Town hall meeting on Feb. 27 likely to focus on budget

WASILLA — Four Mat-Su legislators say they just want to listen.

Nevertheless, Alaska Sen. Bill Stoltze (R-Chugiak), and Reps. Shelley Hughes (R-Palmer), Kathy Tilton (R-Wasilla), and Jim Colver (R-Palmer) had a few things to say about the state of ongoing budget deliberations in Juneau in advance of a town hall meeting set for Saturday.

This past week, the Legislature remained focused exclusively on the budget under the terms of House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 23. The measure suspends the House rules to focus standing and special committees on budget related issues until the house passes an operating budget. Alaska’s budget deficit, driven by steep declines in oil prices, which account for 90 percent of state revenues, is now projected to be about $5.25 billion.

Legislators in the House offered a few specifics about how they intend to get to a balanced budget, largely through the prism of their particular financial subcommittee affiliations.

Colver, a member of the University of Alaska financial subcommittee, and said the University of Alaska system could benefit from some consolidation. The university system has proposed a static budget of $350 million, which Gov. Bill Walker’s budget cut to $335 million.

That’s not enough, Colver said. A consolidated administration could save by eliminating administrative positions among the state’s four university systems (the University of Alaska-Anchorage, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and University of Alaska-Southeast, headquartered in Juneau) could reduce costs without sacrificing instruction positions, and allow students to easily transfer between university systems, Colver said.

“If we can combine and have one management structure, one catalog and one accreditation, we can save money and deliver services without having to lose a lot of instructional capacity,” he said.

That would necessarily mean eliminating some jobs, Colver said.

“I’m not worried about the economic impact,” he said. “They can hire two or three instructors for every one of those other positions we cut.”

The four legislators will gather to hear constituent concerns at the Mat Su Senior Services at 1132 S. Chugach Street in Palmer starting at 10 a.m. Saturday.

Hughes said she’s been primarily focused on Medicaid reform and educational spending as a way of reducing the budget, and had met with representatives from the Alaska Association of School Business Officials.

For her, the issue comes down to math. Of the deficit’s $5.25 billion, about $1.2 billion is in things like Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) and Teacher Retirement System (TRS), which legislators can’t easily reduce. Roughly $2 billion is tied up in formula programs for education and the Department of Health and Social Services, according to Hughes.

“What’s remaining is $2 billion, and that’s all other departments,” Hughes said.

Hughes and Colver both said they favored a piecemeal reduction — say, from $5.25 billion to $4.5 billion — for the 2017 fiscal year over trying to close the gap all at once. The state has about $14 billion in accumulated savings, and smaller reductions could potentially allow the economy time to adjust.

“I think our economy will bear that better,” Hughes said. “We’ll be able to ride that wave a little more easily.”

On the senate side, Stoltze said he’s been focused primarily on a crime bill while waiting for the operating budget to come through from the House. Even so, the budget wasn’t far from anyone’s mind. Stoltze said he favors looking hard at the state’s program of offering free energy efficiency upgrades and the Kodiak rocket launch facility as two examples of potential cuts. Formula program reform would also factor heavily, Stoltze said.

“If we don’t address the pillars of our biggest cost drivers, we’re going through a pretty fruitless exercise,” he said.

Rep. Tilton said she wants to see cuts, but declined to mention any specific areas she’d like to see trimmed from the budget.

Legislators agreed the trip home is a way to get direct feedback from constituents — rather than the lobbyists, legislators and state officials who dominate discussions in Juneau.

“You’re sequestered here with the bureaucrats,” Stoltze said. “Juneau can be like a different planet.”

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.