conversations and experiences that he said he wants to encourage.

“That’s the kind of thing I want to see more of, and the state has a role in helping incentivize that,” he said. “If you’ve got an innovation, our job isn’t to tell you how you can’t do it, but how you can do it. Tell (us) what your barriers are, let (us) troubleshoot you through that. That’s the way you change the state.” 

On the relationship between the governor and the Legislature, Begich said that he would focus on meeting with legislators “from the very beginning” and remain engaged throughout the budget process. That collaboration, he said, would also lower the chances of bills — particularly those with strong bipartisan support — being vetoed “unless it’s a bill that I consider so damaging and that I’ve failed to derail in the regular process.” 

“If that’s the case, that means my fundamental relationship will have broken down with the Legislature,” he said. 

Further on utilizing the governor’s veto power, Begich said he would not allow education cuts or discriminatory bills.

Learn more about Begich’s platform on his official campaign website.