On Thursday, Gov. Dunleavy used the following phrase “budget changes are not meant to harm Alaska or Alaskans.”<\/p>\n
Perhaps he and his staff have not heard of or do not understand Code Blue. The governor vetoed it. Code Blue provides $500,000 seed money annually to pay for supplies and equipment for volunteer EMTs in small Alaska communities. This money is leveraged with federal Department of Agriculture funds and a Rasmussen Foundation grant, quadrupling its impact.<\/p>\n
This money is now gone. This will indeed hurt small Alaska communities without a stable tax base.<\/p>\n
Code Blue money this past year helped replace a 28-year-old ambulance in a small Southeast community. There is huge bipartisan support! We are foolishly disadvantaging our own. This is not an entitlement.<\/p>\n
I am saddened for the Alaskans I serve.<\/p>\n
Tim Quigley Peterson, MD,<\/strong><\/p>\n Medical Director of Southeast Region EMS Council in Sitka<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2022 My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.<\/b><\/p>\n I am saddened for the Alaskans I serve. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":14,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-51691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51691","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\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51691"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=51691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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