February 28, 2014 Voice Your Opinions! Letters to the editor make a difference. You can send a 175-word letter to the Anchorage Daily News by e-mail (letters@adn.com); or by fax or mail (call them at 257-4308). Send letters to the Anchorage Press via e-mail editor@anchoragepress.com or by mail to 540 E. Fifth Ave, Anchorage, 99501. Feel free to call us if you need factual information to help you write a letter. Contact the Governor. The Governor can be reached at 269-7450; sean.parnell@alaska.gov; or www.alaska.gov. Contact us. My office can be reached at: 716 W. 4th Ave, Anchorage, AK 99501; by phone: 269-0106; visit my website at http://gara.akdemocrats.org; or email: Rep.Les.Gara@akleg.gov

Dear Friends and Neighbors:

There’s still quite a bit of work to do on the budget, and your input is needed.  If you live in Anchorage, testimony is Tuesday from 4:15 to 5:45.  The temporary legislative information office (LIO) is located at 733 W 4th Ave, Suite 100 (right across the street from the former location). You must sign in to testify, and testimony is limited to two minutes per person. A list of testimony times and days for people around the state can be found below.

I’m concerned about priorities in a state facing a $2 billion budget deficit.  Kids and schools shouldn’t take a back seat to debatable mega-projects that will, not including cost overruns, cost us over $7 billion. 

We shouldn’t burn through our savings at the expense of opportunity, our underfunded child protection and foster care system (and keep shelving the state’s own study on how to fix it), an educated workforce, or vibrant schools.  We are still working on those issues with other legislators and the Governor, and hope they can be fixed before the current budget passes. 

In the confines of a 175 word limit, I recently wrote a letter to the editor (and provided much more information on the comments page) explaining why the Governor’s proposed 4th year in a row of school cuts (200+ more layoffs added to the 600+ his budgets have laid off the past three years) has a lot to do with the guarantee of deficit spending Alaska is facing.  His new oil tax law creates guaranteed long term annual $1-$2 billion deficits, does not allow us to share fairly in revenue and avoid deficits when oil prices rise. The current proposed budget cuts reflect the Legislature and Governor’s belief that the new law will leave Alaska in long-term deficits. 

The Governor’s budget proposes roughly $2 billion in deficit spending. And despite Parnell Administration statements a year ago that the massive state oil revenue reductions would lead to perhaps a 100% increase in oil production to a million barrels a day, the latest BEST estimate from the Alaska Department of Revenue is that oil production will decline under his new oil tax from over 500,000 barrels per day today to 269,000 barrels by 2024.

Kids And Schools before A $5 Billion Dam, Fantasy Road,
and a $1 billion+ “Bridge to Somewhere”

Here’s a short bit on priorities, and then on a few of the things you might be concerned about.

The capital budget (testimony Tuesday is on the “operating”, not the “capital” budget, but spending is spending) contains:

• $50 million for a starting payment on a $1 Billion Knik Arm Bridge (with connecting roads, but not including expected cost overruns);
• another $42 million on top of $170 million already spent studying a controversial $5+ billion dam that, if we build a gasline, won’t be needed (shouldn’t we see if we are going to make progress on a gasline, which unlike a dam, produces energy and state revenue first?); and,
• a 51-mile Juneau road extension that goes through 35 avalanche sites, will cost hundreds of millions in the long term to just maintain, and still requires you take a 12-mile ferry ride to get to the road system at Skagway.  Oh, and that one, if built, is estimated to cost roughly $500,000,000 (without cost overruns).

These projects should be debated on their merits, but the massive spending they entail in a time of tight budgets means money will be taken away from more important things, in my view.   We should protect our savings, fund opportunity, and leave the debate on these costly mega-projects for a day when we are not facing the rapid depletion of our savings accounts.

So, what’s not in the budget?

