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Rep. Al Vezey - Alaska's Master of Deceit From North Pole
A Story about What happens When People Don't Get Out and Vote!
by Gerald C. Newton January 30, 1996
Once in a while we actually find a politician that tries to fool all the
people all the time.   Representative Al Vezey from an area near North Pole is a
lot like that. We hope all of you read this report and think about it.  Think
about how some people in this country will abuse a democracy and feel no guilt
or shame.  We must expose these self-serving politicians that practice deceit
and alert our fellow Americans to what can happen when people do not get out and
vote. As a citizen Al Vezey was appointed to a reapportionment committee to
redraw the boundaries for State political districts.  He drew boundaries all
right, one of which included himself and a large area of a local Military
reservation, Fort Wainwright.   There are about 4,600 registered voters or over
fifty per cent of the voters in this district  that live on Fort Wainwright that
historically vote republican. Al Vezey ran as a republican in his own designed
district  and was, as expected, elected to the State House.  But let's not stop
here.  Al Vezey ran against Joe Ryan with an agreement between them that
regardless of who won, the other would become the winner's legislative aid
insuring that they both would get a "Piece of the State Pie."  Sure
enough, after Al Vezey won, he hired Joe Ryan as his legislative aid.
 From his safe Federal voter haven where most State Laws do not apply he
began his attack on the State's electrical industry and virtually destroyed the
electrical contractor licensing law for over 2 years.  He even proposed to allow
any registered professional engineer to operate as an electrical administrator
while he, a civil engineer, was scheduled to take the civil engineer's P.E.
examination.  This proposal, if it were passed as a State Law, would have
allowed Al Vezey to operate his general contracting business, Lakeoy, Inc., as
an electrical contractor.  During the time when there were no licensing
requirements for Electrical Administrators, three local people in the Fairbanks
area were so badly ripped off by a legally licensed electrical contractor that
did not have an Electrical Administrator that they had to go to the Attorney
General's Office, the Ombudsman's Office, and finally had to hire an attorney
and sue for retribution.  In one home with children it was a miracle that the
bad electrical work did not burn the house down.  This self serving move by a
State Representative to eliminate the Electrical Administrators went unnoticed
by his Federal Voters because the law did not apply to them anyway.  For that
matter, most of them are not in Alaska long enough to pay much attention to
State politics, except for the collection of the permanent fund dividend check 
- just another reason Vezey can continue his treachery. But it does not end here.  
During the time Al Vezey is not at Juneau, the
State of Alaska's Capital, trying to destroy the rest of State, he operates a
contracting business and performs work on  military reservations doing
electrical work by hiring unlicensed electricians and not using an electrical
administrator to supervise projects as state law requires for almost all the
other contractors in Alaska, the very contractors that Vezey harmed with his
self serving actions in Juneau.  It is ironic indeed, that a Republican
State Representative that proposes to cut State spending makes a living working
on Republican sponsored Federal Pork Barrel construction projects.  Is Al Vezey
out to get whatever from wherever?  From examining his record it is difficult to
arrive at any other conclusion!
 During every legislative session in Juneau, Al Vezey rants and raves about
cutting the State of Alaska's operating budget and eliminating State of Alaska
administrative laws.   Although the state laws requiring licensing of
electricians and contractors do not apply at Ft. Wainwright, soldiers and their
wives do have the benefit to vote in State elections, and soldiers and their
wives do collect the $1,000 State of Alaska permanent fund dividend checks every
year and continue, in many cases, to collect these checks even after leaving
Alaska, and collect PFD for newborn babies that are not born in Alaska. 
According to the Permanent Fund Dividend Office in 1994 over $10.1 million in
permanent fund dividend checks were sent to out-of-state addresses.  Al Vezey
never rants and raves about this little perk that his voters get. And just what
do you call a person that  hides behind Federal supremacy laws to run a business
and makes a living off Republican sponsored Federal Pork Barrel projects, and
although not a veteran,  is elected by voters that live on a Military
Reservation where most State of Alaska laws don't apply?   Vezey graduated from
high school in 1967 at the peak of the Viet Nam War, but there is no record of
him serving in the military.
 It is alarming that the Republican party made Vezey the House Majority
Leader and their Spokesperson in the State of Alaska.  Certainly, this is not
the democracy that Thomas Jefferson would have approved  in any sense of the
word.  Al Vezey is a true Master of Deceit, and as long as the Alaskan people
take an apathetic view toward politics he and others like him will continue to
exist.   
But what about the Republican Conservative Right?  Are these people stupid
or just so hard up for a politician that they put up with Vezey?   Here we have
a politician who hides in his self designed Federal political enclave and cannot
be touched.  He can literally tear down any State of Alaska Institution, and
does, and gets by with it.  He is the Republican Party's legal hit man, and the
Republicans have the unadulerated gall to allow his devious treachery to
continue without the slightest rebuttal.  It makes a person sick unto disgust to
be an Alaskan, especially a North Pole Alaskan. 
On the Internet at
http://www.polarnet.com/users/GNewton/newt.htm