The Daily Signal - Adam Crum: US Energy Costs Would ‘Go Down Substantially’ If Alaska’s Resources Were Fully Tapped

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Energy costs across the U.S. “would probably go down substantially” if the U.S. sharply increased mining and production of Alaska’s natural resources, according to Adam Crum, commissioner for the Alaska Department of Revenue.  Geographically, Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state at more than 663,000 square miles. It is also among the most natural resource-dense states in the nation.  Alaska became a state in 1959, and under its Statehood Act, it is “mandated that the mineral resources and the subsurface rights were collectivized by the state so that the state could actually collect the royalties and production taxes off of that to fund the government,” Crum explains on “The Daily Signal Podcast.” While other states, such as Texas and North Dakota, can have “individual farmers who actually have mineral rights, nobody has that in Alaska,” he said, explaining that his state was “set up to be a resource-development state since inception.”  One of the world’s largest zinc and lead mines can be found in northwest Alaska and has now “been producing for over 40 years and has provided very extensive jobs,” according to Crum.  The mine has allowed the local indigenous population in northern Alaska to “not only have an economy to stay there, but you have this town now, it's about 4,000, 5,000 people of primarily Inupiat Eskimos living up there. They get to benefit from this, and they can still get to live a subsistence lifestyle,” Crum explains.  Asked about the environmental effects of mining and drilling in Alaska, the revenue commissioner said life expectancy has increased in native communities where natural resources are being extracted as industry has strengthened local economies and increased the quality of life.  Crum joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the vast natural resources Alaska has to offer.  Alaska House of Representatives Speaker Cathy Tilton joins the show after the conversation with Crum to discuss the greatest challenges facing America’s most northern state, and to share some of Alaska’s best-kept secrets.  Enjoy the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Sodle podcast for Thursday, September 26th. I'm Virginia Allen. In 1959, Alaska became the 49th U.S. state. Geographically, Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state, as it has over 663,000 square miles. Alaska is also among the most naturally resource dense states in the U.S. that creates a powerful opportunity for America to be energy independent. I recently had the opportunity to travel to Alaska for the State Financial Officers Foundation Meeting. And while I was there, I had the opportunity to talk with a number of U.S. leaders, including leaders specifically from the state of Alaska.

Last week, I was so pleased to share a conversation with Alaska Governor Dunleavy. And today, I am so excited to be bringing you a double header with two great Alaska leaders. First, I'm having a conversation with the commissioner for Alaska's Department of Revenue, Adam Crum. We discussed the natural resources of the great state of Alaska and why environmentalists might just have it very wrong when it comes to energy production in Alaska. And then Republican Speaker of the House for the Alaska House of Representatives, Kathy Tilton joins the show. And we discuss some of the greatest challenges specifically facing the state of Alaska, but also some of the best kept secrets the state has to offer. Stay tuned for these back-to-back conversations after this.

Live from Indiana syndicated nationally from the Daily Signal, it's the Tony Kinnettcast. Man, you've got me hook, light and seeker. Now I want to tune into your program. Interviews from the border. Coverage from inside leftist riots. Exposing those targeting children from the guy leaving liberal journalist, speechless. It's the Tony Kinnettcast. Join us live on the Daily Signals, YouTube and X stream every weeknight at 7 p.m. Eastern or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Well, I am so pleased to have with me today, Adam Crumb, he serves as the Commissioner of Revenue here in the state of Alaska. Adam, this is my first time in your home state of Alaska. You're born and raised here, correct? I am born and raised. I'm born in Homer, Alaska. I grew up in Acre Point, small town of about 1,200 people, little coastal town. I love that. So what exactly does a Commissioner of Revenue do? Yeah, so in Alaska, the Commissioner of Revenue actually oversees taxation as well as the investments of it. And so it's a unique role that you actually actually that they both sit under that, as well as the comptroller.

