"If we want more stability in state services, there’s a simple answer"

That was the title of an ADN editorial board editorial Sunday.  

First and most obvious, if there were a simple answer it would have been found long ago.  There are no simple answers in politics or government (which are not the same things, though they overlap.)

So what is that simple answer according to the editorial board?

After listing numerous shortfall's in this year's budget, they tell us:

"There’s also a simple solution that would go far toward helping restore that stability: Honesty in the budgeting process."

I agree that honesty in the budget process is helpful for the public to understand what's going on.  But is it simple?  Hell no.

First, the budget has to account for billions of dollars, so it's going to be long and complicated no matter what.  But sure, there are ways to make it easier to follow or harder to follow.
Second, the politicians - the governor and the legislators - who are trying to please constituents and funders with rewards that might not be appreciated by most, try to hide those items.   Questionable special favor allocations or cuts are well hidden in rows and columns of numbers that are hard to comprehend.
Third,  in these times of ideological warfare, many items will come under attack no matter how good they are for the general public.  Either they're ideologically unacceptable for one side or the other, or they might appear as a 'win' for one side and loss for the other.
These are just a few reasons why achieving a transparent budget is NOT simple.

Let's move on to the third paragraph of the editorial:

 "Sometimes, as with the senior benefits program, speedier processing of benefit applications results in more people than expected joining a program, draining funds more quickly. But failing to foresee scenarios like that - or deal with them swiftly when they arise - is a failure of leadership. Like not considering prices below $60 per barrel of oil as a realistic possibility for tax purposes, as happened before the 2014 price slump, failing to recognize or plan for the possibility of an uptick in benefit recipients is an indictment of our elected and appointed representatives."

OK, usually people are complaining that government doesn't act fast enough.  But when they do, they get criticized too.  Are they saying that by getting eligible people into the program quickly, the cost is too high?  If so, it's one of the few times I've seen government criticized for doing too good a job.

Let's look at the failure of leadership comment.

"But failing to foresee scenarios like that - or deal with them swiftly"   

Government is not a business where the CEO has the final say.  In a democratic government, decision making power is divided in different ways.  Broad policy making is supposed to be reserved for elected officials and their helpers, the high level appointed officials.  Career public servants are then asked to fill in the mechanical details of,  and then carry out, the policies.

But it's more complicated than that.  Power is split between the governor's office and the legislature (and, if needed, the courts.)  But the legislature is further split between the Senate and the House.  And each of those bodies is split between Republicans and Democrats and a few independents.

Leadership in such a situation isn't easy.  What's needed is peacemakers, maybe even therapists, as much as leaders.  But how do you make peace with people who see you as the enemy and whose supporters (voters and funders) tell them not to compromise?

In contrast, a marriage is simple.  There are only two policy makers and possibly some subjects of the policy (children.)  Often in a marriage, one of the two policy makers dominates the other.  Occasionally, the two work together in harmony.  But frequently they fight and disagree on everything.

Ask any divorce attorney how 'simple' it is to get angry spouses to work out the settlement of their property, and custody of the kids, even of the dog.


Then the editorial talks about oil tax credits.

 "they’re a classic example of the state’s destabilizing tendency to make a promise and then leave those who make plans based on that promise holding the bag, making residents wary and businesses disinclined to make investments in Alaska."

And to not look partisan, the editorial suggests the administration oughtn't renege on the two year school funding or senior benefits.

But this is the nature of a two year legislature that cannot commit funds beyond their two year session. (And since the new session just began, last year's commitments aren't law.)  It's also the nature of the power of large corporations to extract benefits from a legislature it paid for (in campaign contributions, in propaganda campaigns, and strong arm lobbying.)

When a commitment is made against the strong objections of the minority, then when that minority gets more power, that commitment will be challenged.  The oil companies have been telling Alaskans for years how they're going to pick up and leave if they don't get their way.  Well, either they've been bluffing or they've been getting their way.   [Figuring out comparative tax regimes is even more opaque than the Alaska budget.  Here's a long essay on whether Alaska oil taxes are fair by King Economics Group.  Unfortunately it doesn't compare our taxes to those of other oil producing states and countries.   And, it turns out, Ed King, according to his LinkedIn page,  has been Alaska's Chief Economist since Dunleavy took control in December 2018.    This ISER report also is focused only on in-state.   This OPEC comparison of oil taxes isn't about the industry taxes, but taxes at the pump. Finally, this ADN article says ConocoPhillips' Alaska region is its most profitable by far.  But that's not the point of this post, but I didn't want to make a statement without some backup.]

In the last paragraph, the ADN comes to its conclusion.

"So what’s the better answer? Make the hard choices — fund services fully or be up-front about the fact that they’ve been cut — instead of kicking the can down the road."

So, now they seem to be acknowledging that the 'simple' answer is really a 'hard choice.'  They don't talk about who has been kicking that can.  About the Republicans being in power for most of the last ten years when the budget kept going up, or how the Democrats have been trying to raise revenues with income or sales taxes, but the Republicans continue to block that.

Their simple isn't simple.  It's pap.

Here's a headline that caught my eye several years ago.

"For GOP presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina, solving the nation’s biggest challenges is pretty simple — “it’s not rocket science,” as she likes to say."

Here was my response:  Note To Carly Fiorina: Solving Nation's Problems Harder Than Rocket Science  It delves into other aspects of the difficulty of good government.

