Wrangell Sentinel -

The state is not going to fill its billion-dollar fiscal pothole with additional deep budget cuts, said two veteran legislative finance committee members.

The hole is too deep, and years of cuts to the operating and capital budgets already have reduced state spending on public services to a 15-year low, on a per-capita basis adjusted for inflation, according to numbers assembled by one of the co-chairs of the Senate Finance Committee.

When dealing with the budget, legislators have had to determine if the state has a spending problem or a revenue problem, said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman, co-cha...