And so we actually collect the resources for the state of Alaska and then invest them for the benefit of the people. And so the Retirement Management Board, our sovereign wealth fund, the Alaska Permit Fund Corporation, the investment banks, I sit on those boards, and then I'm also the sole fiduciary for about $12 billion of other state capital.

Okay, wow. What would you say separates maybe that role in Alaska from other states? Other states, they'll be very specific, Sometimes it'll be like an elected auditor specifically or just an elected treasurer, which is typically unclaimed property in some investments and some banking principles. And so the combining of it is also unique because it's also not an elected position. It's appointed. And so Alaska has a unique setup in that the executive branch, the governor,

actually has an incredible amount of power because he gets to appoint his financial person. He gets to appoint his land manager, which is the Department of Natural Resources, which in the state of Texas, for an example, would be the equivalent of the elective. land manager, ag manager, and the Texas Railroad Commission. Oh, wow. And that's an appointed position. He also gets to appoint his attorney general. Oh, interesting.

So you have a very unified government in Alaska. Okay, powerful. Well, Alaska is a unique state in many, many ways. You all have a lot of natural resources, which, being here for the first time this week, I've been learning more and more about, speak if you would a little bit, just give us the sense of the vastness

of the natural resources here in Alaska. Yeah, for the size, it's very hard for people to see, hard for people to see because a lot of times we're left off of maps or it's push into a corner. Alaska is so big that up until 1982 we actually had four time zones. Four? Four. Wow. It's typically cut off about every 15 degrees of longitude, but in order to actually

unify the state as well as get us a little bit closer to the contiguous U.S., which we refer to as the lower 48, we actually created the Alaska time zone, which is just one hour behind Pacific. Okay. But the funny thing is you could actually be in the capital of Juneau, which is an hour 45 flight away from Anchorage. And I can face time my wife. I can wake up in the morning and it's sunny in Juneau and it's still dark in Anchorage. Wow.

Massive state. Massive. And so we're that big. And so the resources that we have here, we have had oil producing basins, the same basin for 60 years, Prudeau Bay and Kaepark, which is on the north slope, which touches the Arctic Ocean. And there's still more discoveries going on there. We also have a vast majority of the world's coal supply and fresh water supply in the state of Alaska. The vast majority of the world's coal supply. Alaska is over like 2.2, 2.3 times the size of Texas.

And so Alaskans, with, you know, being a small state complex, we say that if you cut Alaska in half, Texas becomes the third largest state. So there's obviously a lot of warring over resources. Yes. And it can be challenging to actually get to those resources and to produce them. Talk a little bit about those challenges, specifically on the environmental roadblocks that you all face here in Alaska. Alaska is very unique in the fact that our statehood Act, Congress voted to allow the territory to become a state in 1959, actually mandated that the mineral resources and the subsurface rights were collectivized by the state

so that the state could actually collect the royalties and production taxes off of that to fund government. And so whereas you have other states like in North Dakota and Texas, you can have individual farmers who actually have mineral rights. Nobody has that in Alaska. And so that happened at the Statoid Act, and it was collected in order to fund government. And so we were set up to be a resource development state since inception. Wow. And that's one of those. I want everyone to actually really know.

And it's very hard for people to understand that. We are a beautiful, vast place, but we were designed to. to be a resource development state. And then as we grow, we have had incredible resource discoveries all over the state. There is examples of, we have mines all over the world. So, sorry, our world class. And so one of the world's largest lead in zinc mines

is in northwest Alaska, far above the Arctic. And that mine was very difficult to get to. The state investment bank, Ada, actually paid for the toll road to create that in the 70s. And that actually benefited the local Alaska Native Regional Corporation. and it has been producing for over 40 years and has provided very extensive jobs and allowed those people to not only have an economy to stay there, but you have this town now that's about 4,000, 5,000 people of primarily Anupiac Eskimos living up there.

