The second regular session of the 34th Alaska Legislature kicked off last week, and the state’s ongoing fiscal crisis is front and center.
State Senator Jesse Kiehl, a Democrat, represents Haines, Klukwan, Skagway, Juneau and Gustavus. The Alaska Desk’s Avery Ellfeldt caught up with Kiehl on Wednesday morning to learn more about what’s ahead – and what it means for his constituents in Southeast Alaska. He said the biggest challenge will be addressing the state’s ongoing fiscal crises, and that a failure to do so could eventually result in “no PFD.”
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Avery Ellfeldt: The legislative session has just begun. I’m wondering if you could outline what some of your top priorities are at this point?
Jesse Kiehl: The number one thing every year is to make sure that we have a budget that balances funds our schools and public safety, manages our resources, provides for public health and the constitutional obligations we have to meet every single year. And our budget situation is no better than it has been. So we are going to have a very difficult time making our recurring expenses and our recurring revenues match up. So that will be, it will be a big challenge.
AE: That was going to be my next question – about the budget and the state’s finances. Obviously there are a range of ways that that affects local communities. But in the communities you specifically represent, what do you think the main impacts of the general situation are for your constituents?
JK: The single biggest way we’ve balanced the budget in the last few years has been to take the state’s most expensive program – the statutory PFD costs about $2.5 billion dollars a year – and make it our second most expensive program. $1,000 PFD costs a little less than $700 million a year, about $680, and that has an impact on every Alaskan. High income Alaskans don’t particularly feel it, and low income Alaskans feel it pretty intensely.
If we don’t do something about state revenues to stabilize the PFD – and I want to be clear, there is no possible way to get the votes to raise taxes for a bigger PFD, but to stabilize the PFD where it is – you’re going to see it go away. That will be the result of the no revenues, no taxes legacy, is no PFD.
AE: I’m curious, that dynamic aside, if there are any kind of specific issues or bills you’re planning to sponsor, or co-sponsor, or are interested in looking into?
JK: The single biggest one is actually one I’m not pushing. I’m working with colleagues to push a different bill that solves the same problem in a different way than mine. And that is to return a pension for public workers, including teachers and public safety and local government in Alaska. We are the only state in the union where public workers don’t have any kind of guaranteed retirement, neither a defined benefit pension, nor Social Security …. We have got to switch back and undo this 20 year mistake, because it’s costing us a fortune. And really, it’s degrading public services all over the state.
I also have some other bills that I’m circulating, that I am looking at introducing this year. And those have to do with … cruise ships [that] are dealing with some of the problems that the scientific community and the fisheries community has talked to me about with discharges from cruise ship scrubbers into our waters. Uncle Sam says we have nothing to say about those scrubbers. The state is forbidden to work on the scrubbers. But there’s still dirty fuel belching sulfur into Alaska, and that’s a problem.
