Governor releases budget

ANCHORAGE — Governor Mike Dunleavy announced his budget on Friday which included a proposal for the rest of the statutory 2020 Permanent Fund Dividend as long as a full PFD next year totaling $4,972 total per Alaskan.

“Our economy is in trouble. Folks are out of work, businesses are desperate and individual akns are suffering and so in that backdrop of this true emergency that we have, that we have to approach the budget a little differently this year,” said Dunleavy.

Though not required to be released until Dec. 15, Dunleavy’s budget proposal comes with proposals for three constitutional amendments that he has proposed in the past and an increase in spending for public safety. Overall, there is a $294 million reduction in Undesignated General Funds and Dunleavy was proud to say that in his third budget proposal, Dunleavy reduced spending by 10%.

“We keep putting downward pressure on the budget, but this year we had to be careful that those reductions were not that steep because as I mentioned earlier with thousands of thousands of Alaskans on unemployment, we want to make sure that we’re not going to add to the unemployment rolls but we’re going to do the opposite,” said Dunleavy.

Dunleavy’s budget includes between $300 to $350 million in bonds that will be a topic of discussion with the legislature. The Capital budget leverages $58.5 million in state spending for a total of $1.4 billion, provides $4 million to address a backlog of sexual assault cases, $4 million for statehood defense, $26 million for fisheries, wildlife and resource projects and $24 million to construction and maintenance projects. Public safety will see an increase of $13.5 million.

“With quick action on the part of the legislature developing parts of this budget, we really believe we can give hope to all of us that we can get out of this, not just with the health issue, the pandemic, but also the economic issues as well,” said Dunleavy.

Dunleavy said that he would discuss only the budget on his press conference on Friday afternoon and noted that a press conference on vaccination distribution would be held on Monday. Dunleavy discussed how Alaska’s unemployment had reached record lows under 6% in March before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, resulting in over 40,000 Alaskans losing their jobs and over 90,000 Alaskans receiving Unemployment Insurance. Over the last year, Alaska’s GDP shrunk by 11%, and Dunleavy noted the Permanent Fund Dividend that was paid out in July. Dunleavy detailed a brief history of the Permanent Fund earnings that have increased by nearly $40 billion over the last decade. Just this year, the Permanent Fund jumped from $60.8 billion to $72.2 billion since March.

“That growth is going to be incredibly helpful to get us through the next several months. So basically the fund grew at about $1 billion per month. The proposals that we have before us today call upon drawing upon a little less than half of that growth just for this year to once again get our economy up and going get Alaskans made whole to the best extent possible and get us moving forward,” said Dunleavy. “This is not going to be a situation where my administration is going to go to the earnings reserve of the Permanent Fund on a consistent basis to pay for large outlays, but this year is different. This year we have to get his economy back.”