• Funds to reverse the past three years of school cuts, or to prevent next year’s.  The currently proposed education budget funds schools at last year’s level.  That means another 300 educator cuts on top of the 600+ from the past three years.  While I and many of my Democratic colleagues have filed legislation to reverse these cuts, the GOP-led majority has left funding at last year’s level in the budget, promising that the issue will be discussed later in session.  You have a right to demand that the budget, or other school funding vehicles, be passed to reverse this four-year course of cuts to opportunity.
• Funds to implement the Governor’s 2012 study on policies needed to prevent child abuse and neglect and protect the state close to 2,000 foster youth: this issue is still being discussed (that’s good), but not in the Governor’s or House budget so far (that’s a cause for you to speak up so people know you care).  In 2012 the Governor and Office of Children’s Services conceded the state was unable to adequately investigate child abuse and neglect cases, and put our foster youth on the track to success instead of despair.  They commissioned a study on how much support staff would be needed to free up social workers so they could do their field investigation work, and one-on-one work with foster youth and foster parents.  Rather than hiring more expensive social workers, the study recommended hiring support staff at a lower cost.  This “Workload Study”, which recommends additional support staff, has not been implemented, though legislators and the Governor have agreed to continue talking about implementing it.
• Voluntary Pre-K: An evidence-based way to increase student achievement.  Five years ago we worked with then-Governor Sarah Palin to convince her that being one of roughly 10 states without statewide access to voluntary pre-k wasn’t a proud statistic.   Studies show youth – and especially lower income youth – who attend quality pre-k earn more as adults, enter the job market in higher numbers, and graduate high school and college in higher numbers.  They cost society less by ending up jail in fewer numbers.  But a “pilot” program started five years ago for roughly 300 youth is still a pilot program serving roughly 300 youth.  And Head Start pre-k hasn’t received a state funding increase under the current Governor, so many families don’t even bother putting their kids on what used to be a 1,000+ statewide waiting list anymore.  Oh, and the promise in the pilot pre-k program was that we would take it statewide when studies showed it worked.  It has worked, and has shown to increase academic preparedness and achievement. 

You probably have other concerns.  Feel free to let us know if you need information on them.  And please testify!

Operating Budget Public Testimony:
Tuesday, March 4, 2014                                
1:30 – 2:45 p.m.        Juneau
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.        Bethel, Cordova, Kotzebue, Nome, Valdez, Wrangell, and Offnet sites
4:15 – 5:45 p.m.        Anchorage

Wednesday, March 5, 2014                           
1:30 – 2:30 p.m.      Barrow, Dillingham, Fairbanks
3:00 – 4:15 p.m.      Sitka, Petersburg, Delta Junction, Unalaska, Glennallen, Tok     
4:30 – 5:45 p.m.      Homer, Kenai, Ketchikan, Kodiak, Mat-Su, Seward

-Public testimony limited to 2 minutes each.
-Please arrive 15 minutes prior to the end of the allotted time or testimony will close early.
-Please try to arrive 15 minutes early to expedite the sign-in process.

Pebble Mine: The Project that Won’t Go Away

Pebble, located near the headwaters of the greatest wild salmon and trout waters in the world, would be the largest open-pit gold and copper mine in North America, and would produce ore by treating it with tons of toxic chemicals the developers propose to store with a retaining wall. 

Gov. Parnell and former Gov. Murkowski have pushed weaker salmon stream protection rules to make it easier for massive mines that raise a huge risk of damaging Alaska’s World’s greatest wild fish runs to move forward.  HB 77, which the Governor’s allies pushed through the House last year (against my vote), makes it easier for massive mines to get permits to take unsustainable, damaging amounts of water out of important fishing streams (the amount is left to the discretion of the Commissioner of Natural Resources).  Governor Murkowski previously reversed Alaska’s “no pollution in mixing zones” regulations, which forbade material amounts of pollution from draining into our salmon streams.

You’ve heard a lot about “Federal interference”.  If the Governor did his job and didn’t make it easier for the project to move forward with rules that endanger our fishing waters, the feds would be nowhere in sight.  But by not standing up to protect our fishing streams, he has allowed opponents to apply, under the Federal Clean water Act, for federal intervention.  I would have maintained our sovereignty and stopped this project at the state level. The EPA this week announced it was halting federal permits on the project until it can review the damage this mega-mine would risk to Alaska’s great salmon and trout waters.

More to come on this one, I’m sure.

OK, back to work.

As always, call if you have any questions.

And we’ll keep working for a sane budget that reflects Alaska’s priorities.

My Best,