Alaska's Most Unpopular Couple

Their challenge held up a $300 million payout to residents

It was the best news for taxpayers anywhere in overtaxed America. Thanks to levies on all the oil being pumped out of Alaska's North Slope, the state had piled up huge excess revenues. Last year the legislature passed two bills doling out $300 million of it to most of Alaska's 457,000 residents in the form of repeals and rebates of state income taxes and earnings from an oil royalty fund. Cause for jubilation among all Alaskans, right?

Not quite. Patricia and Ron Zobel of Anchorage, both lawyers, felt that the legislation favored oldtimers ("sourdoughs") over newcomers ("cheechakos"), thus violating the equal protection clauses of the federal and state constitutions. Seeking a fairer allocation, they filed a suit that brought the giveaway to a dead halt. Predictably, cheechakos and sourdoughs alike turned on the Zobels with the fury of one of the state's fierce Taku winds.

ZOBELS DROP DEAD, said the mildest of several bumper stickers that blossomed around the state. The couple was reviled on talk shows and received hate mail, bomb threats and late-night nuisance calls. After KIMO-TV Commentator Herb Shaindlin learned that Patricia, 32, was pregnant, he told his audience: "It's nice to know that Ron is doing to her what he's been doing to the rest of us." Says Patricia, who works for a highly regarded local firm: "People are so hateful without really knowing me. It affects everything I do, from writing checks in a supermarket to making reservations at a restaurant." Adds Ron, 36, an attorney with a public interest law firm: "The reaction has only demonstrated the need to challenge head-on this xenophobia and greed."

One law they challenged repealed state income tax for anyone who had filed returns for three years, a provision that took in 70% of all filers. It reduced the tax bill for the remaining 30% in proportion to the number of years they had filed. The scheme was to become permanent so that new residents who flooded the state during booms--like the one that marked the construction of the Alaska pipeline --would bear more of the tax burden. The second law was intended to pay out $100 million in earnings from an oil-revenue fund in ways even more favorable to sourdoughs. People over 18 were to receive $50 annually for each year of residence since 1959, the year Alaska became a state.

The Alaska Supreme Court last September agreed that it was discriminatory to tax only those Alaskans who had filed returns for fewer than three years. Consequently, later that month, the legislature revised the repeal-and-rebate law. The new version repeals income taxes for everyone and gives refunds to those who paid 1979 and 1980 taxes. As for the other law, the court approved it, noting that it was fair compensation for the harsh conditions and high prices endured by earlier settlers. Unappeased, the Zobels promptly got a stay of this second decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, which has put the $100 million windfall on hold while it reviews the matter.

The Zobels are cheechakos, having moved up from Spokane in 1978, so they are open to the charge of sour grapes. Of Ron, a letter writer to the Anchorage Daily News said: "We made his comfortable life possible here. Now he feels cheated, because he isn't being given a free ride." The Zobels insist that their stand is based solely on legal principle and that, despite the abuse they have suffered, they remain committed Alaskans with no plans to leave. Says Ron: "Alaska's attitude toward new residents is its peculiar civil rights problem." qed

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.