After seeing some of the pieces written by other columnists in this paper, I hesitated to write another one about Governor Walker and his vetoes. Then I realized that any politician willing to show the level of courage he has in facing reality and dealing with it deserves as much print as he can get. Gov. Walker’s vetoes last week affected everyone and made people on all ends of the political spectrum angry. I view that as a sure sign that he’s doing something right.
As a supporter of public broadcasting, education and programs for the elderly and young, I was angry at his vetoes too. But I was also happy to see some of our bigger boondoggles finally get shut down. I’ve lived in this state for 44 years and I feel like I’ve spent most of them hearing about the Susitna Dam project and the Knik Arms bridge. Yet I never felt like there was ever really any chance they would become a reality. They seemed to mostly drain lots of money from the state coffer without showing much in return.
There, I’ve made some of you mad. You supported these projects and felt the cuts were better made elsewhere. Thus I’ve somewhat proven my point that there is something to love and something to hate for everyone in Walker’s vetoes. But what you can’t take away from him is that he did what needed to be done to get even a minimally balanced budget for our state. In case you’ve forgotten, our courageous legislators wasted four months of our time and cash to come up with a plan that almost emptied the Constitutional Budgetary Reserve rather than risk losing their cushy seats in the legislature. Unlike the majority of Alaskans who realize the free ride on oil is pretty much over, they chose to hope that prices would rebound before they had to make the tough decisions. Or, as we Alaskans like to say, “Please God, give us another boom. We promise not to fritter this one away.”
It is long past time for Alaskans to stand up and take fiscal responsibility for their state. For so long as we live off the oil companies, it seems to me that we can’t really criticize those legislators who are clearly following the companies’ agendas. If we want to just spend their money and not put a cent of our money on the line to maintain a decent quality of life for all Alaskans, then we can’t complain when the guys paying the bill want special consideration.
For those who insist that the budget needs to be cut even more I say, fine. Show me those cuts. And once you’ve shown them to me, I’ll show you a few thousand Alaskans who think that the programs you want to cut are critical to our future. Every program still in our state budget has advocates as well as detractors. For every cut one person wants, another person wants the funding to continue. So just cutting the budget is probably not a realistic plan, though it makes for a great catch phrase.
The reality is that one way or another, we have to start paying our share of the financial burden. Every layer of our society will be impacted. Perhaps the hardest hit will be the numerous charities and non-profits that will be expected to pick up the slack. They will need our support more than ever, even as we receive lower PFDs and possibly pay an income tax. But that’s the reality of life in this great country. We are not being asked to do anything that isn’t considered SOP in every other state in this union. In fact, and you might want to be sitting down for this, we are the only state that actually pays its citizens to live here.
It’s going to be hard to watch our legislators go back into session and once again prove themselves to be rather lily-livered about doing what’s needed for Alaska’s financial future after watching the courage Bill Walker just showed. Maybe he will only be a one-term governor – and maybe not. In case our legislators haven’t noticed, he has wide and deep support across this state. And he for sure has my vote the next time he needs it.