Gov. Mike Dunleavy held a virtual town hall Tuesday evening via Facebook and Livestream.
Dunleavy fielded questions on his proposed budget for Alaska, which included a $350 million infrastructure proposal to put Alaskans to work. That includes building bridges, ports/harbors and roads across the state, according to Dunleavy’s office. The Permanent Fund Dividend was also discussed as Dunleavy proposed a new dividend formula moving forward which stated that if any money comes out of the Permanent Fund, at least 50% needs to go to dividends.
What are the odds of that happening? Dunleavy said, “I hope the odds are pretty good. This year, this pandemic has colored everything. The economic destruction to the state of Alaska, like other states and other countries has been significant. Don’t have to go through the tourism industry, the cruise ship industry and the drop in oil. This has been problematic. In such a shock to the economic system, the experts believe, for example, that it’s not going to be able to get off its knees by itself. We’re going to have to help it. The idea is that we take some of the money that we earned over this pandemic, that’s the great thing about the Permanent Fund, during this year, that’s been a tough year across the board, the Permanent Fund, from March to September earned about $10 billion. We’re going to ask the legislature to take a portion of that to help pay the full dividend that will be for this coming year but also half of the dividend that was left on the table last year so that Alaskans can get in their pockets several thousand dollars to be able to use to pay bills and take care of things that they weren’t able to take care of. This is going to be tremendously helpful for individual Alaskans, but also for businesses because that money is going to circulate around Alaska many times. We also are looking at a $350 million bond package to get people back to work to also help the economy and get things moving again. Also, to get people working as opposed to getting money on unemployment. We’ve had a tremendous amount of folks on unemployment as a result of what’s happened to the economy. I think $5,000 to each Alaskan, $350 million in bonds and other capital projects that we’re working on, I think will be able to help get our economy off its knees. We want to act on this soon. We’re going to ask the legislature to act on this quickly as soon as we go back to Juneau. I think the people of Alaska will be well served by quick action from this legislature.”
In regards to the particular budget, Dunleavy elaborates on the feedback he’s received so far, “Most of the individuals I’ve spoke with understand the gravity of the situation in Alaska. They understand that the law calls for a full dividend, that part of the law hasn’t changed yet. Taking care of the second half of the dividend last year is also going to help individuals. Many legislators have been contacted by their own constituents. Many, as I’ve mentioned, have been laid off, had hours reduced, their businesses have been hurt. There are a tremendous number of Alaskans calling for the legislature to act on this. The feedback on this that I’m getting is that the legislators I’ve talked to are taking this seriously. What I would say is the earnings reserve, again, returned $10 billion during this time from March to December. We have an opportunity, unlike any other state, as a result of that. Although our operating budget that we’re looking at, reducing that budget by about $290 million, and we’ll continue to reduce where we can and find efficiencies, overall what we really need to do is get people back to work.”
View the entire town hall event here.
