News from my home state

From state and national media:

Dunleavy vetoes $444 million from operating budget

Alaska Governor’s “Unprecedented” Higher Education Cuts Could Shutter Entire Departments

And from a more personal perspective:

The Human Cost of Alaska’s Budget Cuts: Stories from the Front Lines


A quick primer on the conditions leading up to this, for those who didn't grow up in my home state:

• Thanks to the state's oil wealth, Alaskans have not paid a penny of income tax for the past four decades.
• Alaska's been facing a budget shortfall in the billions for the past decade, thanks to fluctuating oil prices.
• The effects have mostly been insulated until now by the state's reserve funds—record-high oil prices in the 2000s gave the legislature the ability to kick the can down the road, as it were.
• The largest effect most Alaskans have seen has been a smaller Permanent Fund Dividend, as the government has been funding itself partly through what would otherwise have been the yearly payout.
• Subset to the above, this is effectively a flat tax on Alaskans—everyone sees the same decrease in their income.  The problem being, of course, that it's a fundamentally inequitable system; the poorest Alaskans who depend on that money for food and heat see the same decrease as the richest, and are thus effectively hit much harder.
• HOWEVER...for all that a state income tax is gaining in popularity (the last poll numbers I saw had the populace split roughly 50/50 on the prospect, which doesn't seem like a lot but is a significant change from the lopsided 20/80ish numbers I remember seeing in my youth), nobody in the legislature wants to be the one responsible for passing it, because they're convinced it'd cost them reelection.
• Alaska is rapidly running out of reserves.
• The current governor got himself elected largely on two promises—not garnishing the PFD, and not instituting an income tax.

So we find ourselves here.  A literal 41% cut to Alaska's largest provider of higher education.  The U of A is already a lean system, and one that does remarkable work—a lot of the cutting-edge research on climate change and natural resource management, among other subjects, comes from there—not to mention providing skilled labor for the local workforce.  (For obvious reasons of cost and isolation and better opportunities elsewhere, a significant percentage of young people who go to school elsewhere don't return to the state.)  And that's not even addressing the similarly devastating cuts to badly-needed mental health services, early childhood education, and state-run media and broadcasting.

As I wrote on Facebook, I feel a little like an expatriate from a troubled country, watching the self-destruction of its dysfunctional government from afar.  There's a certain guilty relief in being far from the front lines, but it's heavily tempered with fear for those left behind, as well as just plain grief for what's likely to be lost.  It's not the end of the world—Alaskans are nothing if not resilient.  We'll survive this, and eventually rebuild.  But it'll be a different place than the one where I grew up.  And as selfish (and perhaps inevitable) as it is, it saddens me to feel like I'll be a stranger in my home.