Greg Svendsen - I'm guessing you weren't here back then to listen to the debates. The PFD was instituted to keep the people of Alaska interested in the Permanent Fund and vigilant against their legislators spending the corpus of the fund. In the years after the fund was created, the Legislature kept trying to spend it and the voters, perceiving that the fund didn't actually belong to them were not uncomfortable with that idea because we were lured by politician promises for free stuff. Gov. Hammond recognized that if we got some small part of it (as shareholders in the corporation, so to speak), we would show up for the shareholders meeting (Leg Session) and argue against spending the corpus.

I personally would not have done it the way that he did. I favored direct transfer from the revenue stream to the people. We would have paid taxes on it and used it to build an economy rather than growing a massive state government. THAT would have benefitted all Alaskans.