Around 70 people crowded into Senator Peter Micciche’s town hall meeting Wednesday night.
Kenai Peninsula residents spoke about a variety of topics they heard…
“I was really impressed with the detail of information and how involved Peter Micciche is.”
“I think the biggest thing for me is it can’t be partisan politics, both sides are going to have to meet.”
“We’re going to have to do what we have to do to keep the state going, we have a very low population we don’t even have a million people in Alaska.”
“I’m really glad they brought up the fact that you can’t cut your way all the way to a balanced budget.”
Many attendees communicated their satisfaction with his sustainable futures presentation.
Senator Micciche addressed difficult choices to be made and some measures that can be implemented to keep spending reined-in if Alaska’s Permanent Fund becomes a source of funding for the state.
Senator Micciche: “First off we’ve been working hard since 2013 that was the first year I served, and we’ve reduced general fund spending from $8 billion to about $4.9 billion, we have more to go. But what we have to do to ensure that additional funds doesn’t put us in that same habit of spending whatever you have is to attach some legislation to usage of it.”
During his presentation, the senator defined the difference between Permanent Fund Earnings Reserve, where annual dividends come from, and the Permanent Fund Corpus, which can never be accessed.
Sen. Micciche says the difference is that the Earnings Reserve can be used to help fund the government while still paying a healthy dividend for Alaskans.