They get to benefit from this, and they still get to live a subsistence lifestyle. Okay, so that's a story we don't hear very often because the environmentalists are very, very loud. And so we hear a lot about how drilling and mining is really, really harming the environment and also harming indigenous populations. What have you all found? We have found the opposite. In fact, there was actually an American Medical Association journal from about seven years ago, which actually discussed what cultures or areas in the United States have actually seen the largest growth and life expectancy. And we have seen this in northwest Alaska, where that large lead and zinc mine is,

as well as in the North Slope Borough, which is the entire borough across the state, that actually across the top of the state, which borders the Belfort Sea or the Arctic Ocean. With this population up there of about 10,000 residents, primarily in Nupia-Keskimo. And that's the most far-nourous civilization. Northernmost point in North America. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. They subsist regularly off of their bowhead whales. They do hunt polar bears.

They do the bearded seals and caribou. and that is how they live up there, but they also are very sophisticated, they form to borough, and they tax oil and gas property. And so this group up there has annual budgets of $350 million. Wow.

And so they're able to actually provide a lot for their citizens to stay in that area. And so the city of Barrow is between 5 to 6,000 people, or Ukiavik is they change their name to the traditional, and they get a live up there.

They have a utilidor system. They have natural gas that is pumped into the city, and they actually provide heat and electricity and clean water for this vast population that's literally at the ends of the earth. Wow. And that's because of their reliance on fossil fuel. They saw that there's a benefit to this.

It can be done in a clean way. And they were able to subsidize that their lifestyle so they can continue to live a subsistence lifestyle and stay in work in their cultural homelands. Is that story getting out? Not as much as you'd think. It's very common in Alaska. But as we discussed this more with folks around. in the country, they don't necessarily understand that.

It's amazing what they've been able to do. The largest domiciled corporations in the state of Alaska are Alaska Native corporations. These are the groups that is Alaska, again, collectifies resources, but under ANCSA of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Alaska Native groups were actually allowed to form regional corporations and given mineral rights. So we don't have, we have one reservation in the state of Alaska.

The rest of that, they actually were given mineral rights and claims to their cultural lands. and they actually get to produce and develop those lands, and they have formed exceptionally profit, multi-billion dollar corporations off of this, that not only provides jobs, helps develop the lands, but they also provide the large dividends checks back to their shareholders, which are Alaska natives.

Wow, critical. So what are the challenges to accessing all of these resources fully that Alaska naturally has? Yeah, the nice thing is, well, I guess the sad thing, a lot of these large developments, they were made and they were built in the 60s and 70s. And after that, we know where a lot of things are, but the regulatory burden and the environmental burden that comes with actually accessing anything new has been cost prohibitive or restrictive. And so Alaska is actually divided right up the middle is where our highway system runs north and south.

There is no connected roadways on the western half of Alaska. Wow. And so we have over 200 towns or villages that are actually off of the road system in Alaska. You can only get to by boat or by plane. And so the difficult thing is trying to build access to that. And we have proven over time that you can actually build infrastructure. You can build the Trans-Alaska pipeline, which is 800 miles that goes from Prudeau Bay, the oil field, and the Arctic, all the way down to tidewater and Valdez. And at the time, in the 70s, the environmentalists, they were saying, oh, you're going to destroy the Caribou Herds.

Well, the Caribou Herds numbers have actually grown over time because it was built in such a way. It's elevated off. It's buried when necessary. It protects the permafrost. There's actually crossings for caribou to get out. And we've learned over the decades that the bugs are so bad in the tundra between flies and insects that the curia would actually like to rest on the gravel pad underneath the pipeline and the roads

because it's a reprieve from the bugs. Wow. The win-win for every one. It is. And so we've seen that grow. And so what we're struggling with in Alaska is actually building these new roads. And so Governor Dunle, the current governor, first two-term governor in a generation, is really trying to push these roads to resources,

working with our Alaskan native groups, getting support to these villages that would be connected, to make sure that we have these vast mineral deposits. If we can move west, we've got coal, we have gold, we have copper, we have antimony. Antimony is actually a new resource, which China has recently said they're going to stop exporting to the U.S., but it's a necessary metal for the hardening of munitions