Legislative Info Office Hearing on the Budget [UPDATED]

Given that the Governor's 'budget roadshow' is being handled by Americans for Prosperity, a Koch funded group, and requires one fill out a form online with more personal information than I want to add to AFP's data base, the House majority caucus is having its own hearings around the state.

It was jammed today with people testifying (mostly) against the Dunleavy budget and for reinstating an income tax.  I did hear two folks (one after the other) say they wanted their full PFDs and the state shouldn't subsidize lazy people.  But everyone else were ready to reduce their PFDs for public education, health care, etc.

If you click on this image it will get much bigger and clearer

I'll add to this later.

LATER:


There was a line that went out the front door, and I didn't get there until about an hour into the hearings.

There was an overflow room with a video of the session in the next room over.

And there was another overflow room.

And the hallway was full of people from the line that went out the door.  This was really the only big sign that I saw and did not seem to reflect the sentiment of most people testifying.

The control room was between the hearing room and one of the overflow rooms.  It had dark smokey windows.

Heavy Rains In San Francisco While Alaska Hit By Unnatural Disaster As Dunleavy Reveals Budget

From Accu Weather:

"Atmospheric river to fuel torrential rain in California"

It was raining steadily, but not terribly hard as we caught the bus to the CalTrain station this afternoon to visit good friends who live a little south of SF.

But the disaster happening in Alaska is totally man-made.  The ads promised a balanced budget and Permanent Fund Dividends forever.  They were paid for, in large,  by candidate Dunleavy's brother.  And the people who vote based on such ads and party identification - but ignore any kind of obvious signs, like the ones I saw at the special hearings set to pass Erin's Law.  





The Alaska state budget is a daunting document.  While I acknowledge that it is complicated, often the people preparing a budget have a vested interest in making it as confusing as possible.  Terms aren't clearly explained or the explanation is hard to find, especially online.  The lists of budget terms online like this one and this one don't explain all the terms and acronyms used in the budget.

Quantities aren't always clarified - like how many zeros you need to add to the numbers in columns to get the actual number.  Often people hide things they don't want people to discover - like funding for a pet project or removal of funding from an agency.

And there are different types of budgets.  Operating and Capital Budgets for instance.  But also Unrestricted General Fund That's all preface to the next item.

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Screen Shot Budget 2020-02-13 by on Scribd

Note:  I'm not even sure what LF means on this page GF is General Fund.  Unrestricted means the funds are restricted to a specific use.  This page comes from here.  But at the State's Budget page you can find a whole slew of different takes on the budget.

I've just highlighted the education parts of the budget.  Despite the fact that Dunleavy taught in public schools in rural Alaska as well as being principal and a superintendent, this budget show total disdain for public schooling.  That was already clear when he talked about 'parental rights' at the Erin's Law hearings.  The parental right movement is related to the father's rights movement.  It's also connected to the home-schooling movement.  There's a touch of anti-government and a tough of fundamentalist religion and a touch of so called 'traditional family values.'  And it was clear to me back in 2012 that Dunleavy would try to cut public schooling if he were in a position to do it.  (Let me say that like in any group that forms, there are people with legitimate issues about how they were treated.  But a number of movements are really protests against losing power they once had - like men's power over their wives has eroded quite a bit over the last 100 years.  See this article on father's rights groups.

"The fathers’ rights movement is defined by the claim that fathers are deprived of their ‘rights’ and subjected to systematic discrimination as fathers and as men, in a system biased towards women and dominated by feminists. Fathers’ rights groups overlap with men’s rights groups and both represent an organised backlash to feminism. Fathers’ rights groups can be seen as the anti-feminist wing of a range of men’s and fathers’ groups which have emerged in recent years, in the context of profound shifts in gender, intimate and familial relations over the past four decades (Flood, 2010). While fathers’ rights groups share common themes, there are also diversities in their degree of opposition to feminism, their involvements in political advocacy, their reliance on Christian frameworks, and so on.Three experiences in particular bring men into the fathers’ rights movement. Painful experiences of divorce and separation, as well as accompanying experiences of family law and the loss of contact with one’s children, produce a steady stream of men who can be recruited into fathers’ rights groups"

And here's a piece on parental rights from a Home School website.

I offer those links, not as 'proof' or as an exhaustive review of the topic, but just as an appetizer to become more aware of the code words 'parental rights' which sounds very reasonable on the surface.  I think the link to the Home Schooling movement helps predict this budget.

The other issue that people have raised with this budget is the 'visiting budget director' as Dermot Cole dubbed Donna Arduin.  I haven't done adequate research on her, so for the time being, you can look at this (Sarasota) Herald-Examiner article form 2014 that reviews her run as a Libertarian 'expert' budget slasher, whose budget analyses are regularly debunked by real economists.

Sometimes being in Alaska and late on Lower 48 trends is a good thing.  We can learn from others' experiences.  Here's hoping that Alaskans will figure out really quick what we've done by electing Dunleavy before too much damage is done. Here's hoping we can learn from what's happened in Kansas, Oklahoma, Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere.  [UPDATE Feb 14, 2019:  I added Kansas and links for a little more background about those states' outcomes of cutting taxes and government.]

Hopefully, those who blindly believed Dunleavy's promises to get people all their back PFD checks AND balance the budget without any new revenues, will realize it was all a scam before the state infrastructure for schools and health and safety are destroyed.  Perhaps the people who are now finding out that those tax rebates Trump promised are not really coming, will transfer that awareness to what Dunleavy is trying to pull off.