Junior Achievement Alaska Business Monthly Hall of Fame Laureate: Ted Stevens.

• Author: Stomierowski, Peg
• Position: JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT 2010 SPECIAL SECTION

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Former Sen. Ted Stevens, when we caught up with him in Washington, expressed satisfaction with what he was able to accomplish during his decades in public service, which he alternately described as a commitment, a calling and a form of payback for a good life.

Making it clear he didn't intend to discuss any fallout from last year's corruption trial, close election defeat and later dismissal of charges and vacating of the jury verdict, Stevens did say of his public service career, "I don't have any qualms about it ... I'm happy at what I've achieved."

While Stevens also declined to quantify what his political representation has meant to the Alaska economy, Scott Goldsmith, with the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research, thought it plausible that Stevens' impact on state economic history has been comparable to that of William Seward, who as U.S. Secretary of State engineered the purchase of Alaska from Russia in an act often ridiculed as "Seward's Folly."

The impact of Stevens' political career most obviously has been felt, Goldsmith said, in the flow of federal dollars into the state's economy during his tenure--a flow that became a surge and a key growth factor over the last 15 years. Stevens was quoted as saying in 2005 that he was responsible for $3 billion a year that was going into the Alaska economy, and Rhonda McBride of KTUU noted in 2007 that federal spending in Alaska was roughly $8 billion a year.

The surge in federal grants to the state and Native nonprofits, Goldsmith noted, coincided with Steven's ascension to the chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee in the late 1990s. Then, early in this decade, growth shifted to a dramatic increase in military spending.

And while by late 2009 the total of military and civilian spending had stopped growing--and there was growing concern that some spending channels will dry up--Goldsmith was not yet envisioning dramatic cutbacks. But it's hard to predict Alaska's economic future with any certainty, he added.

The operating budget of the Denali Commission, which coordinates millions in federal dollars for projects across Alaska, was down more than $34 million in fiscal year 2009 from the previous fiscal year, according to spokesman Sharon Guenther Lind. Lind said operating funds in 2009 were $74.5 million, down from $108.8 million in fiscal year 2008.

Stevens, for whom the city's international airport is named, in his...