and also military-grade tools. Wow. So if there was these resources, roads were built, we can access these materials, those environmental roadblocks were removed. How does that not only affect Alaska, but, as you refer to it, the lower 48? It actually provides a safeguard. It actually helps protect our allies. It actually helps keep the U.S. safe because our military will actually have critical tools. We talk about the critical minerals that the military needs, that renewable energy needs. We have to have

malibidum. We have to have these rare earths. Alaska has all of these. And the funny thing is, Well before all of these environmental lawsuits and groups had popped up, Alaska has always protected the environment. And we say that we have responsibly developed our resources. It is in our state constitution that we must maximize the natural resources for the benefit of the citizens. And so we actually have that to we have done very minimal gas flaring over time. We actually try to protect those hydrocarbons and we recycle them.

So we know we have 43 trillion cubic feet of stranded natural gas on the North Slope. And so we have these products. as opposed to be flaring off, we have protected them. We have protected them in such a way that we have seen animal populations that have grown over time living right next to our native populations. If we were fully mining, producing

100% Alaska's resources, natural resources, what would that do to America's energy costs? It would probably go down substantially. It would help a little bit. The difference is right now we have some exporting going on right from the Gulf of Mexico. There has been a FERC pause by the Biden administration to actually not allow LNG exports for any new permits. Alaska actually has a fully permitted FERC permitted project for the Alaska gas line to move our gas.

The difference is where Alaska is is not only could we help the United States, primarily help our allies in Asia. And so we're talking with Japan and Taiwan and other groups in South Korea. We actually could be able to help them because it's seven and seven and and a half days from Alaska, it's 16 days from the Gulf of Mexico if you can get through the Panama Canal. Wow. Are we exporting anything to those nations right now? No. We actually, the first exports occurred in the 60s in Alaska. It was Conoco Phillips. Actually had moved that, but we stopped exporting natural gas in 2010. Okay. So talk a little about where the focus is right now. I know you all have created a very

strategic plan of okay, this is where we want to go in Alaska. Share what the future holds. What we're focusing on in Alaska is actually upgrading our energy system. We want to make sure that we can build this. Because we're so removed from the lower 48 or the contiguous U.S., some of the rules of regulations haven't been applied up here. We're not FERC regulated in that we don't have redundant transmission systems. And so one of the focuses of our governor is actually how do we build a redundancy to where we can open up transmission capacity to allow new power generators to come online. And this could be any entrepreneurial-based solar panel farms, wind farms, clean abated coal farms with sequestration. So abated coal is clean coal technology with carbon sequestration is actually a lower carbon footprint than an equal-sized wind farm.

And so this was a study that was done by our university system and actually validated by the Department of Energy. And so we have a lot of these possible tools. So we're focusing on Alaska is how do we actually provide capacity for these new power generations to come on to then open the door for a lot of. lot more industries to look to Alaska, to look where our geostrategic location is in the world, where are close to our allies, we're also on these various trade routes to where we can bring people in. As an example, we have moved up to the third busiest airport cargo hub in the world. Wow. Because they can put more goods on and fly a shorter route to Alaska. We're only nine hours

from mainland China. Wow. Interesting. All right, before I let you go, I have to ask, What is the best kept secret of Alaska, do you think? Best kept secret of Alaska is that while our winters are long, they're not as cold as people think in the populated areas. Okay. Actually, I did my undergrad in Chicago, and actually I remember vividly, my first winter there in February, there was two straight weeks of 12 below or colder

with your very high humidity and winds screaming off of Lake Michigan. And my friends and my teammates looked at me, so you must be used to this. I said, I have never seen this before in my life, and I don't understand how you live here. And they looked at me so weird. And what we have, it's a long, drawn out cold that we have in Alaska. The severity of it is much more bearable than some of those other areas. That's what I was always struck with me.

