One-year anniversary of the dishonest Dunleavy budget leaves Alaska in worse shape

It was a year ago this week that Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced his response to Alaska’s financial dilemma.

He promised to cut state and federal spending in the health department by $848 million, while taking $332 million from schools, gutting the University of Alaska, shutting down the Alaska Marine Highway System and confiscating hundreds of millions in oil and gas property taxes and fish taxes from local governments. He said the situation was dire and this was his “permanent fiscal plan.”

In the four months that followed, Dunleavy did not listen to the public or the Legislature on any aspect of the budget, but repeatedly aired his grievances about schools, ferries, Medicaid, the university and his desire to avoid taxes and pay more in dividends.

He didn’t listen to Medicaid experts who said hundreds of millions could not be cut because he had no analysis, just an announcement. He didn’t listen to those who said that a 25 percent cut in schools was a terrible idea or that he was destroying the University of Alaska. He didn’t listen to how his ferry system shutdown would cripple coastal communities. He didn’t listen to residents of the Pioneers Home blindsided by enormous rate increases.

He vetoed whatever he could in June, though his plan to cut education was stopped because the Legislature had funded schools a year in advance. AG Kevin Clarkson tried to help by inventing a failed plan to claim the appropriation was illegal.

In the first eight months of his tenure, Dunleavy spent most of his time not listening. His disastrous performance created the recall movement.

All those things he claimed to believe a year ago? Please forget all of that, he tells Alaskans, which makes it impossible to trust anything he says now about the budget, state services, taxes and the dividend.

Alaska’s financial situation is worse today because while Dunleavy has abandoned his alleged budget “core principles,” he has offered no alternative fiscal plan. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want to be governor.

With the recall driving every Dunleavy decision, he refuses to lead, follow or get out of the way. He should borrow the “I don’t really care. Do U?” jacket from Melania.

Witness the lottery bill he introduced Wednesday to distract the public from the reality that all savings except the Permanent Fund would be gone by October 2021 under the Dunleavy budget.

A year ago he said it was a time to take bold action.

He took steps to do what he had been saying for years as a state senator—cut $1 billion. As a state senator he had the political freedom to never identify anything he would cut from the budget. A seat in the Legislature is the ideal place in which to offer an easy solution to every complicated problem.

As a senator he had the luxury of demanding right-sized government, while avoiding substance. As a candidate for governor, he had the luxury of telling Alaskans whatever they wanted to hear, pretending that he would cut 2,000 ghost jobs and save $200 million in an instant.

As governor, he could no longer deal in the abstract. He had to attach names to numbers. Pity that he didn’t put more thought into the job.

“Today I announced my administration’s straightforward and open budget – a budget where expenditures equal revenues. Over the past four years Alaska has burned through over $14 billion dollars of savings and on top of that the PFD was reduced. We can no longer spend what we don’t have,” Dunleavy said on Feb. 13, 2019.

“As we’ve all seen, for too long, politicians haven’t been honest when it comes to the numbers and the seriousness of our fiscal woes,” he said in a press release that most of the state’s newspapers printed verbatim last year.

“As your governor, I will always be honest with you,” he said.

Today, the governor refuses to be honest about his unsustainable 2019 plan or his unsustainable 2020 plan. Someone has to do something, he is telling Alaskans. Only he doesn’t want to be that someone.

He won’t admit that he was wrong a year ago or that he is wrong now. He won’t propose any changes to taxation or the Permanent Fund Dividend to pay for his budget and he won’t go back to the budget cuts that he believed in last year. If the Legislature cuts the dividend this year—as it must—he will tell his supporters that the cut wasn’t Dunleavy’s idea.

If Dunleavy really wants to spend more on dividends, he has to stop hiding from taxes.

On Tuesday, Alaska Public Media reported that Dunleavy contracted with a right-wing communications consultant in Washington, D.C. in November for $4,000 a month to try to improve his image. Polishing his image Outside is not going to help Alaska, so I can think of an easy way to cut $48,000 from the budget.

Perhaps he wants to improve his image in right-wing circles because he wants money to fight the recall or he has visions of a job with Trump or he imagines that running for federal office will be easier than the governor gig.

In the meantime, Dunleavy neglects the main duty of the governor, which is to lead. The notion that he is allowing the Legislature to take on this role is foolish. Power is not concentrated in a single individual in the Legislature as it is in the executive branch.

By failing to take real positions on spending cuts or taxation, he is setting up the state so that withdrawals from the Permanent Fund and cuts to the dividend are the most likely options for the future. Perhaps he thinks this is a way to avoid being blamed for whatever happens in 2021 and beyond.

Dunleavy may think he is battling the recall by retreating to the indecisive budget babble that worked for him in the Senate, but his decision to hide is more evidence of incompetence.

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