After reading your article “House adjourns without deficit fix,” I am disgusted with the House and especially with Speaker of the House Mike Chenault for gaveling out the House without taking one vote, without debating any of the governor’s agenda items and leaving Alaskans to suffer for their inaction. The fact the other members of the House voted to adjourn, knowing that this will have major long-term implications on the people of Alaska, doesn’t help. I have listened to the House majority all year basically avoiding doing anything that would help blunt this funding crisis. Yet, they managed to vote for a $32 million building, a new LIO office in Anchorage that they don’t need. Then, when that didn’t pan out, they voted for a $12 million bill to buy another building that they don’t need, while at the same time trying to cut the education budget by another $12 million in committee with no notice. The reason I say they don’t need these buildings is because they have a state-owned building in Anchorage, with an entire floor available to house all of the legislators in Anchorage; and it is available.
With the knowledge of extremely low revenues now coming in from oil taxes, which was approximately 75 percent of the state’s revenue, puts this state in the red financially in a big way. The Legislature has seen the numbers. Our Senate did vote and try to do something to staunch the flow of red ink, but the House has essentially done everything it can to continue spending and basically ignore the issue. They have made some small changes but nothing significant that will really help. They have refused to take any real responsibility and have chosen inaction because of elections coming up this year. Alaska’s credit rating as a state has been downgraded once, and maybe twice now, due to the Legislature’s inaction on voting for new revenue.
The bills have to be paid as the average citizen well knows. If oil revenues are down significantly and will not improve for several years, as the Legislature has been told, then other revenue sources need to be developed quickly. Two sources which have been discussed are income taxes and sales taxes. Every state in the union has one of these taxes and some have both. For many years, Alaska has been fortunate enough not to have these taxes. Now, in order to pay for critical services like law enforcement, education, health care, road maintenance, etc., one or both of these plans may have to be instituted. Currently the state’s savings account will be depleted within a short time. Then no monies will be available even for catastrophic emergencies. The Permanent Fund will then be tapped to pay bills and no Permanent Fund Dividend will be available to the people. Currently, the PFD will last four years. This is what the House is relying on to pay bills now: the state’s savings account and the PFD fund.
With the House’s inaction, the coming year will require even more spending cuts in critical areas. The first on the list will be education, law enforcement and emergency services. Do you want your children to have an inferior education because of your representative’s inaction? This will begin next year for sure. There will be no choice. What about emergency services? Fire stations will have to be closed because of lack of funding. This and other reduction in services is what will now be looming in the coming year. This is on those who decided to follow the House Speaker and those leaders of the Finance and other committees who decided the full House won’t debate or even vote on these issues.
Ask yourself: Do you want to wait until there is nothing left before we vote for people who will actually represent our interests? Remember what actions your representative did and didn’t do this session. Also remember, your representative had to cast a vote to adjourn and leave things undone. This forced the governor to do what he could to staunch the flow of red ink so the state’s critical services continue to function.
Keep all this in mind when elections come up.
• Allan Christopherson lives in Nikiski.
