Tara Jollie

Ditch the cliches ("over the cliff," "train wreck"), protect the Permanent Fund and balance the budget. It's not wizardry, it's just work.

OPINION: I think the Anchorage LIO deal is business as usual, and that's what stinks. Election 2016 can't get here quick enough for me.

OPINION: If Legislature has some real leaders, they'll back the governor's Permanent Fund plan and take another look at oil taxes.

OPINION: Alaska should ignore the huffy-puffy political talk and create a citizens' oversight panel to monitor, verify and report on the progress of Medicaid expansion and reform.

OPINION: The Legislature's failure to declare a special session means Alaskans must rise and demand that the Legislature cease all regular session business and do the lawful thing.

OPINION: I wish a lawmaker with great courage would stand up and speak difficult truths on the floor of the Alaska House of Representatives. We cannot just cut our way to a balanced budget. We must address the revenue side.

OPINION: I was a skeptic, but after being part of the Walker/Mallott transition conference, I believe the whole nation should be watching and taking notes on good governance.

OPINION: Lawmakers in Juneau should call for an impact analysis of the oil tax reduction in relation to the Community Revenue Sharing program, which was tied to oil revenue in 2008.

OPINION: If you vote for the candidate and not the party, choosing can be hard. But picking a leader isn’t nearly as complicated as it seems when you start with the team.

OPINION: At a time when Alaska so badly needs good leadership, instead it gets grenade-throwing partisanship. Alaska's leadership needs to focus, and Alaskans apparently need to pray.

OPINION: Senate Bill 26 drastically alters the sale, exchange, permitting and use of state lands and or water. But it is exactly the kind of legislation Alaska doesn't need: sloppy, lazy and full of holes.

OPINION: Alaska's leaders should abandon the good-old-boy system and step into the world of modern management in selecting a new Commissioner of Labor.

Political pundits say jobs will be the number-one issue in the upcoming election. I hope they are right. We haven’t done anything about unemployment in Alaska worth bragging about.

It took years to make a mess of this program which is now a mere shadow of what it used to be and is supposed to be.

While the special legislative session still in stalemate, it's easy to forget that jobs, not necessarily oil taxes, is a big issue still facing the governor and lawmakers.