There’s plenty of rage aimed at the White House for trying to defund a number of independent agencies, most notably the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. But Trump’s doing more than sending the cast of Sesame Street into early retirement.
Some of the less prominent agencies on the chopping block deserve the ax, and Trump’s right to take aim at them. There’s no better example than the little known Denali Commission.
Denali Commission employees are the ones knocking on igloo doors in faraway Alaska, telling residents that they’re from the government and they’re there to help. But according to the agency’s own watchdog, the federal agency shouldn’t even exist.
Mike Marsh sent a letter 4,270 miles from Anchorage to Washington asking Congress to fire him and all of his coworkers at the Denali Commission. “I’ve concluded that my agency is a congressional experiment that hasn’t worked out in practice,” wrote Marsh, who was then the federal inspector. Predictably, the note exploded in the media and the effort failed. Not for lack of merit, though.
The Denali Commission, as the Washington Post reported at the time, was little more than the pet pork project of Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens. The commission doesn’t work with the Denali National Park. Instead, it attempts to bring the federal government to the farthest reaches of Alaska. Specifically, it’s supposed to provide job training, foster economic development with an eye to providing power generators, and promote rural development. And it’s really, really expensive.
At its peak in 2006, the arctic agency slurped up more than $150 million in taxpayer dollars. Last year, the commission requested a more modest $19 million in funding.
Writing “not as the agency’s cheerleader, apologist, or lobbyist,” Marsh argued that was money poorly spent. The power stations and medical facilities they built in the wilderness often went unused. That profligate waste, Marsh argued, could explain why “Alaska ranks first in the nation in its per capita receipt of federal grants, and fourth in federal contracts.”
Since jotting off the letter to lawmakers, Marsh appears to have dashed off. He’s no longer listed on the commission’s website as an employee and likely for obvious reason. As the Post reported at the time, “no small amount of bad blood was spilled.” But four years later there’s no indication the public shaming of the agency made them more responsible.
Before leaving office and despite its poor track record, President Obama gave the commission a new job. They’re responsible for developing and implementing short and long-term solutions to deal with climate change. In particular, Obama committed $2 million to the commission in order to help rural villages relocate.
But the commission’s not exactly working as a federal moving company. Alaska Public Radio reports that the commission isn’t doing any heavy lifting. Instead, they’re “launching a coordinated review” of how coastal communities could eventually move.
While that may or may not be a worthy goal, it seems like one best suited to the Alaskan, not the federal, government. Whether or not the Denali Commission gets the boot (Congress makes the real spending decisions), the agency’s poor track record shows that not all of Trump’s budget cuts should be so controversial.
h/t @lachlan
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
