Alaska Center for Public Policy Newsletter #21
public policy to empower low-and moderate-income families
 February 2008
In This Issue
Alaska Health Policy Review
Alaska Should Join Other States:...Call for Moratorium on Home Foreclosures
New Research on Rural Alaska Economy
Make Alaska's Minimum Wage a Living Wage
State Immigration Project Policy Options 2008
Subscribe Now: Alaska Health Policy Review 

Download a complimentary copy of the February 1, 2008 issue of the Alaska Health Policy Review. This weekly issue features three articles about the Certificate of Need controversy, a health policy calendar, and a comprehensive health policy bill tracking section.

Alaska Health Policy Review is the comprehensive, authoritative, nonpartisan source for health policy matters in the state of Alaska. It is a publication of the Alaska Center for Public Policy.

During the legislative session AHPR is published electronically every week, and monthly the rest of the year.  Some of our current subscribers include:
  • several Alaska legislators
  • Foraker Group
  • University of Alaska
  • Rasmuson Foundation
  • Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority
  • Alaska Public Health Association
  • Alaska Primary Care Association
  • and many others!
A selection of published in-depth interviews during 2007 includes:
  • Senator Bettye Davis, Chair of the Senate HESS Committee. 
  • Dr. Jerome List, Alaska Medical Director of Mountain-Pacific Quality Health Foundation, who raises important questions about quality and accessibility for Alaskans with Medicare insurance.
  • Senator Hollis French, author of SB 160 Mandatory Universal Health Care.
  • Representative Peggy Wilson, House HESS Committee Chair.
  • Representative Sharon Cissna, Co-Chair of the Legislative Health Caucus and a member of the House Health, Education, and Social Services Committee.
  • Paul Sherry, the CEO of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
Articles from last years' issues include:
  • A detailed analysis of recent state and federal policies affecting Alaska's Denali KidCare, which insures thousands of children from low-income families in Alaska.
  • An in-depth summary of the joint Committee hearing of SB 160 Mandatory Universal Health Care.
  • A history of controversial Certificate of Need legislation in Alaska, including some curious findings in the fiscal notes.
  • A list of health policy lobbyists in Alaska, their employers, and their incomes.
  • A summary of work-to-date of the Governor's Health Care Strategies Planning Council.
  • A calendar of key upcoming meetings and events that may influence health policy in Alaska.
A 12-month subscription to Alaska Health Policy Review is available for $850. Substantial discounts are available for organizations with multiple subscriptions, and for smaller nonprofits. Don't miss an issue!

Send orders and inquiries to Lawrence D. Weiss at health.policy.review@gmail.com, or call (907) 276-2277.
Dear Colleague:

I am pleased to report that the Alaska Center for Public Policy is growing and accomplishing more. During the last few months we hired two part-time staff persons and an volunteer intern; we started a successful subscription publication; and I have been asked by the Anchorage Daily News to be an official ADN blogger on the subject of health care policy and related issues. In addition, we have provided information and assistance to several state-wide coalitions and a number of legislators, and have provided written and oral testimony on a number of important bills. Life is good. 

Learn more about our new publication, the Alaska Health Policy Review, by taking a look at the article that introduces the Review in the column on the left side of this newsletter. Visit the new ADN blog at www.adn.com/healthcareblog. And remember to check out our primary, but always improving, web site at www.acpp.info. See the latest blog entries on a variety of policy issues, and use our custom built Alaska policy search engine. There is more--go see for yourself.

As always, I am eager to hear your comments about how we can improve.

Lawrence D. Weiss Ph.D., M.S.
Executive Director
ldweiss@acpp.info
Alaska Should Join Other States:
Call for Moratorium on Home Foreclosures 

Nationwide, home foreclosure filings have increased an incredible 68% over the period of just one year. The rate is predicted to increase even further this year as payments rise on roughly 1 million home loans. Without action, in the next two years, as many as 100,000 homes would be subject to foreclosure in New York alone.

Last year, Massachusetts became the first state to impose a moratorium on home foreclosures resulting from predatory lending. Movements are also underway in Michigan, Ohio and Texas to adopt foreclosure moratoriums.

The state of Alaska, currently, has housing which is less affordable than it has been for at least 15 years. Shouldn't we be giving serious consideration to joining the other states and calling for a moratorium on home foreclosures? An excellent article on this subject can be found on the Progressive States Network site.
New Research on Rural Alaska Economy
 
A new publication from the University of Alaska Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) describes an economy unlike that anyplace else in the United States: the economy of the vast remote region of northern and western Alaska. At 395,000 square miles, the remote rural region is large enough to hold Japan, Germany, and Great Britain. Yet only about 60,000 people live there, and most households keep themselves going with a mix of cash, subsistence, sharing, and non-cash trading. That's a world away from the state's urban economy, and under standard measures, such as income, the remote rural economy lags far behind.

