Despite having to deal with a massive budget deficit, Alaska’s slightly more moderate House of Representatives is working pretty well. That’s the report from Sitka Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, who spoke to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday (3-4-15).
But Kreiss-Tomkins also said solutions to Alaska’s fiscal problems are far beyond the scope of any political shifts in government.
Just how bad is a $3.5-billion deficit? Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins didn’t need a thesaurus to spell it out. “It’s dreary, and macabre, and dark.”
In Alaska’s current budget “apocalypse,” as Kreiss-Tomkins calls it, the state has very little to gamble on the future. Alaska can get by on deep, painful cuts for two years, he says, until the state’s savings are gone.
After that, we’re going to make very big decisions that are going to alter the status quo we’ve had in Alaska for the last 40 years.
In addition to budget solvency and Medicaid expansion, Kreiss-Tomkins said that the third major issue before legislature this session was adopting a legal framework for the commercialization of marijuana
Via KCAW.org
image credit Robert Woolsey KCAW
