One of the leaders of the powerful Senate Finance Committee has said taxes are not on the table this year as the Legislature considers how to balance a $3.7 billion deficit.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a press conference Tuesday morning, Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, said he isn\u2019t interested in taxes as a solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m one vote, but I\u2019m not getting into the tax business while I know government is too big,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Senate on Monday passed an $8.73 billion operations budget that cuts $571 million from the current fiscal year. The Senate\u2019s budget is effectively a draft, however, as the House is not expected to concur with the Senate\u2019s changes. The House\u2019s disapproval would mean the Senate and House versions of the budget will go to a conference committee for a discussion on a compromise proposal that combines both drafts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt needs to be smaller before we can ever get into a conversation with Alaskans (about taxes),\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n
Gov. Bill Walker has proposed a wide-ranging plan that includes taxes, spending some of the earnings of the Alaska Permanent Fund, and budget cuts to erase the deficit by 2018. None of Walker\u2019s tax proposals have yet reached the Senate Finance Committee, and none of the three proposals for spending Permanent Fund earnings have reached the committee yet, either. Wednesday was the 58th of 90 days in the legislative session.<\/p>\n
Last year, he said, the Legislature cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said the sky was going to fall, and essentially nothing happened. Government continued to function. That tells me (the budget) was at least that fat,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Kelly spoke only for himself, his fellow Finance Committee members seemed to indicate a willingness to use the state\u2019s $8.2 billion Constitutional Budget Reserve, instead of new revenue, to balance the budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to fill the entire gap,\u201d said Sen. Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna. \u201cI think that\u2019s where the governor and us are in some disagreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it make sense to spend from savings because Alaska is in a position akin to that of parents who have saved for their child\u2019s college education. \u201cOur child just graduated from high school, and it\u2019s time to start thinking about how we\u2019re going to pay for college,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel and a member of the Senate Majority on the finance committee, said he expects the Legislature to use savings, but that\u2019s not necessarily a permanent thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to be using savings accounts, but as was with the budget when people said everything was on the table, I believe that everything on the revenue side has to be on the table too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In regard to permanently filling the deficit, he said: \u201cIt\u2019s not going to happen in one year, but I\u2019m hopeful that we will make some strides. The focus of the next 30 days is to look at all options.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter James Brooks at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the leaders of the powerful Senate Finance Committee has said taxes are not on the table this year as the Legislature considers how to balance a $3.7 billion deficit. Speaking at a press conference Tuesday morning, Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, said he isn\u2019t interested in taxes as a solution. \u201cI\u2019m one vote, but […]<\/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":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24642","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=24642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24642"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}