Kevin Jardell offered a rare bit of legislative optimism to the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s state lobbyist told the Assembly that he believes the Legislature will slash Alaska\u2019s $3 billion annual deficit this year, bringing much-needed stability to state government. That\u2019s critical for Juneau: More than 4,000 workers here are state workers, and another 2,000 local-government workers rely on state funding for at least a part of their salaries.<\/p>\n
More importantly, those jobs are high-paying: More than half the wages paid in Juneau come from government.<\/p>\n
Jardell said he believes the Legislature will decide to use the investment earnings of the Permanent Fund to balance some of the deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, there will be a compromise, but I do believe we will see the earnings in some way this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Jardell\u2019s prediction came with a downside: Even if the Legislature chooses to erase some of the deficit with new revenue, more cuts are coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Juneau, we are going to see some impacts. The entire state of Alaska is going to see some impacts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The only question, he added, is where those impacts will be.<\/p>\n
The budget proposed by Gov. Bill Walker includes cuts to the Alaska Department of Transportation\u2019s planning department, whose duties would be taken over by private contractors.<\/p>\n
Each member of the Juneau delegation said he opposes those cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want a guy in Oklahoma designing a bridge anywhere in the City and Borough of Juneau. I wouldn\u2019t trust that,\u201d said Sen. Dennis Egan, D-Juneau.<\/p>\n
Rep. Justin Parish, D-Juneau, said he spoke with Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe assured me that it was not the governor\u2019s intention to privatize all of that work,\u201d Parish said.<\/p>\n
Even if construction funding is reduced, \u201cwe should be able to have a pretty steady level of work available for our DOT engineers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Assembly member Debbie White asked the lawmakers if they would fight to keep funding for the now-canceled Juneau Access road in Juneau \u2500 or at least in the upper Lynn Canal.<\/p>\n
Rep. Sam Kito III, D-Juneau, said he believes the most obvious need for that money might be in Skagway, which needs a new ferry float, or in other portions of the ferry system.<\/p>\n
He suggested that crew quarters might be added to one of the two Alaska-class ferries under construction in Ketchikan. That would allow the ferry to be used on routes longer than the Lynn Canal run.<\/p>\n
The Assembly also heard from Washington, D.C. lobbyist Katie Kachel, who said most observers are awaiting the action of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got to get organized, and they start work on Monday,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kevin Jardell offered a rare bit of legislative optimism to the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly on Thursday morning. The city\u2019s state lobbyist told the Assembly that he believes the Legislature will slash Alaska\u2019s $3 billion annual deficit this year, bringing much-needed stability to state government. That\u2019s critical for Juneau: More than 4,000 workers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-18584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18584","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\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18584"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}