Maybe the answer is fish.

No, not the answer to what’s for dinner tonight. The answer to solving the increasingly acrimonious debate over the amount of this year’s Alaska Permanent Fund dividend.

Figuring out how to share the investment earnings of the Permanent Fund between community services, such as schools and the university system and state troopers, and with individual Alaskans through the fall dividend payment is a lot like sharing salmon between multiple competing interests.

The commercial fishing industry, sportfishing enthusiasts, charter boat operators and customers, Alaskans...