Wrangell Sentinel -

As the State of Alaska grapples with our current fiscal situation, legislators are considering ways to balance the budget while protecting our savings and preserving the PFD. I urge my colleagues to focus on an important part of the discussion: oil taxes.

Alaska is the only state in the US that taxes oil based on net profits, yet we are also the state that relies the most on oil revenues for government services. Unique among states, Alaska is also the owner of the resource: most of our oil has been produced from state owned lands. This also means we collect the landowner’s royalty in add...