ANCHORAGE: After signing the two largest budgets in state history and taking Alaska from a $5 billion surplus to a $2 billion deficit, Sean Parnell is bragging about his fiscal record. In a fundraising email remarkable for its unintended irony, Parnell pats himself on the back for cutting state spending, when the state’s operating budget […]
ANCHORAGE: In Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks, Gov. Parnell’s budget is forcing property tax rate increases and teacher layoffs. By “locking in” three more years of education cuts, the legislature has forced local governments to choose between teacher layoffs and higher taxes. The damage is even worse in Fairbanks because reduced pipeline property taxes are shifting […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Lisa Murkowski focused on Alaska’s strategic location to the Pacific theater when U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno appeared before her in the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, inquiring how safe its Army assets are from the larger budget cuts contained within the bipartisan Budget Control Act (BCA) passed in 2011. […]
The U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior said today in a congressionally mandated report that the two departments will need over $470 million more than the $1.4 billion they have available to them for fighting wildfires this season. This newest forecast of annual suppression expenditures is the first of three to be […]