Wow, good to know. All right, how can we follow your work? So what we're doing in Alaska, we're going to continue actually fighting us. I would say on the energy side. And, you know, the conversations this week and over the last couple of months, months has really highlighted how much we need to actually push our story more. Yeah. And so we're going to actually collect a lot of stories from our native population and the benefits and you can hear it from them. Yeah. I'm only repeating

stories that have been told to me directly by my friends that live in these villages and to hear it from their voice is a very powerful thing about what they're able to do. So we're going to actually promote that much much more to share that story of the benefit of resource development in a responsible way, but what it can do to these remote populations. Critical. Commissioner Crumb, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it.

Absolutely. I am so pleased to be sitting in Alaska with the Speaker of the House for Alaska. Kathy Tilton, thank you so much, Speaker Tilton for your time today, and for talking about your great state. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me here today.

And thank you for coming to our great state of Alaska. It is really a pleasure to have everybody here with this seminar that's a very been going on and just to get to meet so many wonderful people, I just want to scoop you all up and keep you here in Alaska. Well, it's definitely an absolutely gorgeous state. Were you born and raised in the state of Alaska? I was not born here, but since I was two years old, my grandparents came with the military and my mom followed and then my dad followed after that. But I haven't left Alaska. I've been here all my life. I'm a little older than 29, so just a few years. Well, were you always

interested in serving in Alaska state politics, where did that journey begin for you? So I worked at the local level. When I graduated high school, I moved out to the Matsu Valley from Anchorage, mainly because I couldn't afford a home. I was head hunted by the mayor of the city to come work for him. And in that time period, about 10 years, I worked for five different mayors. We went through a few for different reasons. So I got a good. good understanding of how local government works. I had been working at a law firm as a legal secretary, and it was really fascinating, but it came to a time in my life where I needed to raise my family, and so I left local government and spent a long time raising my children, which was

fabulous. We're private business owners ourselves, and so I had the best of both worlds, get to be at work a little bit, be a mom, raise my kiddos, and well, but then as luck would have it, head-handed by a senator to come and work for her. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. But God has different plans for you. And eventually, I heard clearly that I needed to say yes. And so I went to work in Juneau, and I worked as a staff for four years. Well, best time in my life to really understand state government,

I think that it's important for people who want to be involved in the political world to go and staff or volunteer in somebody's office is really worthwhile. The seat became open in my district, and, well, you know, it all goes from here. I ran for that. I just put my boots to the ground and went and knocked on them lots and lots and lots and lots of doors and heard people's concerns and won that election, and now I'm working on my sixth term. Wow. And became House Speaker.

That's a long journey. I did become a House Speaker, although I didn't exactly run for it. But, you know, when I first ran and was elected, we were in the majority. But we lost that majority in Alaska here. The Republicans were not in the majority for six years. So some of that was due to the kind of strange politics that we have here. We have some folks that will hop over party lines and build coalitions and things like that. It was an interesting place to visit in the minority.

I did learn a lot there, but I knew that we needed to work our way out. So just over time, we just kept adding to our numbers and adding to our numbers. And then this last session, we were able to take the majority. And we're looking forward to a stronger majority coming into the next year. Well, now that you all have the majority and your House Speaker, you said, you know, the first thing that I want to prioritize as House Speaker in Alaska is a state fiscal plan. Why was that such a high priority for you? Fiscal plan has been something that has been talked about in Alaska for a very long time. And it's kind of, you know, all politics and all policy is kind of circular, I think.

