In my decades of covering Alaska politics, I can’t recall anything as irresponsible as the Dunleavy/Arduin budget. By slashing valuable state services and making no effort to consider their importance, the Dunleavy budget fails on all accounts. looking at the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Read MoreThis mess appears to be the result of Dunleavy handing over control of state government finances to temporary budget director Donna Arduin, who won’t be here to deal with the aftermath.
Read MoreThe press in Alaska, with a few exceptions, failed to examine the details of Dunleavy’s budget pronouncements or check his ever-changing numbers. That might change now that he is proposing cuts of things he never suggested he would cut, setting up Republican legislators to face the wrath of Alaskans.
Read MoreWithout some form of general taxation, it doesn’t matter how much we diversify Alaska’s economy with new jobs, new businesses, new products, new anything.
By Larry Persily
Read MoreDunleavy is telling reporters that he is not cutting the budget at all, but his administration is building a new budget, which just happens to be smaller, so no one should say that the budget is being cut. Brilliant.
Read MoreEven GOP legislators will understand that accepting the Donna Arduin slash-and-burn budget will require them to find new opportunities in the private sector.
Read MoreThere are no House committees yet, so Chair Carpenter had as much political power as the chair in which he was seated, but no one told him.
Read MoreThe Anchorage Daily News story on the privatization of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute downplayed the privatization part.
Read MoreThe temporary Alaska budget director from Michigan, still developing the secret plan to cut $1.5 billion from the state budget, has pushed private prisons elsewhere, which seems to be why this idea may be inflicted on Alaskans.
Read MoreIt turns out the state education department does not have $139,000 in its budget to pay for the newly created “assistant commissioner,” a position to be filled by a lawyer and co-pastor from Washington, D.C. But the money will be found in other departments.
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