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Some excerpts:
Townsend: “Make your pitch for why you think Alaskans should vote for you for governor.”
JKT: “I want to put an end to the conflict and dysfunction between the legislature and the governor. We’re breaking records for the most number of vetoes in a two-year legislature in Alaska history. And I think that is a sign of failed governance, failure to collaborate, failure even just to communicate.
And I think basic institutions in Alaska have really struggled and suffered, like K-12 education, or in coastal Alaska, where I’m from, the ferry system, or even just the really, I mean, this might not seem glamorous or sexy, but the basics like the DOT Surface Transportation Improvement Program, the billion dollars every year we get from the feds, it’s been mismanaged in Alaska, it’s forfeited upwards of $200 million in federal money because of mismanagement of just like the basics of administering state government. And those basics really matter. So these are the things that have really concerned me.”
Townsend: “You’ve talked quite a bit on the campaign trail about support for education. You’ve talked about wanting to forward-fund public schools, give teachers a pension plan to keep them from leaving. What else would you like to see done to stabilize public schools and improve the education Alaskans kids get?”
JKT: “Well, full funding is just a matter of triage. We’ve seen accounting for inflation, significant cuts over the last eight years to public education. And I think any parent in Alaska has seen what that looks like firsthand.
“And I’ve traveled every corner of the state, all 19 boroughs across Alaska. I don’t know how many dozens of school districts I’ve interacted with over the course of this year. There are 54 total in Alaska, definitely a healthy fraction of those 54.”
“And every school district has their own sad story about what that divestment and relative neglect has looked like. So getting funding back up to par is the first order of business. And forward funding, I think, is this wonderful, common sense, bipartisan improvement where basically we can lock in education funding earlier in the year so school districts can actually plan and not guess how much funding they’re gonna get and not have to resort to this awful budgeting mechanism where they fire a bunch of teachers because they don’t know how much money they’re gonna get and then rehire them two or three months later.
“And it’s just like a lose, lose, lose. It’s so dumb and we don’t have to do it. And making forward funding a priority in fiscal year 28 and the coming legislative session is also gonna be high priority for me.”
“I’m very confident we can get it done. It can be to my desk as governor by March in school districts. For the first time in years, can actually proactively plan and not just be left to guessing.
So I think those are two really important things. And I’ll just say really quickly as a third element, I think it’s really important that teachers in Alaska have a retirement. And right now, that basically is not true.
“And teachers are leaving the state and droves two and a half times the national turnover rate here in Alaska, about 20% year-over-year. Teachers are leaving the classroom. And a lot of that is because there’s just no financial future in the profession.
“And so passing a reasonable defined benefit plan, which the legislature has done, but the governor has vetoed, is another priority for me.”
Townsend: “So let’s talk about the Permanent Fund. The Permanent Fund dividend is an annual fight that takes attention away from other pressing state fiscal issues. What do you see as the answer here? And will it take a constitutional amendment to settle this?”
“Yeah, there is a reform for the permanent fund to make it truly permanent and truly protected. It just so happens, I introduced that legislation the last four years of my legislative career, and it’s creating basically a single fund endowment for the permanent fund that has a constitutional limit on how much money can be taken out every year. If there’s a limit on how much money can be taken out of the permanent fund so that you’re not overspending it or spending it down, it’s a sustainable amount that you’re taking out every year, that is the way to protect the permanent fund from being spent down so that it can grow for future generations.
“And it’s a relatively simple constitutional amendment. And the permanent fund corporation trustees have supported it. Organizations like Commonwealth North and other, the Bankers Association, it’s pretty much anybody who has spent time around state finances.”
Townsend: “What do you see as a path to better energy system stability and less price volatility, especially for rural communities? Are there hydro projects or other things that you think could help with that stabilization?”
“100 percent, yes. And in my old district, so the rural Southeast Alaska communities, HUNA built Gartina Falls Hydro. It’s a micro hydro project, just shy of one megawatt.
“It one-to-one displaced diesel fuel generation and brought down the cost of power in HUNA, which is a growing community and has really succeeded in part because of the affordability of that lower-cost hydro energy. And the state has something called the Renewable Energy Fund that every year builds projects in rural Alaska that help communities get off high-cost diesel. And I was a big supporter of that program and appropriating money to build those projects as a legislator.
“And you can see the success across the state. I was in St. Mary’s on the Lower Yukon in July, and there’s just a big windmill right there. And again, displacing diesel, one-to-one basis.”
Townsend: “And in the continuing further with the discussion about the fiscal future, you were quoted in Anchorage Daily News on Friday saying, the state budget needs less magical thinking. Tell us what you mean by that and the fiscal context around it.”
“Magical thinking to me means that you’re going to pay a $4,000 PFD, you’re not going to have any new taxes, and somehow the state will continue to function magically the way it already has. It just doesn’t work. It doesn’t even not work.
“It doesn’t even remotely come close to working. If that were to come to pass, the degree of budget cuts that the state… It’s kind of an apocalyptic, like 28 days later, the movie level version of Alaska in order to somehow make those numbers work.
And I just think there has to be a degree of rigor and intellectual honesty when we talk about the budget. And there are trade-offs. And reasonable minds can disagree and weigh different parts of the budget in different ways.
“And that’s totally appropriate. But you need to be grounded in the math and kind of the truth of the matter. And it does Alaskans, I think, a disservice when you are sort of promising everything at the cost of nothing and somehow pretending that that is realistic.”
Townsend: “What are your ideas here in our final couple of minutes for keeping young people in the state after high school? A panel at a recent UAA event cited statistics that say 50% of high school students leave the state after graduation and don’t come back.”
JKT: “I was at an event last night where we were talking about this. And like in international trade, they talk about trade surpluses and deficits, you know, the US with China. And I feel like we have our own version of a trade deficit in Alaska where the number of young people who leave Alaska for work or for college in the lower 48 is far greater than the number of young people who come to Alaska for college or for work.
“And I want to turn that on it upside down. And part of that, I think, is having a robust, healthy university system. And I would be a big supporter of the university as governor.
“And the other piece is having great workforce development and career pathways, including out of high schools, into the trades, apprenticeships, you know, electricians, plumbers, laborers, carpenters, you name it. And there’s huge demand in our economy for those careers. And I think we can do a lot better in terms of helping get young people into, you know, a well-paid career where they have a future and see a future.”
From Talk of Alaska: The race for Alaska’s next governor: Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins | Talk of Alaska, Oct 20, 2026
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