The Senate Finance Committee is considering a draft of Alaska’s state operating budget that would cut more than $200 million from a version adopted earlier this month by the state House.
The committee unveiled the first draft of its operating budget proposal at an April 24 meeting in the Capitol in Juneau.
The committee’s version of the budget would send less state money to school districts than the House had proposed, though it appears a compromise has been reached on that number — less than the House and school districts wanted but more than the governor supported.
In addition to trimming the larger school funding increase approved by the House, the Senate committee removed almost every other budget addition proposed by the House.
Almost all of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed budget increases were removed too — for state troopers, health care and additional staff in various state departments.
“Those were eliminated from the budget … because of our financial condition,” said Bethel Sen. Lyman Hoffman, the committee co-chair in charge of writing the budget for state services and programs.
Even with the Senate’s cuts, preliminary figures show that the operating budget — when combined with other spending bills — still adds up to a deficit of between $70 million and $140 million for the state fiscal year that starts July 1.
That figure will almost certainly change, because some costs — particularly labor contracts — have not yet been determined.
“We are still in deficit mode. There is still work that needs to be done on this budget to have it balance,” Hoffman said.
The bipartisan majority in charge of the state Senate has vowed to write a balanced budget that does not require spending from savings.
The Senate committee’s proposal keeps a roughly $1,400 Permanent Fund dividend approved by the House. At $950 million, that is the third-largest item in the budget, behind education and health care spending, respectively.
The Senate version would permanently close part of Spring Creek prison in Seward to save $7.5 million per year; eliminate double-overtime pay for some prison guards to save $6 million per year; cut teacher recruitment programs to save $1 million per year; reverse a funding increase for Parents as Teachers and the Dolly Parton Imagination Library; eliminate grants to child advocacy centers to save $5.5 million; and eliminate more than $13 million intended to improve access to child care.
Hoffman noted that no action taken by the Finance Committee is final. The budget bill is subject to amendments in committee, debate on the Senate floor, and then any differences between the House and Senate will be negotiated in a conference committee to find a compromise between the two drafts.
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