Dunleavy budget-cutting claims add up to tallest of tall tales

For many months Gov. Mike Dunleavy has been portraying himself as a hero of the budget-cutting wars, claiming credit for reducing current year spending by $600 million or $650 million.

He began talking about a $650 million cut last February and fell in love with the statistic.

In a piece in the right-wing Washington Examiner in October, he said: “When our state’s big-spending politicians were unable to find the necessary savings, I utilized my veto powers to cut spending by $650 million — the largest budget reduction in state history and a critical first step toward balancing the state budget.”

“We reduced about $600 million from the budget, about 40 percent of the deficit,” Dunleavy told Fox News two days later. “And of course, folks that like a larger government, special interests that are tied into government money, they didn’t like this.”

Two months later, he told the right-wing Heritage Foundation that his administration ordered a “transparent and honest assessment of Alaska's finances. No more deception. No more disinformation. No more time to stall. And when some of our state's big-spending politicians decided to ignore these warnings, I utilized my veto power to cut spending by $650 million. This was the largest budget reduction in the state's history and a critical first step towards getting Alaska back on track.”

The magic number of $650 million amounts to a tall tale, as false as his campaign promise that the state could save $200 million by cutting 2,000 ghost jobs and no one would notice.

After all the expenses are tallied in a few months, the final government services budget for the current fiscal year will show little change from the previous fiscal year.

The major reasons include these: Dunleavy reversed himself on a big chunk of vetoes in response to the recall campaign; some reductions never happened because the state didn’t change Medicaid rules; a court ordered some school funds reinstated; the bill for fighting last summer’s wildfires is a big one.

There have been some real cuts in public services—$44 million from the Alaska Marine Highway System, $25 million from the University of Alaska and Medicaid reductions. There are also some pass-the-buck tricks that will force local governments and local taxpayers to pay more for schools. The cost of paying back oil tax credits distorts the comparison and retirement costs are up.

The easiest thing to do in Alaska politics is to talk about cutting the state budget. The second easiest thing is to confuse people with statistics.

The hardest thing is to actually cut the budget—mainly because so much of it goes to education and health, services that are popular across the state.

Meanwhile, Dunleavy continues to goose the numbers in his public statements about the size of the budget, but his claims are shrinking and getting closer to the truth.

This week he told Commonwealth North in Anchorage that with items added back into the budget, the reduction this fiscal year is going to be “in the neighborhood of $400 million.”

It’s pretty clear the reduction will end up in a much cheaper neighborhood than that.

The governor is not the first one to pick and choose budget numbers. All of his predecessors have engaged in that activity from time to time, but Dunleavy has made exaggeration standard practice.

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