When Gov. Mike Dunleavy championed a 41 percent cut in state funds to the University of Alaska budget in 2019—a budget wrecking ball that did lasting damage— Bethany Marcum said it was a great idea.
“It is reassuring to see that the administration has embraced fiscal responsibility with this budget,” wrote Marcum of the proposed budget on Feb. 13, 2019. “Alaskans are tired of deficit spending and this governor clearly means business.”
Four months later, Dunleavy vetoed $130 million from the university budget. Marcum said it was a great idea.
“We are in favor of the vetoes in terms of the dollar amounts,” Marcum said after the $130 million veto.
“While it’s easy to say we need more funding the reality is we have to address these issues…” Marcum told Alaska’s News Source in 2019. “It’s just not sustainable to continue to subsidize government with savings.”
Dunleavy’s veto of university funding created a financial crisis that continues to harm higher education in Alaska.
The Legislature faces a confirmation vote for Marcum and Dunleavy’s other nominees to state boards and commissions Tuesday. Dunleavy, her former employer, nominated her for an eight-year-term on the UA Board of Regents.
Marcum now claims that she did not support Dunleavy’s budget cuts to the university or his veto of $130 million for the university in 2019.
She also says she was quoted out of context when she said on the redistricting board that Eagle River would be helped by her plan to give Eagle River more representation, a decision found to be unconstitutional gerrymandering by the Alaska Supreme Court.
She said she supported the dollar numbers in the Dunleavy budget cuts, not the specific budget cuts. She said she supported the dollar amounts of the Dunleavy vetoes, not the vetoes.
She also claims the Alaska Policy Forum never has any policy opinions on budgets. She apparently isn’t aware of the forum’s claim that the university has a “bloated budget.”
In her confirmation hearings before the House and Senate education committees March 24, Marcum claimed that she never endorsed the Dunleavy attack on the university, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
She was not correcting the record. She was inventing a cover story.
“If I could I would just like to correct the record that I never spoke to directly to any cuts to the university. I spoke to general budget reductions and veto amounts of for reductions of the capital and operating budgets,” she said in March.
“And I recognize that my content, my comments were taken out of context. And some folks have sent me some things recently which made it clear that some are trying to make this seem as if I was commenting directly on the university’s budget reductions, but that wasn’t the case.”
The problem with this gibberish is that there are no “general budget reductions.” Dunleavy cut funds from the University of Alaska. There are no “general budget vetoes.” Dunleavy vetoed $130 million from the university in 2019 and she supported it.
Trying to save her confirmation in the Legislature, she gave a long-winded monologue about her alleged neutrality on the UA portion of the 2019 budget cuts:
“ I was speaking in my role as the leader for Alaska Policy Forum. And we have an approach at Alaska Policy Forum where we are looking, we look at the sustainability of the budget, we look at the revenue that the state takes in every year, and we look at the spending, and we put out what’s called the responsible Alaska budget, which is kind of a self-imposed cap that we ask legislators and other policy makers to consider, including the governor.
“We’ll hold anybody who doesn’t look at that number accountable in terms of trying to point out why the spending is not, you know, to levels that we feel are sustainable. But we also have a policy internally within our organization that we are not policy makers. We are not the ones who get involved in the political process for deciding where cuts should be made.
“It is a political process. It’s part of the appropriations process that legislators and other policy makers use during this legislative session. And so we typically don’t comment on particular departments or agencies or divisions where we think reductions should be made or could be made.
“Trust me, I get asked by legislators frequently, ‘Where should we make cuts?’ And my answer is, ‘I can tell you what amounts you should strive for, but I believe that is your role as a legislator to decide or you know in some cases it’s the governor, to make those decisions. I don’t have the background to be able to make those decisions. I don’t sit through all of the finance subcommittee meetings that legislators do. And I think that’s the appropriate role of the legislator.
“And so I would just start by saying that I appreciate you asking because I appreciate the opportunity to state that my comments were not directed toward the university’s budget at all. It was directed toward the general reductions that the governor had proposed. And I did say we appreciated the fact that there were attempts being made to create balance between the revenue that the state was receiving and the spending. But where those happen? That’s a whole different discussion.”
If the university offered a graduate degree in waffling, this would qualify as a dissertation.
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