Here is a sampling of editorial opinions from Alaska newspapers:
March 8, 2017
Ketchikan Daily News: Opioid solution
Gov. Bill Walker’s opioid legislation is a good start that should pick up speed.
The legislation includes pain management training for medical providers and limiting quantities in initial prescriptions.
Lawmakers eventually might consider a buy-back system in which patients return unused portions of prescriptions that often are left in such places as medicine cabinets and forgotten.
The state also might work with communities to ensure facilities and services for drug addicts to receive treatment. The facilities could be expanded to provide services to alcoholics, particularly in small towns and cities.
Opioids are drugs such as heroin and prescription painkillers.
The governor noted last month that Alaska has reached disaster status in regard to opioid abuse.
Walker’s bill includes:
- Limiting initial opioid prescriptions to seven days. This essentially begins to limit the distribution of the drugs.
- Requiring parent involvement when opioids are prescribed to a person younger than 18. Involvement would include education for both parents and youth.
- Increasing pain management training for medical providers. This would serve the best interests of all involved in each case.
- Requiring medical practitioners and pharmacists to report drug information to a prescription database. Veterinarians also would be required to participate because their prescriptions intended for pets might be consumed by opioid addicts.
This is a step in the right direction. It won’t eliminate the problem of opioids, but it will begin to address it in a meaningful way. For those who are affected by opioid abuse - users, families, communities, and law enforcement and the court system - Walker’s proposal is encouraging.
The Legislature, of course, might tweak it after hearing public comment, but at least Alaskans will be talking about the opioid problem and working toward solutions.
In the end, Alaska and its people will be healthier for it.
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March 4, 2017
Peninsula Clarion: Nothing easy about permanent fund earnings plan
During a town hall meeting with local legislators last weekend, Alaska Senate Majority Leader Peter Micciche, a Republican from Soldotna, discussed a plan to use earnings from the Alaska Permanent Fund to help pay for state government. At a press conference in Juneau on Monday, he said that he would consider the current session a success if the Legislature could pass such a measure, along with the operating and capital budgets.
On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Chris Tuck, an Anchorage Democrat, responded that focusing on the use of permanent fund earnings would be the “easy route” in addressing the state’s multi-billion dollar deficit.
We’d like to pose this question: If a plan to use permanent fund earnings is easy, why hasn’t it been done yet?
Indeed, Rep. Tuck seems to disprove his own point with that sentiment. For the past two sessions - and extended sessions, and special sessions - lawmakers have adjourned without any plan in place to use earnings from the permanent fund.
No, lawmakers have been taking the easy route for the past two years, drawing on the state’s savings to cover the $3 to $4 billion gap.
But because lawmakers have taken that route for the past two years, they are quickly running out of the easy route option going forward.
At that point, using permanent fund earnings will be the only route.
Rep. Tuck’s point is that he would like to see lawmakers also look at oil tax credits, a point of contention over the past two sessions as well.
However, lawmakers have known for quite some time that some version of a plan to use permanent fund earnings is the largest and most crucial part of addressing the deficit. It’s been acknowledged by Gov. Bill Walker, by the Senate, and even by other members of Tuck’s House Majority coalition. Too many lawmakers have been putting that tough decision off, saying that they don’t want to look at the permanent fund until they’ve done this or that or the other.
Meanwhile, Alaska has burned through billions of dollars in savings waiting for this, that or the other to get done.
We hope that the Legislature takes significant steps during this session to address both the short-term and long-term fiscal health of Alaska. We know that means using a portion of the permanent fund earnings to pay for state services.
We are under no illusions that doing so will be easy.
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March 5, 2017
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: Legislators should resist temptation to shift deficit to cities, boroughs
When state revenue is tight, the budget pressure in Juneau can be intense. For the past two years, legislators have scrutinized the state budget closely, attempting to squeeze every dollar possible in potential cuts from the budget before turning to revenue measures. Though this has burned up quite a bit of time and money with less effect than revenue measures would have had at balancing the state’s books, it’s prudent to trim what fat exists before making the blanket assumption that every state dollar spent is a necessary or wise expenditure. But in looking for savings, some legislators have been tempted to lower the deficit not by responsible budgeting but by sleight-of-hand. Though this temptation can be powerful, legislators should resist it.
A certain amount of cost-shifting by the Legislature and governor has already taken place. For instance, in 2015, the Legislature opted to put a five-year halt to school bond debt reimbursement. That move ended a tradition of more than a decade in which the state reimbursed between 60 percent and 70 percent of debt incurred by cities and boroughs for school renovations and repairs. Although the move spurred criticism because of the state’s constitutional mandate to provide education for its residents, the Legislature’s move is defensible, as there is no legal obligation to fund projects passed by municipalities.
Minor budget shenanigans that make the yearly budget deficit look better but don’t fix underlying problems aren’t confined to the Legislature. Gov. Bill Walker, for instance, opted to delay the payment of a portion of state oil tax credits in 2015 and 2016 to avoid drawing down savings too quickly. Although the moves saved the state some immediate budget pain, they also moved costs to future years with no real savings.
There has been talk, however, of cost-shifting on a much larger and more detrimental scale. Proposals have been floated in Juneau to shift substantial cost burdens, such as the benefits and pensions for teachers, to the municipalities where they are employed. Such a move would be a massive cost increase for municipalities, and would exacerbate the difference in the share of education costs borne by incorporated municipalities and those located in the state’s unincorporated area. Local property taxes would require massive increases, further burdening the state’s committed, non-transient residents. What’s more, most if not all municipalities in the state have revenue caps that couldn’t accommodate such immense cost increases, necessitating expensive special elections to allow for their revision. A cost shift of such a magnitude would overburden residents of incorporated municipalities and likely result in local budget chaos. The only positive would be for state legislators themselves, who would claim they had dealt with a large piece of the budget deficit. Technically, this would be true, though they wouldn’t likely be keen to admit they had done so by making their problem someone else’s - namely, municipal governments and their own constituents.
If balancing the budget were easy, it wouldn’t take a group of capable legislators so long to implement a solution. Those legislators should resist the temptation to offload the budget problem on those who are poorer equipped to deal with it.
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