Alaska editorials

Here is a sampling of editorial opinions from Alaska newspapers:

April 20, 2017

Peninsula Clarion: Community effort saves Brown Bears

Congratulations to the Kenai River Brown Bears, and kudos to the community that supports them; thanks to their efforts, the team will be back on the ice for the 2017-18 season.

Now comes the hard part - keeping the enthusiasm generated during the effort to save the Brown Bears going through the highs and lows of a junior hockey season.

Since the Brown Bears, members of the North American Hockey League, announced in late February that the team would cease operations following the season, mostly due to financial issues, members of the community have taken it upon themselves to bring the team back.

Raising $300,000 in commitments to next year’s team in just 25 days has been a remarkable endeavor, particularly at a time when businesses and individuals are feeling an economic pinch.

And the Brown Bears are an organization worth saving. Providing high level hockey throughout the winter is just a part of what the team has done for the community. Players frequently spend time volunteering in a wide range of capacities, and the organization has been recognized for its community service.

Support for the Brown Bears has come from a broad swath of the community, from fans buying season tickets, to support from business owners - even the arch-rival Fairbanks Ice Dogs contributed to the effort.

With the immediate hurdle cleared, the Brown Bears organizations and its boosters can now start to plan for the long haul. The potential for new teams in Anchorage of the Mat-Su certainly helps the Brown Bears’ prospects, running a junior hockey team in Alaska is an expensive proposition, particularly with the rest of the league moving eastward and teams here expected to pick up the tab for visitors’ travel. Much has been done, but there is still much to do.

We hope the community’s enthusiasm for the team, which was exhibited by the fans who packed the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex for the squad’s final home games of the season, continues into next season and beyond. As we noted, the Brown Bears have been more than just a hockey team over the past decade - they’ve been part of the community. We’re glad to see our community reciprocate; that kind buy-in is essential to any organization’s success.

And we’re also looking forward to seeing the Brown Bears back on the ice when the puck drops on the 2017-18 season next fall.

Game on!

___

April 23, 2017

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Dueling budget visions offer starkly different paths for state funding

With Alaska’s Legislature in agreement on the necessity of Alaska Permanent Fund earnings restructuring, the House and Senate have wasted no time getting to their next intractable revenue fight: whether an income tax is necessary. The Senate, having passed a package combining cuts and a percent-of-market-value restructuring plan for the permanent funds, insists nothing more is necessary to balance the state’s budget. The House, by contrast, says a state income tax is necessary to put Alaska in the black and maintain reasonable levels of state services. Neither approach is objectively wrong, but each offers a very different vision for what the state will look like.

The plan passed by the Senate will close the majority of the revenue gap, but - depending on how oil prices move - still will leave a sizeable deficit that will require spending out of the state’s savings for at least the next several years. Narrowing that deficit will require serious cuts, to the tune of $750 million across the next three years.

If this were the beginning of the fiscal crisis and not its third year, those cuts could be relatively easily accomplished. But during the past two years in the Legislature, a cuts-only temperament among legislators has resulted in the stripping away of everything that was easy to cut and then some. For examples, one need look no further than the state justice system. Alaska now has fewer state troopers and fewer prosecutors to handle the cases they bring in. Courthouses close at lunchtime on Friday to wring out further cost savings.

Many of the state’s departments have incurred double-digit budget cuts for two years running. The only real place to turn if legislators are looking to claw back another $750 million in state spending is Alaska’s education system - K-12 schools and the University of Alaska are among the biggest recipients of state general funds, in keeping with the Alaska Constitution’s mandate that the Legislature provide public education to all the state’s children.

The House’s plan would couple permanent fund earnings restructuring with a state income tax. It has the virtue of closing the state’s budget gap entirely, without continuing to draw on savings. But no question the burden on Alaskans would be higher. Though the income tax mechanism, charging residents a percentage of what they owe in federal income tax, would hit poorer Alaskans less hard than those better able to absorb the financial hit, most Alaskans would see their tax bills rise.

Importantly, the House plan would preserve state services at close to their present levels. Some residents have expressed concerns that instituting any level of taxation will inevitably lead to government creep, a fear that has been echoed by some majority caucus legislators in the Senate. Although it’s wise to be on guard against growth of government without a specific purpose, it’s odd for legislators to be the ones voicing that fear, since they have direct control over the size of government and rate of taxation as the keepers of the state purse.

The House and Senate plans represent very different visions for Alaska’s future. The Senate’s plan would attempt to reduce financial impacts to residents, at a cost of substantial reductions in services, particularly education. The House’s plan would preserve services at present levels, but would result in residents shouldering the burden of helping pay for those services. It’s a vitally important choice for the state, and residents should let their legislators know which approach they prefer.