The Alaska Permanent Fund dividend would be $1,100 under an amendment a committee passed on Tuesday.
The House Finance Committee voted 7-4 to reduce the amount of the PFD from what Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposed. He put forward a $2,350 dividend in the bill that the committee amended.
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Committee members said they don’t want to draw more than is outlined under a law that limits how much the state spends in permanent fund earnings each year.
Dunleavy has proposed drawing $3 billion more than planned from fund earnings — half to pay for this year’s dividend and the other to cover the gap between what the state spends and what it raises over the next few years.
Public testimony earlier in the day on Tuesday favored a larger dividend amount by a wide margin. Many of those testifying said the state should pay PFDs under the formula in state law. The last time the formula was followed was in 2015. The formula would lead to a roughly $3,800 dividend this year, which would equal 82% of the amount being drawn from the permanent fund.
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Legislators have been unable to agree on a new PFD formula. Dunleavy has proposed a constitutional amendment to base the PFD amount on half of the annual draw. The amount the committee passed is equal to just under a quarter of the draw.
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The $1,100 amount could be changed again as it moves through the legislative process. Nearly half of the money would require the approval of three-quarters of both chambers of the Legislature. A similar vote failed in June.
The next step for the bill would be a vote by the entire House. The Senate could pass its own version of the bill, which would require the two chambers to work out their differences. Or it could pass the House version and send it to the governor’s desk.
Wednesday is the 10th day of the special session, which can last until Sept. 14.
Andrew Kitchenman is the state government and politics reporter for Alaska Public Media and KTOO in Juneau. Reach him at akitchenman@alaskapublic.org.
