Dunleavy recycles empty budget promises, platitudes for re-election campaign

Alaska news organizations are already repeating the mistakes they made in 2018 in covering candidate Mike Dunleavy, quoting his feel-good pledges about state finances without mentioning that the numbers are based on dubious assumptions.

Just as he did during his first campaign for governor, Dunleavy is refusing to talk about taxes. And he is refusing to provide specifics about how he would cut a half-billion from the state budget.

Dunleavy’s re-election campaign, which is unofficial but real, consists of his perennial pledge for bigger dividends, lower spending, no new taxes, no real service cuts, higher oil prices and higher oil production.

Alaska private newspapers, public radio, the Associated Press and commercial TV stations aren’t covering him as a candidate or checking his assertions.

They are playing along with the illusion that he is not running for re-election, but merely performing his duties as governor. With few exceptions, Alaska political reporting consists of writing down what Dunleavy says and then writing down what someone else says, with no analysis or context.

In 2018, Dunleavy was never challenged by news organizations on his false claims that the state budget intentionally includes a slush fund of $200 million for thousands of state jobs that are never filled.

Eliminating that slush fund, along with “efficiencies” from Medicaid and school health insurance, made up his “plan” to trim $450 million without reducing services. At other times he rounded the easy savings up to $500 million and said that higher oil prices and production would take care of the rest.

“If we get our budget down to about $4, $4.1 billion, somewhere in that neighborhood, and then let it grow—the operating aspect of the budget, the operating side of the budget—at about 2 percent a year, we can maintain, we can keep up with some inflationary costs at 2 percent a year. But it also gives us some breathing room to get these other resources on line, to get this other oil in the pipeline and increase our revenue stream,” he said in a public radio appearance on Sept. 4, 2018.

“We can grow our way out of this,” he said.

He repeated his imaginary numbers throughout his campaign and reporters didn’t question their validity. The claim that “we can grow our way out of this” remains Dunleavy’s mantra.

This time he is saying that his so-called “50/50” constitutional amendment for the Alaska Permanent Fund is the miracle cure—as in 2018, he sees no taxes, no real service cuts and bigger dividends.

He wants to ride the amendment and the promise of bigger dividends to a second term in 2022.

On Friday, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner quoted a Dunleavy press release claiming that his “50/50 component balances the budget within five years, and requires no broad-based taxes.”

Yes, it’s true Dunleavy made that claim in a press release. But the Dunleavy plan is not the pain-free miracle that balances the budget within five years without taxes.

It assumes that there will be no stock market correction in the next 9 years, that oil prices will rise and that the budget will be hundreds of millions lower than it is today.

Hidden in the Dunleavy plan are hundreds of millions in mystery budget cuts in the future, hundreds of millions in oil revenues that may or may not appear, and hundreds of millions in additional earnings from the Permanent Fund that may or may not appear.

His promises today are as empty as those he made in 2018. It’s all about telling people what he thinks they want to hear.

Fairbanks Rep. Adam Wool, who has a better grasp of state finances than the governor and most legislators, has been among the minority of legislators putting forward ideas that might actually create a viable fiscal plan.

“Unless massive budget cuts can be achieved, two major changes must be made to balance Alaska’s budget for the foreseeable future and form the centerpiece of a sustainable fiscal plan,” he said in as presentation this week.

One would be to set the dividend at about $1,000, while the second would be to institute a broad-based tax that would raise about $500 million.

“If higher dividends are desired, revenues will similarly need to be higher,” he said. This is a far more realistic view of our situation.

The Dunleavy 50/50 plan, without new revenue, “crashes the system,” Wool says.

A competent governor would admit that. Competent political reporting would allow Alaskans to better understand that Dunleavy’s miracle solution is another con job.

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