Rep. Dan Saddler, R-Eagle River, called it a \u201creconnaissance by fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
If so, it ran into some thick armor plating.<\/p>\n
This week, Republican minority members of the House Finance Committee offered hundreds of amendments to slash the state budget and help eradicate a $3 billion annual deficit. In a process that ended Thursday evening, the coalition House majority acted like a tank bouncing bullets and rejected all but a handful of those proposals.<\/p>\n
Now, the budget fight turns to a new phase as Alaska\u2019s 2018 spending plan advances to the House floor, and this battle won\u2019t be over quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish we could say we were done with this whole fiscal crisis thing, but there\u2019s hope on the horizon,\u201d said Pat Pitney, director of the state Office of Management and Budget, to the Juneau Chamber of Commerce at its Thursday luncheon.<\/p>\n
Pitney offered a concise forecast for a tenacious fight over how to balance the deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to see a lot of movement over the weekend and into next week with bills moving out of one body or another,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As lawmakers try to erase Alaska\u2019s oil-driven deficit, they\u2019re acting on two levels. First, they have to decide what they want to spend in the next fiscal year, which starts July 1.<\/p>\n
Second, they have to decide how to pay for it.<\/p>\n
On Friday morning, the House Finance Committee is expected to pass the state\u2019s spending plan to the full House for consideration. When the House approves that budget bill, it\u2019ll have done the first half of the first half of the Legislature\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
The Alaska Senate is expected to come up with its own spending plan \u2014 one with deeper cuts than the House\u2019s version \u2014 and the House and the Senate will also have different ideas about how to pay.<\/p>\n
On Thursday afternoon, the House Finance Committee finished grueling consideration of more than 230 cost-cutting ideas proposed by Rep. Tammie Wilson, R-North Pole.<\/p>\n
Wilson brought some of those ideas forward on behalf of other Republican lawmakers who aren\u2019t members of the finance committee. Those lawmakers are expected to stump for their cost-cutting proposals on the floor next week.<\/p>\n
Rep. Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, offered 17 budget amendments in committee. She\u2019s already prepared 10 amendment proposals for the House floor, she said late Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would expect that you\u2019ll see things come back to the floor,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Tilton said minority Republicans wanted to \u201cactually show the public there was some places there could be true reductions\u201d to the budget.<\/p>\n
Rep. Les Gara, D-Anchorage and vice-chairman of the finance committee, said many of the amendments offered by minority Republicans were malformed and wrong, taking money where it didn\u2019t actually exist.<\/p>\n
While most amendments were defeated, some ideas with Southeast impact were accepted in committee and are advancing to the floor.<\/p>\n
On behalf of Rep. Sam Kito III, D-Juneau, Rep. Dan Ortiz, I-Ketchikan, introduced an amendment restoring funding for a state forester position in Haines.<\/p>\n
That amendment passed, as did one offered by Ortiz to boost Alaska Marine Highway System funding by $2.1 million.<\/p>\n
The House Finance Committee is scheduled to meet at 8:30 a.m. Friday to approve a final version of the budget. If all goes as planned, that version will be read onto the floor Friday morning, allowing full debate to begin Monday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Contact reporter James Brooks at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com or call 419-7732.<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rep. Dan Saddler, R-Eagle River, called it a \u201creconnaissance by fire.\u201d If so, it ran into some thick armor plating. This week, Republican minority members of the House Finance Committee offered hundreds of amendments to slash the state budget and help eradicate a $3 billion annual deficit. In a process that ended Thursday evening, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":18591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34,95,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-18590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska-legislature","tag-alaska-state-budget","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18590","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=18590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18590"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}