Borough marked by Palin's veto pen

July 1, 2007

By John Moses / Frontiersman

MAT-SU - Users of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway weren't the only Mat-Su Valley residents impacted Friday when Gov. Sarah Palin broke out her veto pen and went to work on the state's list of construction projects. Small and larger communities across the state saw anticipated projects reduced or eliminated altogether from the 2008 state budget.

Mat-Su-area projects were not immune when almost a quarter of a billion dollars were vetoed from requested state department budgets. Borough Manager John Duffy listed roughly $10 million in local impacts off the top of his head. Borough staffers were immersed Friday in the Fiscal Year 2008 spending plan's hundreds of pages and by 5 p.m. Duffy said he was still counting deletions of projects large as $5 million for local highways and as small as carpeting for Snowshoe Elementary School's library.

&#8220We're disappointed in a couple of the cuts,” Duffy said. &#8220You know, it could have been worse. You have to be positive about it. I think we're probably better off than most at the end of the day.”

Palin said she had to focus state expenditures on constitutionally mandates services - education, public safety, health and state infrastructure. The cuts affected more than 300 local projects and reduced the state budget to nearly $1.6 billion. Palin also signed the operating and mental health budgets, but there were no cuts from what lawmakers submitted.

At a news conference in her Anchorage office, Palin said the cuts should send a message to lawmakers for next year's budget considerations.

"We need to live within our means," Palin said. "Even though we have a surplus, that doesn't warrant a spending spree on an unlimited credit card. Now is the time to save for the future."

That means - among other things - that the Valley won't get a new recycling center, Sutton won't see $600,000 for a new library site and 16 miles of Houston's school bus routes won't be improved.

The Palmer-Wasilla Highway project took a big hit, Duffy said.

&#8220There will just be less pavement put down,” he said. &#8220It's going to be a shorter project.”

Another hit, $2 million, came to a rail extension to the port at Point MacKenzie. That project will still likely go through but on a tight budget, Duffy said.

Palin spoke of building a better process for future state budgets.

&#8220This was a very deliberative process meant to provide consistency and a level of fairness in a process that can be anything but fair,” she says in a prepared statement. &#8220Vetoes included within the decision-making process are not a reflection on the project itself, but upon the state's responsibility to pay for the proposed project. We recognize that we have got to change the system. We have already begun working with legislators to change the process and this is a good start.”

One Wasilla legislator didn't like the news.

Senate President Lyda Green, R-Wasilla, said she was caught off guard by the priorities and criteria Palin spelled out.

"If you're going to have new rules, announce them the first day, not one month after we leave Juneau," she said. "She needs to make it clear the sorts of things that aren't going to be funded. This is not a good way to run things. It shows a total lack of understanding for the process."

The Legislature could consider overrides of each individual line-item veto, but it must be done within the first five days of the next time the body meets, whether in special session or next January during the regular session. Palin has said she could call lawmakers into special session in the fall to consider how the Legislature in 2005 approved the Petroleum Profits Tax.

For a successful override, it would require three-fourths approval of all 60 lawmakers, or 45 votes.

Green said she will first confer with her finance committee co-chairs Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, and Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, who were out of the state attending an energy conference.

Fair process or not, Friday was a bad day for the folks at Valley Community for Recycling Solutions. The Valley's only recycling center did not get $2 million it expected for building a new facility.

The governor's veto lists the recycling center as a &#8220lower priority category of funding.”

&#8220We're going to proceed with our project,” executive director Mollie Boyer said. The center, which she said is &#8220bursting at the seams,” is a popular program and is needed to reduce the flow of recyclables into quickly filling landfills.

Talk around the recycling center's office Friday focused on how to keep up the project's momentum.

The Willow Area Community Council (WACO) won't see $30,000 to build the Willow Community Center a secure storage building. WACO Vice-Chair Norm Wakefield was less upset about losing the building funding than he was relieved nobody seems to have cut funds for a more vital request.

&#8220The big thing was the emergency generator,” he said.

Willow's center is the region's only large emergency shelter since the destruction of Su Valley Jr./Sr. High, which burned in a fire June 5. It was used during last summer's devastating floods and again this year during the Big Su River Fire.

The center needs storage for the Willow Library and the many community groups that use it, Wakefield said. &#8220The storage building, it's a ‘nice to have' kind of thing. We'll have to try again next year.”

Houston won't have $225,000 in state cash to upgrade 16 miles of school bus routes.

Meadow Lakes won't have $44,500 in design and construction cash for an access road.

The veto pen also hit in the Big Lake community, which won't get $27,500 for playground equipment, a chamber of commerce information center and upgrades for library books and technology.

The Matanuska Borough School District saw a total of $411,617 in reductions. Funding was reduced, but not eliminated, for new bleachers at Palmer High School and new lights for Houston High's football field.

Building safe gun ranges in the Borough was deemed not the state's responsibility; Palin cut $340,000 toward that goal.

Libraries were in the sights as Sutton lost $600,000 earmarked for Borough land acquisition.

Palmer saw $7,500 for city library shelving and furniture cut from the budget.

&#8220I know we share the goals of creating a strong economy with good jobs, an education system that is world class in preparing our children for those jobs, safer communities and good, solid infrastructure,” Palin says in her statement. &#8220The budgets before us will set us on a course to make that vision a reality by prioritizing our spending, making substantial investments in core services and saving for our future.”

The budget arrived in three legislative bites. One bill established the 2008 operating budget, while another, also by Palin, establishes the state mental health budget and appropriations for the cost of running the mental health program.

The cuts came in Palin's Senate Bill 53, in which Palin spells out cutbacks and project eliminations.

Steve Quinn of the Associated Press contributed to this article.