When Alaska’s Republican-led House passed its version of the budget earlier this year, it contained a $2,700 dividend and a boost to education but no serious plan to pay for either. The bipartisan Minority Coalition refused to help the Majority tap the state’s savings account—a position shared by the Senate—arguing it was irresponsible to deficit spend when there was little action on a fiscal plan.
A month later and little has changed.
The GOP Majority has not advanced any meaningful pieces of a fiscal plan—its Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Ben Carpenter angrily announced Friday that he was pulling the plug on revenue after the House Finance Committee’s moderates changed a non-binding spending cap bill to give the state more room to grow—and it appears little has been done in terms of winning over votes.
Just a few days away from the end of the 121-day legislative session, that leaves things without any clear resolution between the House Majority’s insistence on a larger dividend and the refusal to spend from savings held by Senate and House Minority. Without agreement on the budget, the Legislature is headed to extra innings, whether through a 10-day extension (unlikely) or a special session called by Gov. Mike Dunleavy that can run 30 days.
As much as the House Majority has stood by its demand for a $2,700 dividend and the accompanying withdrawal from savings to cover the $600 million-plus deficit, it doesn’t change the fact that they still don’t have the votes or the leverage to force the rest of the Legislature to sign off on deficit spending this year.
It’s a weak position that the Senate—filled with long-serving legislators experienced in the art of leverage and browbeating—has sought to capitalize on.
In an overt attempt to force the House’s hand on the decision, the Senate has held onto the budget in a move that sidesteps much of the traditional budget negotiations. With three days left on the clock and the budget still in the Senate, there’s no time for the budget to be sent to a conference committee for the traditional back-and-forth negotiations over the budget.
That budget contains the $1,300 PFD that the Senate says allows the budget to balance while also providing a boost to education funding but has contingency language that would grow the dividend to $2,700 if the average oil price for the upcoming year is far higher than forecast.
Senate leadership has argued that negotiations can still happen between the two chambers, that those changes can still be incorporated while the bill is in the Senate’s control and that the House can pass the budget in a concurrence vote before Wednesday night. That hasn’t sat well with the House, which has complained that they’re being locked out of the process and limited in their input on the budget.
Sen. Lyman Hoffman, the Bethel Democrat who oversees the capital budget, said last week that he was willing to incorporate a list of priorities from the House into the budget but never received an actual list from the House.
What’s next
The operating budget currently is on the Senate floor, setting the stage for amendments and debate to begin today with the possibility that it could reach a final vote and be sent to the House today. Given the state of the negotiations, though, it’s likely that the Senate will hold onto the budget through to Wednesday, giving more time to make changes and further painting the House into a corner.
If the Republican-led House Majority sticks together and rejects the Senate budget, things will be headed to overtime. If the House Majority, however, fractures and a handful of moderates vote in support of the Senate budget, then items could be wrapped by Wednesday at midnight.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
