Alaska state ferries may stop running due to budget turmoil

[Newsjock]

Source: CBC News

All Alaska state ferries will stop sailing by early July if the Alaska Legislature fails to reach a budget deal.

The Alaska Marine Highway System's plan is among dozens of state service cuts announced this week. Alaska is facing a $3 billion budget shortfall, worsened by a global oil price plunge, and lawmakers have been fighting for more than four months over how to fund day-to-day operations.

... Ferries spokesperson Jeremy Woodrow says the 11 ships in the fleet will head to their home ports as close to July 1 as possible.

... The ferry system serves 35 communities, only five of which are on the road system.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/alaska-state-ferries-may-stop-running-due-to-budget-turmoil-1.3100869

[Blue_In_AK]

1. The Republican majority in our legislature

are some of the worst of the worst. This little article is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of their shenanigans this session. They'd rather see the Alaska government shut down rather than give state employees the COLA raises that were negotiated last year, accept Medicaid expansion, pass Erin's law, and forward fund education. Yet they won't cut a cent from their boondoggles - the Knik Arm Bridge, Susitna Dam, a Juneau road (that just happens to connect with business holdings of the husband of a finance committee member), or fix the disastrous oil tax scheme that they rammed through last year, which has the state offering more to the oil companies in incentives to drill than they're taking in in revenue. In other words, we're paying them to take our oil, which in Alaska is owned communally by the citizens of the state.

ALEC and the Kochs have taken over this place. AFP spammers are all over our newspaper's comments section.

We were so happy to have elected an independent governor, but the R legislative majority is so pissed that their guy didn't win that they're shutting everything down - rather like the national R's are treating the president.

[shenmue]

2. Yipes

[gratuitous]

3. It should be an interesting 2016

I wonder if the Alaska Democrats can run some decent candidates who will unseat some of these knuckleheads? The alternative, I suppose, will be to see if Alaskans are as tough and self-sufficient as they're touted to be. Some of them may be in for a very rude shock, a la Luis Lang.

[Blue_In_AK]

4. They have gerrymandered the districts

to such an extent that it's going to be hard to knock them off. I don't know if you know anything about Alaska demographics and geography, but they have combined the very diverse and economically modest Mountainview neighborhood of Anchorage with lily white, conservative Eagle River. Mountainview had been represented quite ably by African-American Bettye Davis for several years, but now they are represented by Eagle River's Anna McKinnon, the one who will financially benefit from the Juneau Road. A Christian fundy from Wasilla represents everyone from Fort Greely to Valdez. They gerrymandered out two Democratic districts in Fairbanks.

The Dems have run good candidates here in the past, but it's really hard to fight the influence of Big Oil. Several of the legislators are ConocoPhillips employees and should have recused themselves from the oil tax debates last year, but didn't, of course. One of them had his salary doubled after passage of SB21.

It goes on and on. If the comments on the ADN are any indication, the majority of people here are well and truly fed up with these idiots, but they've got us over a barrel.

[gratuitous]

5. Everything I know about Alaska

I've learned from Blue_In_AK posts, and this one is no different.

Republicans have done a stellar job locking down their advantages over the years, but they've overplayed their hands time and again. Here's hoping that Alaska joins a few other places in 2016 in overcoming Republican electoral schemes. People move on, places change, and sometimes people even change their minds. The way Republicans are re-doubling their efforts to try to disenfranchise as many people as possible in states across the country, it makes me think they're onto some of those changes and trying to shore things up for one or two more cycles.

Theirs is not a sustainable model for long-term governance.

[Blue_In_AK]

6. Thank you. I am more than happy to educate people

about this great state that I love so much.

We have made a bit of progress by electing our current governor, Bill Walker, who, although a Republican in the past, ran as an independent with Byron Mallott, an Alaska Native Democrat, as his running mate. As I mentioned this infuriated the Republican majority who wanted Sean Parnell to be re-elected. (We call him "Seanoco Parnellips" since he was a ConocoPhillips lobbyist previously.) Anchorage also just elected Democrat Ethan Berkowitz as mayor, and our last Assembly election tilted the balance a little more to the left.

In the past 20 years or so Anchorage has become very diverse, having taken in immigrants and refugees from around the world. Three of our high schools and several middle and elementary schools are among the most diverse in the country. I think once these kids are old enough to vote and make their influence felt, there will be a major shift in the politics here. Once upon a time, Alaska was a progressive and Democratic state, as is clearly reflected in our Constitution. We only went astray with the advent of the Pipeline and the oil boom, the arrival of Texas and Oklahoma oil men and their southern politics. In a way, I'll be happy when the oil dries up and they all go back where they came from and we can get on with advancing this state.