Mat-Su Assembly: The good, the bad and the ugly

THE GOOD

A huge surprise was that one resolution to be sent to the legislature was amended by Assemblyman Ted Leonard in support of the full statutory PFD in the constitution, and another one for a constitutional spending cap. Assemblymen Sykes and Mayfield and Assemblywoman Boeve were not real happy with some of those amendments, but they did pass. I guess my biggest surprise of the evening was that Sykes supports a full PFD, because he says it is the people’s money.

I never thought I’d agree with him on anything.

The reason given for the tax cap is that it is irresponsible to spend without putting a cap on it. The borough forward funded education a year or two ago, but they also put a cap on it. The consensus was that the same applies to the state budget.

The reason given for fully funding the PFD, is that since costs are being shifted to the local level the people will need a full PFD to deal with added expenses locally. Additionally, taking the PFD at the state level means the valley will be funding the rest of the state, since we have a large population, which will lose far more than we gain in benefits supplied by our stolen PFDs.

One thing I didn’t say in my testimony that I thought of later is that people keep saying the Dunleavy budget is full of cuts, but that is not what happened. The truth is that Dunleavy did zero-based budgeting. That means he started with the available revenue. Then he delegated the job of adding ‘must have’ items to build the budget until they ran out of money. Whatever was left out is because there simply was not enough money. Certainly there is room to shift money around, but the total budget remains the same. We simply cannot continue to spend what we do not have. What is the good that is coming of that? Many departments are calling legislators and telling them where they can save money.

THE BAD

The resolution that the two above amendments were attached to was to tell the legislature that MSB supports fully funding education. I don’t believe Mat-Su voted for that, so I don’t think it is appropriate to make that statement to the legislature. While I do support classrooms, I believe there are cuts that can be made that do not impact students as much as are being threatened, if at all. I believe that most cuts should come from administration. Combining districts could save tens (maybe hundreds) of millions when you also cut the supporting staff and close some offices/buildings. One example I see is the amount of districts we have. I hear 54-56 or more. We should have only 2. One for rural schools and one for borough schools. Did you know that Hawaii has only one district for all those islands, but they have twice the population of Alaska?

The other ‘bad’ is explained by Brian Endle Both resolutions regarding community councils passed. Our ‘steady eddies’ against both ordinances were Assemblymen Jesse Sumner, George McKee, and Ted Leonard. The biggest problem I see with creating & combining all those community councils is that if you are added to one that has ‘rules’ you will be mandated to follow those ‘rules’. In other words, if you are added to a community council that restricts what you can and cannot do on your own property, you will inherit those limitations.

THE UGLY

It’s about to get ugly. There was a very nice lady who testified that she was on a board once of a rural school district that went bankrupt. They survived by being creative with budgeting and kids even thrived with less. They figured it out because they had to. Always giving school districts what they ask for never makes them accountable or thrifty. Test scores don’t support throwing more money at them. Test scores need a different solution. It’s a curriculum issue.

I do not like the prospect of raised taxes in the valley. Not one bit. I wonder if the assembly is able to deal with needed cuts to the extent that is needed at the borough level. As I left the meeting, I was acutely aware of other action items that I was not going to hear. My fear was that the assembly would be spending money we don’t have after we left. I also was very aware of the large building we were sitting in and wondered how many positions could easily be eliminated from the borough budget.

We need new assembly members to flip that assembly. I think it can be done this year.

At the state level my hope is that the Senate will bring sanity back into the budget. Not holding my breath, but I am praying about it. I know that our Governor is the adult in the room, but I am hoping others will support him too. Any vetoes he is forced to make need to be protected from an override. Failure to support him will doom our state financially. To establish fiscal stability to grow the private economy we MUST have a spending cap. To establish security we must repeal SB 91 and once again be tough on crime. To restore faith and economic stability to the people, they must establish the traditional PFD in the Constitution. Simple. We have a very smart Governor to stress those three things.

Carol Carman is a life-long Alaskan, retired teacher, political activist and ARP District Chair.