"The legislature now has a balanced budget before them THEY now can decide priorities of the budget. My administration is agnostic on this."

A short one today, I hope.  Some reactions to the governor's letter to the university community.

"The previous administration burned through nearly every dollar in the state's savings account."

Actually, he wanted to increase revenues with appropriate taxes but the Republican controlled Senate banned the word taxes.  And he did cut the budget each year.  But rather than destroying the state, the way your budget will, he got some money from the PFD account (lowering the checks) and from savings accounts.  You, governor, also refuse to consider increasing revenues.  That's a serious problem.

 "While some wish to ignore Alaskans and propose billion-dollar taxes and PFD grabs, I've made clear that this is out of line with the core beliefs of most Alaskans."

Whether it's out of line with people's core beliefs, I can't say. If that's true, you're saying the core beliefs of most Alaskans are:  we want our services and our free oil money, but we refuse to pay for any of it.   Taxes are certainly NOT against the core beliefs of most educated Alaskans who understand the numbers and the impacts these proposed cuts will have and who understand that there are some things - like roads, police, schools, public health - that are a much better bargain for a society if the public pools their money (as in taxes) to buy collectively.  Yeah, some with lots of money can buy private security guards and send their kids to private schools, but society as a whole needs everyone to get a decent education.  Only con artists benefit from an uneducated public.

And those who believed Dunleavy's campaign promises that he'd balance the budget and pay out the old PFD cuts and keep the state running - they desperately need  good education and mental health systems.

"The legislature now has a balanced budget before them  THEY now can decide priorities of the budget.  My administration is agnostic on this."  

As strategy, I guess this is a good move on the governor's part.  He's basically saying, I've balanced the budget and the legislature can decide on where to cut.  They'll get the blame, he hopes.  But really, to tell the university they can work out with the legislature where to cut is like telling your kids, "Hey, here's 50 cents, go buy yourself dinner.  I'm agnostic about what you eat, but just keep it within our budget."  You can't buy dinner for 50 cents and you can't run a university on 40% of last year's budget.  It's a disaster for years to come.   (Dermot Cole has already addressed the governor's claim that it's only 17%.)

I don't know who's helping the governor do all this.  Well aside from Donna Arduin.  Or if he really thinks - "the sky won't fall" because government is bloated.  This is like not believing in gravity.

I once asked my students - as we discussed ontology - if the University was real?  They all agreed it was.  I argued it was just something that people made up. And they could make it up into something entirely different.   That the state could decide to sell all the buildings to some company and they could call it whatever they wanted and the university simply wouldn't exist any more.

But that was a philosophical argument to make a point about the nature of reality.  It seems our governor is trying to prove my point.   Some people will die.  Others will suffer needlessly because of the cuts this budget requires.  Even if the legislature restores half the cuts.

In a letter to the editor the other day, someone wrote this was simply the governor's opening gambit of a chess game.  There is no opening gambit in chess that compares to this.  Well, there's one - knocking over the board and all the pieces.

What the governor does have going for him is that his letter is in good English, it's polite, and if you don't know anything about the situation, it might sound reasonable.