For budget sanity, Sanford is obvious choice in Fairbanks state senate race to replace Coghill

In the key Senate District B race in Fairbanks, Republican Robert Myers is facing independent Marna Sanford.

Myers is a truck driver who defeated incumbent Sen. John Coghill in the Republican primary, claiming that Coghill, a staunch fiscal and social conservative, was not conservative enough for the Fairbanks area.

Sanford is an attorney and member of the borough assembly. The third candidate on the ballot, independent Evan Eads, has dropped out of the race and endorsed Sanford.

In his public appearances and campaign statements, Myers has shown himself to be a leading member of the Republican party anti-math movement.

Sanford, by contrast, has focused on the difficult policy and math choices, concluding that we need to maintain state services and pay for them with a fiscal plan. That requires taxes and a new formula for the Permanent Fund Dividend.

Sanford is the obvious choice in this contest because she has outlined a sensible approach to the budget, while Myers is trying to sell a fiscal fantasy that even Mike Dunleavy would never have tried to pawn off on the public.

Myers has distinguished himself with a series of impossible claims about the budget that do not add up. He’s about $2 billion short.

He gives every indication of not knowing anything about the tradeoffs reflected in every budget decision. Budget illiteracy is not a virtue.

He opposes any new taxes, he supports bigger dividends and he wants to make government more efficient. Last summer, he said he might support a flat tax, but since the primary he has opposed any tax increase. None of this works.

Myers has been unable to identify how he would cut $2 billion from the state budget, preserve the old formula for the Permanent Fund Dividend and pull this off without new taxes, the elimination of major services or wiping out the earnings reserve of the Permanent Fund.

The GOP anti-math movement is the single greatest threat to the future of the Permanent Fund and survival of any dividend.

Myers is hiding his impossible claims behind the fuzzy marshmallow language used for decades by pontificating politicians—lots of talk about priorities, making government more efficient, finding a new path forward, supporting a world-class university and deciding what kind of government we want.

Myers has received the Donna Arduin endorsement, and appears to have swallowed the ill-advised budget policies of the former temporary budget director that would destroy key state services. He has also adopted the unworkable scheme offered by Dunleavy and Arduin acolyte Mike Barnhill that the university should be more like Harvard and Yale and find rich donors to pay for programs.

“The most basic function of government is the protection of individual rights, so we need to keep the three C's: cops, courts, and corrections. A few other agencies like the public defenders office and state prosecutors are included there. Everything else should be on the table,” Myers says on his website.

The most reckless plan advanced by Myers is his idea to cut education spending by more than $300 million.

“We can still have our budget and have the services that we expect at a much lower rate, without really compromising quality, in most cases,” he told reporter Nat Herz.

Myers told Alaska Public Media that the state could cut 25 percent of its spending on public education without a reduction in quality.

Myers did not bother to tell Alaska Public Media or anyone else how his alleged plan would work.

I suspect that is because he has no idea. He is justing quoting a number provided by the former temporary budget director. Dunleavy and Arduin proposed a $300 million cut to schools in 2019, but Dunleavy backed off because of statewide opposition and Arduin was shown the door.

In rough numbers, a $300 million cut would lead to the loss of more than 3,000 jobs statewide, the closure of schools and far more students in every classroom. Myers isn’t being honest about the consequences of his proposed cut, if he has looked into the matter at all.

If cutting $300 million from schools made sense, then a real fiscal conservative with experience on the state budget like John Coghill would have explained long ago how that would have been implemented. He would have brought it up every year and fought for it.

Myers is insulting the intelligence of the voters by claiming a $300 million school cut is within easy reach. And he neglecte to mention where he would find more than $1.7 billion more to do away with in the state budget.

“Alaska deserves better,” Myers said on Facebook. I agree with him on that.

After Myers made his impossible budget claims at one recent debate, Sanford said that his plans would require cutting state spending by about half. She said a cut of that magnitude is completely unrealistic and deserves no part in a serious conversation about the future. She’s right.