Over the years, there have been many efforts to improve that economy. But the new paper by ISER economist Scott Goldsmith argues that standard measures can't capture all the economic activity in a region where subsistence and non-cash trading play such important parts. Also, there are many gaps in the available data. This new paper offers the most comprehensive picture possible based on available data--and at the same time identifies other information that could improve the picture and make economic development efforts more effective.
  • Most of the state's natural resource wealth is produced in remote rural areas--about $17 billion worth in 2006--but more than 90% of that wealth bypasses the remote economy. It is government that directly or indirectly accounts for almost all (perhaps as much as 90%) of the income of regional residents. Local benefits from resource production--through local resource taxes, jobs, and activities of Alaska Native regional corporations--are concentrated in a few areas.
  • A big share of the money that does come into the remote rural economy quickly leaks out again because so many of the workers (an estimated 40%) are non-locals who spend their paychecks elsewhere, and because residents and local businesses buy many things outside the region. Of the estimated $2.35 billion that entered the remote rural economy as a result of natural resource production and government spending in 2006, about $1 billion quickly leaked out to other areas.
  • Official employment figures underestimate the time residents of remote areas spend working because they can't take into account time spent in subsistence activities and the informal economy. If such time could be included, employment would be larger than published data show and would have a more complex seasonal pattern.
  • Thousands of young people in remote areas will soon reach working age, and that growth in the labor force, combined with the constraints on the types of cash jobs the economy can support, will create special challenges for residents. To find jobs, many will need to get specialized training, commute to jobs, or move to areas with more jobs.
  • There are opportunities for economic growth in remote areas. But importing goods and services will continue to be expensive, and future government spending will be constrained. Cash will continue to be scarce, and subsistence and informal economic activities will continue to be extremely valuable.
Visit the ISER web site to read the research summary and the full report.

Source: ISER Research Announcement January 11, 2008.
Make Alaska's Minimum Wage a Living Wage

The cost of living in Alaska is one of the highest in the US, yet Alaska has the lowest minimum wage on the west coast. The federal minimum wage is expected to increase in 2009 to $7.25--ten cents more per hour than Alaska's current minimum wage of $7.15.
 
Senate Bill 187 proposes to change that. Senator Kim Elton, one of the sponsors of the bill, wrote in the February 1, 2008, issue of his newsletter, off the record:
SB 187 takes Alaska's minimum wage from $7.15 an hour to $8 an hour in 2009 then adjusts the minimum wage annually for inflation in the out years. For many of us, this means nothing. But 14,000 of our Alaska neighbors will live slightly less close to the margin if we do what is right. At $7.15 an hour, a worker earns less than the federal poverty level for a family of two. Many of these very low wage folks are sole wage earners and many are parents ...

It's time for us to step up to catch up. Hesitation to go higher with the minimum wage is mostly couched in terms of job loss-the suggestion some employers will reduce their work force if the minimum wage goes up. Research demonstrates that the economic impact of raising the minimum wage shows the positive effects without job loss. In fact, over 650 economists, including six past presidents of the American Economics Association and five Nobel prize winners, recently signed on to a statement clearly saying that hiking federal or state minimum wages "can significantly improve the lives of low income workers and their families without the adverse (job loss) effects that critics have claimed."
Elton adds that states with higher minimum wages felt no adverse effects when the minimum was increased but found instead that the higher wages led to increased productivity, lower recruiting and training costs, less absenteeism, and better morale.
State Immigration Project Policy Options 2008
 
In an attempt to highlight state policies that promote humane immgration and to challenge divisive anti-immigration efforts, the Progressive States Network published State Immigration Project: Policy Options for 2008 in December 2007. They identified five key areas on which anti-immigration efforts focus, and offered analysis that refute those arguments. The five key areas are: 
  • Undocumented immigrants are undercutting jobs and wages for native workers
  • Immigrants aren't assimilating or learning English
  • Undocumented immigrants are a burden to taxpayers and don't deserve public benefits
  • Non-citizens are voting illegally in large numbers
  • Immigrants cause crime and are a threat to national security
You can read about facts and sets of policies that challenge these arguments and subscribe to bi-weekly email updates by visiting Stateside Dispatch: State Immigration Policies & Politics in 2008.