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It ain’t over till it’s over
The budget passed in May, but nothing is final until it survives the governor’s red pen. A lot of good made it across the finish line, but we lost some important projects too.
Here in Southeast, the governor vetoed funding to extend streets, water, and sewer lines to support more housing at Pedersen Hill. He also vetoed money to help Skagway clean up the contaminated mess AIDEA left behind in its former Skagway ore terminal. We lost $10 million that would have helped electrify cruise docks, and another $10 million to support ferry operations if the feds short fund us again. Confusingly, he also vetoed $10 million to support ASMI at a time when our commercial fishing families need all the support they can get.
While the governor signed the one-time funding increase for schools. That doesn't mean he avoided cutting education. He vetoed money to implement the READs act, half the increase in Head Start funding, and a big chunk of the state's investment for broadband in rural schools.
He also set up a confrontation with the feds by vetoing money to fix pandemic-era school funding inequities. That one is hard to understand. Every other state has complied with the federal law in question. And now Alaska is under penalty as an official "high risk grantee" of the US Department of Education. The biggest cost of those penalties won't fall on the state's ed department, though. They'll be paid as increased paperwork and compliance costs at 53 Alaska school districts. Picking this particular fight is a model of inefficiency in government.
Some of the vetoes will hit our communities more broadly. While we’re fully funding community assistance this year, the governor vetoed the money to make sure we fund it next year. He also vetoed the money I put in the budget for rural public radio. Again.
The governor also vetoed some really important investments in state agencies. He cut funding to help digitize our archaic, paper-based payroll system. That may sound boring, but nothing else works if we can’t get paychecks out on time. Right now we have several hundred 'pay problems' every time, and big trouble hiring people to do the work. Going digital could take us down to just a few problems. But with this veto, the only way to fund the change is by cutting payroll workers' jobs. As a result, we'll go from having too few people to run an inefficient system to having too few people for a modern one. So we can expect the problems to continue.
He also took out added funding for job training in Alaska prisons. There are waiting lists for inmates to learn welding & Toyostove repair. Workers with these skills are in high demand in Alaska. Adding training was a win for public safety because people who get out of Alaska prisons with the skills to support themselves are much, much more likely to succeed. But for the veto, that would have meant fewer Alaskans becoming crime victims in the future.
While the budget still has a lot of wins, these short-sighted vetoes will all cost Alaska in the long run.
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