“If you steal $10 from a man’s wallet, you’re likely to get into a fight, but if you steal billions from the commons, co-owned by him and his descendants, he may not even notice.”
So said Walter Hickel, a former Republican governor of Alaska who died on May 7 at age 90. Hickel was a businessman who campaigned first for Alaskan statehood and then for its economic development. He also served as President Nixon’s Secretary of Interior, until he was forced out over differences on the Vietnam war.
Like another Republican governor of Alaska, Jay Hammond, Hickel believed in managing Alaska’s common resources for the benefit of all the people. But he fought with Hammond over how to do that. Whereas Hickel wanted to use the state’s oil revenue for big economic development projects, Hammond preferred to return much of the revenue to the people in the form of yearly dividends. Hammond got his way with the establishment of the Alaska Permanent Fund, which since 1980 has paid out over $17 billion to all Alaskans equally.
In 1990 Hickel was elected to a second term as governor. In this term he reclaimed over $4 billion of unpaid taxes and royalties from North Slope oil producers and established a ‘community development quota’ which brought revenue from offshore fisheries to Alaska’s coastal villages. In both his terms as governor and in civic life, he was known for his insistence that the state, not private industry or the federal government, should decide the best use of Alaska’s common lands and resources.