{"id":9397,"date":"2016-06-30T08:01:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T15:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/walker-limits-pfd-checks-to-1000\/"},"modified":"2016-06-30T08:01:28","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T15:01:28","slug":"walker-limits-pfd-checks-to-1000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/walker-limits-pfd-checks-to-1000\/","title":{"rendered":"Walker limits PFD checks to $1,000"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE<\/strong> \u2014 Facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, Alaska\u2019s governor on Wednesday cut in half the annual checks that give all residents a share of the state\u2019s oil wealth, but he kept enough money in place to award everyone a $1,000 payout.<\/p>\n

Gov. Bill Walker\u2019s administration said the checks had to be reduced in order to save the program.<\/p>\n

The veto \u201cpreserves that ability to provide a check to every citizen in this state forever,\u201d his budget director, Pat Pitney, said.<\/p>\n

If nothing was done, Walker said the Alaska Permanent Fund \u2014 worth about $52 billion \u2014 would have been depleted in four years.<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Ganotisi, 38, took some time off from painting a house on Wednesday to fish for king salmon in Ship Creek, which winds through downtown Anchorage. He had already heard the news that the governor is cutting the check in half, and he didn\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n

His wife is pregnant with their third child and is due in September. The dividend checks are cut in early October every year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were going to use it for diapers and all that kind of stuff, but it\u2019s going to be kind of tight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Every year, they put some money away in their kids\u2019 college fund and use some to stock up on food. It helped last year when nearly every single Alaskan received a record amount, $2,072 each or nearly $8,300 for a family of four.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that they\u2019re cutting it down, it\u2019s going to hurt a little bit \u2018cause I have a feeling they\u2019re going to keep cutting it down,\u201d Ganotisi said.<\/p>\n

Alaska\u2019s government relies mostly on revenue from oil production to stay solvent. But declining production and a precipitous drop in oil prices have left the state with a deficit of more than $3 billion for the next budget year.<\/p>\n

If changes were not made, Walker has warned, the oil-wealth program could disappear. He introduced a bill earlier this year capping the checks at $1,000 to help pay down the deficit. The state Senate passed the measure, but the House couldn\u2019t get the bill out of committee before adjourning a special session last month.<\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s reduction of the oil-check purse was among $1.3 billion in budget vetoes that he said would result in savings across much of state government. He compared the cuts to running through fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fire is the future of Alaska,\u201d the governor said.<\/p>\n

After a news conference, Walker told The Associated Press that he runs the risk of having lawmakers override his budget vetoes because he\u2019s called them back into session beginning July 11, but that\u2019s not his intent.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, I\u2019ve pulled them back in special session so we can finish the job. If they take that time to override my vetoes, there\u2019s nothing I can do about that,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve done everything I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker said lawmakers complained to him that if the oil checks were reduced, they wouldn\u2019t be re-elected this year in the fall elections. He said his veto alleviates them of that concern. Walker, a first-term independent, doesn\u2019t face re-election this year.<\/p>\n

Walker has proposed several measures to help bridge the gap, including tapping into the oil-wealth fund, which has paid a dividend yearly since 1982. He\u2019s also proposed reinstituting the state income tax for the first time in decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 Facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, Alaska\u2019s governor on Wednesday cut in half the annual checks that give all residents a share of the state\u2019s oil wealth, but he kept enough money in place to award everyone a $1,000 payout. Gov. Bill Walker\u2019s administration said the checks had to be reduced in order to save […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"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-9397","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\/9397","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\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9397"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}