It's not about taking away the PFDs, it's the principle. People in OK and TX don't collectively as a state own any rights to the oil. If you are/were a lucky soul to own land and big oil pays you to drill on/in it, you got rich. We can't do that here. The people of Alaska are stakeholders since no private person can own land and let big oil tap that oil out. The question people are now asking is, why are they capping or possibly removing something that was given to us as a (state) constitutional right, when there are huge tax credits to big oil that haven't been renegotiated to relieve burdens on our existing state budget? Wiki explains why PFDs are a right this way: "Many citizens also believed the legislature too quickly and too inefficiently spent the $900M bonus the state got in 1969 after leasing out the oil fields. This belief spurred a desire to put some oil revenues out of direct political control." Thanks Wiki!