were removed from their committee positions<\/a> last session after they violated an agreement to vote as a bloc. Sen. Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, said he voted against the budget because it had not contained a statutory amount for the PFD. But Shower stood with the governor Wednesday, saying there had been an effort to follow the statutory amount but not the political support.<\/p>\n“I have been strident on the statutory formula, but we don’t have the votes,” Shower said at the conference.<\/p>\n
Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, was also removed from committee assignments for her vote, but spoke in support of the proposal.<\/p>\n
Dunleavy said several times at the conference the proposal is a starting point and would require compromise by all parties but in the end would create a stable fiscal path for Alaska.<\/p>\n
The only non-Republican to stand behind Dunleavy at the conference was Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, whose rural district relies heavily on the PCE program. Hoffman, the Legislature’s longest-serving member, said he’s seen state funds dry up quickly and something needs to be done.<\/p>\n
“I’m concerned that if we don’t take action, those (PCE) dollars can be burnt up just as quick,” Hoffman said.<\/p>\n
Hoffman is caucusing with the Senate Republican Majority this session.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, remained seated during Dunleavy’s speech but rose to speak, saying briefly the House Majority Coalition was willing to discuss the proposal.<\/p>\n
In a meeting with reporters, Stutes said she was optimistic about the proposal, and willingness to discuss the issue is a positive sign. But there were still elements of the proposal that needed to be worked out, Stutes said.<\/p>\n
“(The proposal)’s got a lot of the components that have been contentious, we need to remove those contentious components so everybody gets a little bit of a win,” she said.<\/p>\n
Stutes is a Republican but has caucused with Democrats and independents for the last two sessions. She said the governor’s office is communicating more with the Legislature, and there was an improved working relationship to discuss contentious issues.<\/p>\n
Dunleavy said he hoped the Legislature will move quickly to pass the substitute which was being submitted into the Senate Judicial Committee Wednesday afternoon. The Legislature is still trying to finish passing a budget before the May 19 deadline, but the governor said lawmakers can move quickly when they want to.<\/p>\n
If the budget is not passed within the 121-day deadline a special session will have to be called. While the governor did not say there would be a special session, he said one might be useful to allow lawmakers more time to discuss issues like the PFD and how to appropriate additional federal funding.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to see what the next couple days do, when we put our minds to something we can get things done,” Dunleavy said.<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Peter Segall at psegall@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SegallJnuEmpire.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov says proposal is first step to better fiscal future <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":70639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[75,784,652,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-70638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-local-news","tag-permanent-fund","tag-pfd","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70638","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\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70638"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=70638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}