The Alaska House of Representatives will today consider a draft of the $8.66 billion state operating budget that cuts $639.6 million from existing operations.
A vote on the passage of the draft could come as early as today after a marathon session of the Alaska House Finance Committee extended past midnight Wednesday morning. After a break that allowed Legislators to sleep, the committee resumed work, eventually approving a draft that reversed cuts to public broadcasting, senior care, a special unit of prosecutors devoted to public corruption, and other items legislators earmarked as a priority.
“Everybody who’s walked into my office was told no, we don’t have the money,” said Rep. Mark Neuman, R-Big Lake and co-chairman of the House Finance Committee.
Lawmakers on that committee, however, did say “yes” to some items.
According to a synopsis of the draft budget provided by the Legislative Finance Division, the plan cuts 219 full-time state jobs. Roughly half the budget will be paid for with federal money, fees and other sources of revenue. The other half is paid for with the state’s general fund, and that half has been the focus of most of the Legislature’s budget-cutting attention.
The cuts, driven by the state’s estimated $3.7 billion annual deficit, are only part of the fiscal solution expected from the Alaska Legislature this year. The Alaska Senate is at work on its own budget, which it is expected to finalize later this month.
The Senate and House will form a conference committee to reconcile the two versions of the budget and at the same time will determine how to pay for the resulting bill. The Legislature could use savings from the state’s $8.21 billion Constitutional Budget Reserve to fill the deficit, or it could pass any (or all) of a number of proposed tax increases. It could also choose to approve a plan that uses investment earnings from the $50 billion Alaska Permanent Fund to partially fill the deficit and reduce the amount of savings needed to balance the budget.
“That’s what we’re going to be looking at next: How do we fill the holes?” Said Rep. Steve Thompson, R-Fairbanks and co-chairman of the House Finance Committee.
Before all that, the House will meet today to consider a proposal that doesn’t cut as deep as previous drafts.
Rep. Cathy Muñoz, R-Juneau, sits on the finance committee. “The issues that I was focused on were public education, the marine highway and restoring funding for behavioral health and public broadcasting,” she said.
That focus brought some success: In the committee, the budget was revised to provide $2.7 million more for public broadcasting, TV and radio combined.
“That was critical not just for Juneau but for all over Southeast Alaska … where there are radio stations that probably would have had to shut down because of the reduction of the state grant or the elimination of the state grant,” she said.
Without that funding, the state also would have lost Gavel to Gavel, the program that beams Legislative hearings to TVs across the state.
On the Alaska Marine Highway, she felt the House was able to hold the line, with no further decreases beyond those suggested by the governor. Service will still be down in the coming year, but not by as much as it might have been.
Neuman, with the support of Muñoz’s and other lawmakers, created a $30 million grant program for drug-abuse treatment and detox. That program, if approved by lawmakers, would allocate $10 million per year for three years to existing treatment programs. It’s part of a response to a surge in the number of heroin and opiate addicts in Alaska.
“The intention with this new money is to enable nonprofits and providers who are currently providing services to deal with the unmet need,” Muñoz said.
Muñoz didn’t get everything she was after: Thompson had suggested reversing $25 million in funding cuts to the University of Alaska system, but he withdrew that suggestion in committee. Muñoz had supported it, and she suggested that the idea could return as a negotiating item between the House and Senate.
It’s also likely to be a demand of the Democratic-led House minority, whose votes are needed in order to spend savings from the Constitutional Budget Reserve.
Muñoz said she also faced a tough decision when it came to education. She voted against restoring funding for pre-kindergarten programs including Parents as Teachers, saying that in negotiations, it was a compromise between that or keeping a scheduled increase in the amount the state pays school districts per student.
“We had to look at education expenses in general, and that was part of the discussion,” she said. “We can’t do it all given the revenue we have. We just have very limited money.”
Rep. Sam Kito III, D-Juneau, is a member of the House minority and has repeatedly said he believes in funding pre-kindergarten programs.
“It’s not the final story on pre-K,” Muñoz said. “I think it’s going to come up again and again.”
The same might be said of the budget as a whole.
The House is scheduled to convene at 10:30 a.m.
• Contact reporter James Brooks at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.
