The Alaska House of Representatives obviously gets it. We\u2019re hoping the Alaska Senate will, too.<\/p>\n
The House on Monday voted 38-1 in support of a resolution to stop work on any bills not directly related to bridging the state\u2019s nearly $4 billion budget gap. All lawmakers knew coming into the legislative session that addressing the budget and finding revenue solutions would be the top priority, but the House essentially put the state\u2019s money (or lack thereof) where its mouth is. Until the House sends its version of the budget to the Senate for approval, there will be no work on other topics, with only a few exceptions.<\/p>\n
We applaud the House for getting its priorities right. The budget should be priorities one, two and three. <\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t to say the other bills aren\u2019t important, but without funding state government will not be able to afford anything beyond the most basic level of services. They can get to those bills, but should only do so after addressing the budget.<\/p>\n
The state cannot afford to delay solving this issue any further without severe financial consequences next year. Even delaying until next session will be too late, and the state\u2019s Capital Budget Reserve won\u2019t have enough money left to make a large impact if it\u2019s raided this year to make ends meet. <\/p>\n
The resolution also was a strong sign of bipartisan cooperation, with only Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, voting against. But Josephson\u2019s concerns were about the House suspending its five day\u2019s notice of when bills can be heard and instead going with a 24-hour rule. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is very important to focusing our work,\u201d said Rep. Cathy Mu\u00f1oz, R-Juneau. \u201cI really appreciate being able to get all of us … to solve our budget issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking from the other side of the aisle, Rep. Sam Kito III, D-Juneau, agreed. \u201cI\u2019m cautiously optimistic that there is an effort to work together in good faith and that we will continue to work together with our colleagues … for a sustainable budget plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
The House\u2019s resolution is a sign of optimism that both parties are willing to set aside everything else and focus on the most important issue to face Alaska in decades. It\u2019s our hope now that this gesture of bipartisanship will lead to solutions before time runs out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Alaska House of Representatives obviously gets it. We\u2019re hoping the Alaska Senate will, too. The House on Monday voted 38-1 in support of a resolution to stop work on any bills not directly related to bridging the state\u2019s nearly $4 billion budget gap. All lawmakers knew coming into the legislative session that addressing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-18112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18112"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}