House District 8 Candidates Bill Elam and John Hillyer discussed topics ranging from education and Alaskan outmigration to Alaska’s financial future and the proposed natural gas pipeline in the most recent installment of the Candidate Forum Series.
Elam currently represents the Sterling and Funny River areas on the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly and manages IT operations at Central Peninsula Hospital. Hillyer served in the U.S. Air Force for 32 years and has lived on the Kenai Peninsula for the last 10 years.
On outmigration, or the climbing trend of Alaskans leaving the state, Elam said the issue was near “crisis level” and that he believes better career and technical education for the younger residents of the state could help stem the tide of these departures.
“Our younger folks don’t necessarily feel like they have a lot of opportunities here,” said Elam. “One of the things I’ve been able to do in my tenure on the Assembly was to partner with the the school district and use my knowledge and. Relationships within the technology industries to reach out to our career technical education folks. And so, [with] Cisco networking, I was able to get them into our, our, our schools right here so that you can come right out of our high schools with a, a CNA, which is a technology certification.”
Hillyer focused on boosting the Alaskan economy, providing a better education, and increasing energy production to incentivize people to stay in Alaska. He said the declining employment rates in the state are leading to a reduction in the population.
“Our economy is going downhill, and that as a result, unemployment is increasing. In fact, we have some of the worst unemployment in the nation in the bottom five,” Hillyer said. ” That has led to an outmigration of these and a reduction in population. The reasons being is because we don’t have the economy. What we need to do is stimulate, and we need to motivate the legislature and reconnect them with the private sector. When you have 40% of your budget coming from the federal government, 30% from earnings reserve, and about 13% plus from oil and gas, there’s no real incentive for the legislature to connect with the private sector. We need to reinstate that.”
To hear the rest of the Elam/Hillyer forum, you can rewatch or listen to the full forum on the Peninsula Clarion Facebook page.
Stay up with the full candidate forum series by following the forum schedule at radiokenai.com.