Under the bill headed to Dunleavy’s desk, third-graders who can’t read well, based on a standardized test, will have their parents called into school to decide their children’s educational fate. The parents will have to sign a waiver saying they know the kids are failing and are not prepared for fourth grade before the child is allowed to advance to the next grade. This is going to be humiliating for some kids when they are blamed by their parents for not reading.
Read MoreAlaska legislators will debate a final budget today that includes total cash payouts to Alaskans ranging from $2.1 billion to $2.5 billion. The per person amounts would be from $3,200 per person to $3,850, the latter number contingent on gaining a super majority vote and the backing of Republicans in the House.
Read MoreThe state is going to end up making cash payments to Alaskans that will probably exceed $1 billion or $1.5 billion. The Republicans, all with their eyes on the election, are trying to whip up hysteria that anything less than $3.6 billion in cash payments is an insult, but they don’t understand the word “billion” or the need to plan for the next time that oil drops to $50.
Read MoreThe U.S. House of Representatives lists 13 financial disclosure reports filed by the dozens of U.S. House candidates competing in the upcoming Alaska special congressional election. Some of the high profile candidates not on the list are Sarah Palin and Josh Revak.
Read MoreThe Senate budget was based on the wish and prayer that oil prices for the fiscal year starting July 1 would remain higher than they have been for many years. Even so, the budget contained a deficit of more than $1 billion that would have to be covered by drawings on savings and federal funds.
Read More“The $1,050 deficit for FY23 is based on $101 oil. If the actual price is merely in the mid $90s, we zero that out and then we're either into the CBR (without a 3/4 vote) or an overdraw from the permanent fund. Yes, at this moment we're sitting on a large slug of short term money. So we ‘can’ afford a fat dividend. It's just incredibly shortsighted and irresponsible.”
Read MoreAlaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy is strong-arming House members with secret promises and threats about what he will or will not veto to get them to vote to approve the Senate’s reckless budget. Alaskans need to know what he is telling legislators to try to get them to do his bidding.
Read MoreAs of this month, the Dunleavy administration says it wants to hire someone to repeat what was to be done under Kelly Tshibaka, which is to “complete IT and procurement consolidation.”
Read MoreRight-wing Republicans in the Senate, assisted by Senate Democrats Scott Kawasaki, Bill Wielechowski and Donny Olson, are betting on high oil prices to pay inflated dividends and provide state services in the next fiscal year. It’s a reckless gamble, one that should be reversed by the House-Senate conference committee on the budget.
Read MoreSens. Lisa Murkowsi and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young crossed party lines and voted for the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that Congress approved last summer. The most vocal opponents of what they did are Republicans who first claimed that the state was shortchanged, only to drop that argument when the multi-billion-dollar scale of the Alaska portion became obvious to them. The new argument is that the law contains too much.
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