Alaska’s $23 billion Alaska Permanent Fund was created from oil money with the sole purpose of distributing the dividends from investments to all Alaskans each year. Yet Governor Murkowski has suggested in a recent speech that the Permanent Fund could also be leveraged to support the effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an effort many environmentalist and some Alaska Native groups vehemently oppose. Though Murkowski cautioned that he was not officially proposing anything, he offered examples of how investments in a company could be used to put pressure on legislators from that state. The law that created the Fund, however, states: "The resources of the (Alaska Permanent Fund) corporation or the fund may not be used to finance or influence political activities."
