The Alaska Legislature convenes for a new session today. There is a large freshmen class, and a list of familiar challenges: Dwindling savings. Oil prices well below heights reached last year. And unresolved questions about the size of the PFD.
A person walks up the steps of the Alaska Capitol on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023.
Stevens, a Kodiak Republican, said there is interest, too, in delving into the issues of education funding and pension and retirement matters for teachers and other public employees. He said he was hopeful his caucus would “firm up” its goals when all the members get to Juneau. The last bipartisan coalition in the Senate was in 2012. In the years following, there were Republican-led caucuses that included one or two Democrats.
In 2018, amid deficits, lawmakers began using permanent fund earnings traditionally used to pay dividends to also help pay for government, and they sought to limit how much is drawn each year from earnings. A longstanding formula used to calculate dividends was last used in 2015. That old formula has been seen by many lawmakers as unsustainable, but efforts to come up with a new one have faltered. Lawmakers have generally just been setting a yearly amount.
Dunleavy, who had an at-times rocky relationship with lawmakers during his first term, said when he was sworn in last month that his goal is to “work with everybody to create an Alaska for the next 50 years.”
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