Inch by Inch
The governor's surprise declaration two weeks ago about what it takes to get the budget into effect brought our state closer to a shutdown than we've ever come. Let's leave aside the fact he doesn't seem to believe what he's demanding applies to him (see the video below)—he could back up his demands with a veto pen, so the legislature came back and met them.
To do it, we spent the week (and weekend) crunching to get a 2/3 vote in the House to pass effective dates that meet the governor's novel demands. The Senate already got there. A working agreement on the bigger pieces of a long-term fiscal plan—queued up for the August special session the governor called last month—was the key.
That's not to say the budget is now a snuggle-fest of puppies and kittens. It is not. The governor's line-item veto authority still looms between everything in it and final enactment. (He could theoretically veto the entire thing and shut down state government, but I don't expect that.) And we haven't hit the 3/4 vote threshold needed to deal with the Constitutional Budget Reserve.
Without that 3/4 vote, the budget has about $130 million of holes in it. Without that, the endowment that pays for Power Cost Equalization and revenue sharing with municipalities gets re-invested in money market funds paying next to no interest, instead of the broad markets. Without that, there will be no Alaska Performance Scholarships for talented Alaska high school grads to attend the University of Alaska.
But with passage of the effective dates this afternoon, we at least won't lay off state employees and stop serving Alaskans' needs. We won't waste countless dollars pulling fish and game folks out of the field and writing checks to state employees for the value of their unused leave and the countless other wastes a shutdown would cause.
It's always best when debate happens in public view, and on time. The legislature as a whole fell short of those goals this year. But we will go on to work toward them another day.
