Alaska\u2019s state government will continue to shrink.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday morning, state budget director Pat Pitney said Gov. Bill Walker proposes to cut 185 jobs in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Those cuts would leave the state with just over 24,000 workers across all agencies, the smallest figure since 2007.<\/p>\n
Pitney released those figures Wednesday as she unveiled the details of a proposed $9.5 billion budget. About half that figure \u2014 $4.8 billion \u2014 would be undesignated state spending funded by oil and gas taxes, income taxes (if approved), other tax increases and the governor\u2019s fiscal plan. That figure is the smallest since 2008. The remaining amount would be paid for with federal money and program receipts that directly pay for operating expenses \u2014 things like ferry tickets, which stay within the ferry system.<\/p>\n
Members of the Senate committee \u2014 and later, the House Finance Committee \u2014 expressed skepticism about the governor\u2019s proposal, which includes a net reduction of about $100 million in state spending from the current budget.<\/p>\n
Sen. Anna MacKinnon, R-Anchorage and co-chairwoman of Senate Finance, said the governor\u2019s proposal \u201chasn\u2019t really reduced spending overall in the state\u2019s budget\u201d because programs including Medicaid Expansion are benefiting from federal payments that reduce the need for state funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure we\u2019re really reducing state government,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re just moving the shell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other senators appeared upset that the governor\u2019s proposal takes for granted the passage of an oil and gas tax credit reform bill and the Permanent Fund Protection Act, which would use the earnings of the Permanent Fund to pay for government services and link Permanent Fund Dividend payments directly to oil and gas prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch of what you have put in this budget to have a budget are huge policy calls,\u201d said Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks and Senate Finance co-chairman.<\/p>\n
As proposed, the Walker budget accounts for $73 million in oil and gas tax credits, Pitney said. Without reform, the state will be obligated to pay an amount roughly equivalent to the combined budgets of the University of Alaska and the Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n
Speaking before the House Finance Committee in the afternoon, David Teal, director of the Legislature\u2019s finance division, said oil would have to reach $113 per barrel to balance a \u201cstatus quo\u201d budget for next year. With the governor\u2019s proposed budget \u2014 which includes taxes and Permanent Fund changes \u2014 the deficit would be $500 million and fall into balance by 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou simply cannot cut your way out of the deficit,\u201d Teal told House Finance.<\/p>\n
If the Legislature does need to raise taxes, a Rasmuson Foundation-funded poll released Wednesday seems to indicate that Alaskans may not mind too much.<\/p>\n
Conducted statewide by cell phone and landline telephone, it found that 65 percent of respondents favored cuts and new revenue to address the state\u2019s deficit. The poll had a 4 percent margin of error.<\/p>\n
A majority of respondents (55 percent) favored cutting the state operating budget by 10 percent ($500 million), introducing a statewide sales tax (51 percent), reducing oil and gas tax credits (51 percent) and using a portion of Permanent Fund earnings to pay for government (51 percent). A majority were opposed to reducing the amount of Permanent Fund Dividends (50 percent) or introducing a state income tax (55 percent).<\/p>\n
The poll also broke out its results by region, albeit with a larger margin of error. In Southeast Alaska, where the margin of error was 10.7 percent, 58 percent of respondents favored cutting the budget by 10 percent. Support for cuts was stronger in Southeast than in any other region of the state, save the Mat-Su, according to the poll.<\/p>\n
Southeast residents favored (59 percent) a 1.5 percent income tax and the governor\u2019s fiscal plan (63 percent), but they opposed (55 percent) the way the plan would change the Permanent Fund Dividend.<\/p>\n
Full results of the poll are available at plan4alaska.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alaska\u2019s state government will continue to shrink. Speaking to the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday morning, state budget director Pat Pitney said Gov. Bill Walker proposes to cut 185 jobs in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Those cuts would leave the state with just over 24,000 workers across all agencies, the smallest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":23295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23294","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=23294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23294"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}