In my 12 years on the House Finance Committee, my job was to understand how a budget would affect people and the economy. What does it do to educational opportunity, or elders who’ve helped build this state? In contrast, the repeated line from many in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration is that they haven’t considered the impacts of their budget.<\/p>\n
Writing budget numbers, without analyzing the impacts on people, is typing, not governing. Here’s some of the damage that causes.<\/p>\n
Pioneer Home residents have been rightly stressed by a roughly 50 percent proposed rate hike. That makes an entry-level room for someone a fixed income, who gets food, but not medical care, a staggering $43,000 a year. Our highest care residents would pay $180,000 a year.<\/p>\n
[Opinion: I ran into Gov. Dunleavy on the street. Here’s what I wish I told him]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n Seniors were never asked for their input. That puts them in the same boat as hard-hit schools, mayors, communities the budget saddles with higher local property taxes and those who rely on the Alaska Marine Highway System. None were offered any input.<\/p>\n Alaska’s new budget writer, Donna Arduin, a Michigan resident and partisan who knows less about Alaska than anyone who’s ever written an Alaska budget, claims it’s not her responsibility to know her budget’s impact on elders, students or the economy of a state where she doesn’t live.<\/p>\n [Budget bill language would give unprecedented power to governor’s office]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n I believe people should care about what they do to others.<\/p>\n We do have information on this budget’s impacts. Studies from the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), and questions in legislative committees, make clear this budget will encourage people to leave Alaska, or live with less opportunity to achieve, less dignity and fewer jobs if they stay.<\/p>\n Cutting $1.6 billion from a roughly $4 billion budget, that’s already been cut deeply the past five years, is a job killer, an opportunity killer and a dignity killer for Alaskans, from the youngest to our elders.<\/p>\n Students don’t achieve more when we fire our best teachers and overcrowd classrooms. In recent years, public schools have lost roughly 1,000 teachers, career and guidance counselors and other educators from Juneau to Nome. The governor’s budget would make things worse. It wipes away last year’s bipartisan education compromise, which aimed to stem the loss of teachers and classroom opportunities.<\/p>\n