Governor’s budget would damage opportunity, Alaska’s economy

In my 12 years on the House Finance Committee, my job was to understand how a budget would affect people and the economy. What does it do to educational opportunity, high rural and urban energy costs and our elders who’ve helped build this state? In contrast, the repeated line from many in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration is that they haven’t considered the impacts of their budget. Writing budget numbers without analyzing the impacts on people is typing, not governing.

Here are examples of some of the damage that causes. Pioneer Home residents have been rightly stressed by a roughly 50 percent proposed rate hike. That makes an entry-level room for someone on a fixed income, who gets food but not medical care, a staggering $43,000 per year. Our highest care residents would pay $180,000 a year. Seniors were never visited or asked for their input, or warned of this during campaign season. That puts them in the same boat as hard-hit schools, mayors, communities the budget saddles with higher local property taxes, and nearly anyone who could have offered input if they had been asked.

Alaska’s new budget writer, Donna Arduin, a Lower 48 resident and partisan who knows less about Alaska than anyone who’s ever written an Alaska budget, claims it’s not her responsibility to know her budget’s impact on elders, students or the economy of a state where she doesn’t live.

I believe people should care about what they do to others.

We do have information on this budget’s impacts. Studies from the university’s Institute of Social and Economic Research, and questions in legislative committees, make clear this budget will encourage people to leave Alaska or live with less opportunity to achieve, less dignity and fewer jobs if they stay.

I want our neighbors, rural and urban, to stay in Alaska, not leave. Cutting $1.6 billion from a roughly $5 billion budget that’s already been cut deeply the past 5 years is a job killer, an opportunity killer and a dignity killer for Alaskans, from the youngest to our elders.

The governor’s budget also robs over $1 billion from our carefully built Power Cost Equalization endowment, which keeps the high cost of energy in rural Alaska equitable, and it empties the fund we use to provide college and job training aid so people born with little can afford to succeed.

Ms. Arduin should spend some time in our schools, Pioneer Homes and communities to see what she’s doing to Alaskans.

Student’s don’t achieve more when we fire our best teachers and overcrowd classrooms. In recent years, public schools have lost roughly 1,000 teachers, career and guidance counselors, as well as other educators from Juneau to Nome. Now the governor and Ms. Arduin propose making things worse. Their budget wipes away last year’s bipartisan education budget compromise, which aimed to stem the loss of teachers and classroom opportunity. They’ve also proposed a $300 million slash to public school support that would have to be paid by the laying-off of 3,000 more teachers and educators, lost courses or other cuts. That’s not what you tell parents whose job skills we need, whose children should be our future workforce, unless you want them to move.

Cutting waste is one thing. Hacking at opportunity and the economy is another.

Budget writers would do well to read - as the Legislature’s Finance Committees have pointed out - comprehensive studies from ISER, our university’s economic think tank. State agency budgets have already been cut by $425 million since 2015, and by more than $3 billion if you count combined cuts to the operating and capital construction budget since 2013 (more, if you consider inflation). The governor now wants to cut another $1.6 billion.

That comes with consequences. According to ISER, every $100 million more in cuts kills 900-1,500 private and public sector jobs. ISER economist Mouhcine Guettabi testified to the Senate Finance Committee recently that even with more money on the street from the PFD the governor funds by slashing funds for schools, seniors and basic services, we’ll lose more than 7,000 needed private- and public-sector jobs and extend Alaska’s recession.

That doesn’t count the jobs we don’t have anymore because of Alaska’s austerity capital construction budget. A past average of $500 million in state funds used to cover road and building maintenance, energy cost reduction projects, rural sanitation (yes, the honey bucket still exists in Alaska) and, I’d say, some pork, has been reduced to about $100 million. An austerity construction budget means less construction and thousands fewer good jobs.

I do thank the governor for holding back the budget cutting ax from some areas Alaskans agree on. I also have faith the Legislature will now take the budget, listen to Alaskans and pass one that reflects our values of fairness, dignity and opportunity.

Les Gara served as vice chairman of the House Finance Committee in 2017-18, and was a member of the Alaska Legislature from 2003-2018.

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