But I had filed a revised spending limit. We have a constitutional spending limit, but it does not put down more pressure on our budget. So I was kind of on a finance track, and I've always been concerned about the spend that we have with the revenues that we have coming in to our state. you know, private sector, you don't get to spend more than you make. And so I felt like it was really important. So I filed a revised constitutional spending limit. I wasn't able to get that over the line,

but I knew that that was an important piece of where we need to go in our state fiscal health. So this year we put together a Ways and Means Committee, which actually looked at, and, you know, honestly, the chair of that committee was really open to looking at all the different components. and pieces of what it would take to put together a complete fiscal plan for Alaska. Wow. Really, really critical. When you look at some of those other top priorities for yourself, for your fellow GOP

members in the house, what are some of the big issues that you all are really focused on addressing that are maybe some of the consistent problems that kind of come up for Alaskans? Sure, of course. Well, first I want to say when I took the gavel, I said three things, and three things only. I said, we need respect for ourselves because I think Americans across the board, we've lost a little bit of respect for ourselves. And we need to bring that back, how we present ourselves, how we act and those kinds of things. And then respect for each other. We need to have the, you know, we need to be able to listen to each other.

It does not mean we have to change our values or our morals or go against what our constituency might want us to do, but we still should be able to have those conversations so that we can learn what we might be, as we come to the floor with a bill or something like that. So respect for yourself, respect for each other, and then respect for the institution. I feel like there is a lot of, you know, people like their legislator, but they don't like the legislature. And kind of like teachers and school districts, right? So I felt like if we could bring back some of that decorum, and we bring back that decorum by having respect for each other. And that's one of the big, big kind of overarching things.

If I didn't accomplish anything else, I'd feel great if we could accomplish that, that we could bring back some respect to the legislature. But when we get to policy issues, of course, I'm a less government person. Absolutely. I'm a private business person. I believe that the private sector is who provides the economy and that, you know, the government is there to just, you know, just set a background and less regulation. So honestly, for me, the less bills that you file,

sometimes you're better off unless you're taking away from some regulations or some things like that we really wanted to look at education and how education was being performed in alaska there is a lot of room for change uh i think it's it's no secret that we're 49th in the nation in our um education scores and testing we want to be able to bring that up we want to hold our school districts accountable because every child deserves a great education. But what does that mean? Children all learn differently. I have three boys.

They all have different learning habits and the way that they learn. So we want to have more choice. We want parents to be involved. We want to bring back those family values. The parents should be involved in the education of their child. So those kinds of things.

We did a whole reform package on education. It was six or seven bills. all put together kind of omnibus, which I'm not really a big fan, but we needed that. And it kind of shook things up here in Alaska, because over the last six years, while we were not in control, there was nothing really done. There was nothing to reform education. And there actually was no money ever being put towards education, except for when the governor did the Reed's Act, which was done here based on, I think, Florida's Reeds Act.

And we did put a small amount of money, but that was the Republican again who voted for that. So we wanted to come out kind of, you know, just strong. And we did. We came out really strong with an education package to do some reforms and to have some accountability and to have the family involvement and give people those options and choice. That's so, so critical. Well, one of the other big issues, because we're talking about young people in education, and I think that's a fight that, especially on the school choice front, so critical for so many states across America. Another issue that's affecting so many states and specifically young people is that of opioids and really addressing that opioid crisis. Talk if you would

a little bit about how that has affected the state of Alaska and how you all are working to really address that crisis here. Absolutely. You know, it's interesting because if you think about the vast amount of land that Alaska has, we have areas of our state that are actually considered dry communities because there is a large amount of addiction that is kind of it's um you know it's something that we just face here in alaska um there's a large um alcohol addiction and so it would make sense you would think though how would we even have opioids it's coming into alaska somebody asked me about fentanyl the other day and i said you know that i you know how does it even get here well i'm not 100% sure how it gets here but it gets here and so this um a few years ago there was a

bill that was brought forward that was kind of took a soft-on-crime approach. It was kind of going around the nation. It was in my first year when I was in the majority. I'm newly elected as a freshman legislator. And the bill numbers has to be 91. It won't mean anything to people outside of Alaska, but it means a lot to me. That was one of the best votes I've ever taken in my career, I believe. I've taken many that are really good. But this was, on this, I just instilled. I instinctively knew that this kind of reform was not what we needed. And I voted no, even though I was encouraged by many of my members, caucus members, to vote yes for that bill. Well, it was only about a year after that bill was implemented that it ended up that we, people who had sell what would happen and cars were being stolen and every, you know, it's kind of like just a, you know, a land of everybody just free for all.

