Speaker Responds to Misinformation on CBR Vote

(Juneau) - Alaska State House Speaker Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, today responded to comments made by the minority caucus concerning the three failed votes on forward-funding education through one of the state's savings accounts. The Majority advanced three separate appropriations bills with the education funding language. All three votes were failed by the minority, despite winning Senate approval in the supplemental appropriations bill on the session's last day.

Alaska's schools – and Alaska's children – deserve more consideration and respect than to be used in a political attack or as a way for the minority to leverage us for political favors or funding for their pet projects.
~ Rep. Mike Chenault

Speaker Chenault offered one point of clarification for the forward-funding amount attributed to a minority caucus member yesterday on an Anchorage television news broadcast, saying "forward-funding of education would have required shifting more than one billion dollars from the CBR into the Public Education Fund, not $600 million. When arguing policy, you need to argue it with accurate information, and base it on the merits."

Speaker Chenault went on to release the following statement:

"The Majority Caucus was upfront in building its budget in House Finance this legislative session. We said our position was to forward-fund education through the Constitutional Budget Reserve, the state's main savings account. We did not structure the appropriations bills to leverage the minority or make education funding a political football. To assert that the failed minority votes on the issue were the product of political or caucus bickering is a lazy way to enter into the debate. Our mission this session was to craft reasonable, responsible budgets in a lean year, because of the $100 decline in world oil prices; the money simply wasn't there to spend general fund revenues at the level of the past two years. We were fortunate to put more than $5 billion in savings last year, with the understanding that in lean year's – as in the past – we would have to draw from them to fund state government. That is exactly the scenario we were faced with this year, and the minority caucus refused to approve the certainty and predictability we have been striving to give Alaska school districts over the past four years.

"Four years ago, the Legislature came together to forward-fund education, which would be filled by general funds, surplus revenues, or draws from state savings, to give school districts across the state the certainty they had asked for in building their own budgets. The fund was made whole the next year, and in order to continue the policy of forward-funding the Legislature has to continue re-filling the fund when crafting the state budget every session. I know, because I was the operating budget co-chairman in the House when we established this account and this policy with our peers in the Senate.

"As it stands now, thanks to the failure of the minority caucus to approve this funding, Alaska school districts have been set back five years, to a time when districts had to send out mass runs of pink slips and delay their budgets for months, waiting for the Legislature to appropriate education funds. Who's to say that oil prices won't still be down next year? This is an issue that won't go away, or be explained away by defensive posturing from the minority caucus. Alaska's schools – and Alaska's children – deserve more consideration and respect than to be used in a political attack or as a way for the minority to leverage us for political favors or funding for their pet projects."