May 21, 2015 Voice Your Opinions! Letters to the editor make a difference. You can send a letter of up to 200 words (shorter letters are more likely to be accepted) to the Alaska Dispatch News by email (letters@alaskadispatch.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; 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 Neighbors:

Below, and linked here, is an Op-Ed I ran today in the Alaska Dispatch on the status of Special Session. I’m working hard, and will offer a few words beyond what could fit in that Op-Ed, which I wrote in part to set the record straight on a few statements I’d seen in the paper by legislators who likely wrote in the heat of the moment. That’s understandable.

Working Across Party Lines Works

The most common thing I hear when I speak to people, regardless of their political views, is that they want legislators to work across party lines. I think we should have done that by the end of the 90-day session. And though it’s water under the bridge now, I also believe it was a mistake by those in the majority to vote to leave the Capitol back on April 30 for recess (which took away the pressure to get a budget done, and took away the needed dynamic of having all 60 legislators and the Governor in one building, talking). But this is where we are and we need to work for the future.

Here’s the only difficulty of getting to a compromise, which on this budget, should be easy. Like a dance, it takes two. I think that can happen. But it gets harder if what I call the “car salesman” model prevails. If you’ve ever bought a car, and offered a compromise, but the car dealer just went into that glass room to bring out another car dealer who says they won’t budge, you know that model doesn’t work. For my part, I believe in standing up for what’s right, but also in making principled compromise with folks willing to do the same.

I feel, with the right person, many of us could, in a matter of hours, solve our differences. I’ve spoken to Republicans who agree, and I will keep working to do that for my part.

On the other hand, if you’ve read what happened on a simple bill this week to educate children and teens about how to report and stop sexual abuse, there are some who are very wedded to ideology, and have a hard time dropping ideology to pass even the least controversial bill. That bill, Erin’s Law, has now been gutted, and abortion language has been added when it didn’t need to. http://www.adn.com/article/20150520/woman-behind-sex-abuse-prevention-bill-blasts-alaska-lawmakers-changing-it

We don’t need an unnecessary pro-choice vs. anti-abortion battle when we are trying to get your work done.

Government Shutdown – Very Very Doubtful:

I can’t tell you if we will have enough people willing to work hard to reach a bi-partisan budget, or whether Republicans in the Majority will do what’s been mentioned by some of them as a possibility – spending $5 billion of Permanent Fund Earnings Reserve money to avoid working with Democrats on a bi-partisan budget. The latter could jeopardize our ability to pay Permanent Fund Dividends, and just as importantly, would be disappointing – that folks are so dead set against working across party lines that they’d go to that length for a one-party budget. I think there are people in both parties who’d chose the smarter, bi-partisan route.

But in either case I don’t believe there are many who are willing to fail to pass a budget by July 1. I just don’t see a government shutdown as a realistic possibility – and a bi-partisan budget could.

Below is the Op Ed I wrote discussing the major issues still in dispute, and that, I think, could be solved in an hour. We shouldn’t be nearing the end of a 30-Day Special Session. As always, let us know if we can help, or if you want to share your thoughts.

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(Reprinted From Today’s Alaska Dispatch News)

I'd rather work across party lines than listen to back and forth political jabs. Unfortunately when it comes to the state budget, there is real math, and political math.

In the last two days our Senate President and House Speaker have given you political math. They’ve avoided the inconvenient truth that Democratic and Independent legislators, while protecting educational opportunity and child abuse and neglect victims, have offered larger budget savings than our Republican friends have. Working together we can cut the budget and also protect what’s vital to our economy and the people who live here.

So – here’s a request that we drop the pen and work together to adopt a bi-partisan budget, not just a Republican budget that deeply cuts academic opportunity, help for seniors who cannot afford medicine, and that dishonors wage contracts for workers.

And there is no reason for a government shutdown. That, too, just requires simple compromise.

Our two GOP leaders, in op-eds this week, misstate that Democratic and Independent leaders have offered only budget increases (Speaker Chenault claims an $80 million increase and the Senator Meyer claims it to be double that). They get to their bad math by avoiding an “inconvenient truth.”

The inconvenient truth is that we have offered far more budget cuts than our counterparts on the Republican side of the aisle. They leave out over $200 million in budget savings we have offered. These cuts omitted from their calculus include moving from the overpriced new Anchorage Legislative Office Building with automatic garbage cans, into cheaper space.

So, sure, Democratic and Independent legislators have proposed to honor the promise made last year for education funding, and not take away $48 million from public schools, and lose more teachers and educators, like the GOP has proposed.

And we want a child protection system that isn’t so overstressed and in such crisis that its Director recently testified with these words: “Kids will, in fact, die” under this budget.

Leaving our most vulnerable foster youth with a 40% homelessness rate and 27% incarceration rate, and a system in crisis isn’t good management by your Legislature. And proposed cuts to job training and the University can be tampered down.

But we need to save money too. So here’s what we’ve proposed, and what the House Speaker and Senate President forgot to add in when they did their math: Over $200 million in savings to the budget.

Right now the Speaker and Senate President propose to have the state pay oil companies $650 million more in the next two years in oil company tax credits than Alaska receives back in oil production tax revenue under the 2013 oil tax law they passed.

These oil tax credit payments are subject to a legislative decision to appropriate, just like the withdrawn 2014 Republican promise made for education funding that they’ve now withdrawn in their budget. We’ve proposed, in this time of a $3.2 billion budget deficit, to slow these oil corporation payments and cap them at $400-$500 million a year, and save roughly $200 million a year in state spending. Oil companies will get their credits, but they will be delayed by a matter of months.

Oil companies can handle inconvenience. Children and seniors shouldn’t have to bear all the pain.

And we want to pass the Governor’s Medicaid Expansion and Reform bill, which will save $330 million in state spending over the next six years, bring 4,000 needed jobs, and get sick people health care.

We should cut $6 million from unneeded funding for the $6 billion, unaffordable Susitna Dam, and $17 million from the controversial Bragaw Road extension. In all we have offered well over $200 million in these and other cuts.

A budget is a moral document. It shouldn’t put oil companies ahead of seniors and children. We can cut the budget, but smartly, with a scalpel and not a bludgeon. And we should work together for compromise, for the good of all Alaskans, regardless of what party they belong to.

Rep. Les Gara (D-Anchorage) is a member of the House Finance Committee