So that bill wasn't totally repealed, but we ended up doing a redo and we're tightened down a lot of the things that were in SB 91 to get some controls back. So, you know, people could feel safe in their own homes. Has that helped crime levels to come down, whether on that drug front or in the areas of things like carjackings, more violent crimes? It did. It did make a difference when we did this. form and we ended up, you know, making the penalties higher again and not really having this. You know, we didn't want to have this soft on-crime attitude here. What we want to tell criminals is we don't want you here. We don't want you in Alaska.

Don't bring your stuff here. Don't come here. So we just did a bill this last session that was, that really did look at opioids and fentanyl in particular and, you know, increase those penalties for those major dealers to say, don't even come to Alaska. So, so critical. You know, Alaska is a state full of amazing natural resources, of course, tons of natural beauty. The population, though, it is shrinking. What would you say to people to maybe convince them or give them a thought of, hey, there's a lot of reasons to consider Alaska as a home? Well, it's my home and I love it here, of course, so I have to say I'm really

partial to Alaska. But, you know, if we were looking to ask, why would you want to come to Alaska, what you just said, the natural resources are here. It is a beautiful state. It's a wonderful place to raise your family. You know, we are working on education and more choice options. So that might be a reason to bring your family here. But, you know, just the outdoors and the activities that you have available to you here are

Supreme. We have a world-class ski resort here in Alaska. People might not know that. Really, best kept secrets. We have Denali, which my husband calls McKinley still back from the day, because he was a climber and he was a guide on Mount McKinley. It's just if you enjoy the great outdoors, if you enjoy family activities, fishing and hunting and getting back to your roots, My grandparents were farmers. And so, you know, being in Alaska, my grandmother taught me to fish, to hunt, to plant my garden, and to use all of those resources. And that brings your family together. I love that perspective.

You mentioned early on that, you know, you're very much so in your leadership role as House Speaker, your mindset is very much smaller government, bringing down that federal regulation. what do you hope to see for Alaska in the next five to ten years? As you continue on that journey of trying to shrink the size of government in Alaska. Well, you know, I would love to see. We talked about some regulation reform. We started to work on that a little bit. I would like to see more of that regulation reform. There's a lot of undue regulations that just don't make sense for Alaska.

When in particular just a crazy story, my son has a, taxi company and he wants to be able to provide rides for handicapped people and he cannot do that without five years of experience already doing that for the insurance so so technically he needs to come from out-of-state to be able to to provide this resource this need which is really huge transportation needs in Alaska are huge because of the vast amount of land that we have here. And he's not asking for a grant from the state to provide him with the vehicles. He's ready to provide those vehicles himself, but he's being stopped by the fact that he can't

get insurance for his company to do that. So those are the kind of unnecessary and burdensome regulations that I would love to be able to tackle and, you know, say we don't need that. We want to encourage the private sector development because our private sector is, what creates our economy. Yeah, one so much affects the other. Absolutely. Well, Speaker Tilton, thank you for your time.

Thank you for the work that you're doing here in Alaska. And thank you for hosting this great conference in the state of Alaska in your hometown. Thank you so much for being here. And thanks for having me on your show anytime. I'm always available. And I just really appreciate all you do. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us for this double-header show of the

The Daily Signal Podcast. I hope you enjoyed those conversations with both speaker Kathy Tilton and Commissioner Adam Crumb. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows from the Daily Signal podcast, whether our morning interview editions or our afternoon top news. And if you would, take a minute to leave us a five-star rating and review. We love hearing your feedback. All right. We'll right back here with you around 5 p.m. for top news. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Katrina Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, and Elizabeth Mitchell.

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