Over the weekend Governor Bill Walker combed through the FY 2016 spending plan budget and slashed departments by 72%, an option that will go into effect if the legislature does not provide an alternative within what’s left of the special session.
Gov. Walker: “And I signed that this morning I went through and vetoed down sufficient amounts so that we have met the roughly $1.9 billion of revenue that we have coming in. Now we all know that we can’t run our government, the State of Alaska, on $1.9 billion budget but it does now balance, revenues to expenditures.”
He said because House Bill 72 was transferred to his office, he was under obligation to take action on it within 15 days and this was the only logical option because he would not sign an unfunded budget.
Walker stated he hopes the legislature will come up with a better solution in the next 9 days of the special session so that the state will not have to send out 15,000 lay-off notices, which he deemed the worst possible scenario.
Gov. Walker: “The one thing to keep in mind is that the amount of dispute that we’re talking about, if it’s $100 million difference in a funded budget, that’s 3% of the amount of the deficit that’s a real problem. If we submitted a budget with a $50 million difference, that’s a 1.5% of the size of the problem, the problem is the deficit. The problem is the $3 billion deficit so while we are focused on arguing over 3%, we’re not even looking at resolution for the 97% of the problem.”
He said he hopes to further the discussion on how to fix the 97% of the problem with the public input sessions he and Lt. Governor Byron Mallott have scheduled in Fairbanks June 5-7.
Walker’s budget director Pat Pitney said the forward funding for the Department of Education of 2016 was used to fund operating budget 2015.