Fiscal Year 2005

At a recent Anchorage Chamber of Commerce luncheon while unveiling his proposed budget for the coming fiscal year, Gov. Murkowski summed up the states troubles in two words; attitude gap. According to the governor the states fiscal stability has more to do with shrinking faith than shrinking revenue.

But the question that has to be answered is what caused this attitude gap? It’s my belief that the governor’s own actions have a great deal to do with the attitude gap. But you be the judge.

In February 2002 I sat in my seat on the floor of the House of Representatives and listened as U.S. Senator Frank Murkowski gave his annual address to a joint session of the Alaska State Legislature. In his remarks, then gubernatorial candidate Murkowski issued a bold three-facet prescription for solving the state’s yawning fiscal gap. He said no new taxes; no using permanent fund earnings and that Alaska had to wean itself off its dangerous dependency of federal government handouts. “……” 

In October 2002, as a contentious gubernatorial campaign entered into the final thirty days last fall, the polls showed the race was close. It was then that the no tax, no using permanent fund revenue for government rhetoric was kicked up several notches by the Murkowski campaign. The result was a major swing of about nine percent of the undecided voters that turned a close race into a blowout.

However, thirteen months later Alaskans are realizing that the free lunch they were promised before the election, isn’t coming.

A year after being sworn in, the governor’s fiscal prescription hasn’t been effective medicine and he’s made a serious about face. He’s embraced all kinds of taxes. Unfortunately, none of them solve the problem and all are poorly analyzed taxing policies. And for the Murkowski administration, if it weren’t for federal government handouts, critical support for seniors, communities and even commercial fishermen would have been non-existent because of cuts to state funding.

So with two of his three campaign pledges down, the governor is slowly walking towards the third.

Next week in his State of the State address, the governor will endorse the pomv plan proposed by the Permanent Fund Corporation’s board of trustees. In addition, I’m predicting that he’ll endorse a proposal to use a certain percentage of permanent fund earnings for government. That’s where the leadership ability of Gov. Murkowski to close an attitude gap that he created during the campaign, will be tested.