That means the $1.3 billion in spending cuts imposed last month by Mr. Walker, a political independent, will almost certainly take effect on top of cuts that lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature had already agreed on.
And those effects will ripple far and wide across the state, from public schools and the University of Alaska, which will see steep declines in state aid; to individual households, in the form of reduced state oil investment dividend checks; to the state court system, which began closing at noon on Fridays to save money. Tiny airports that connect the state’s vast rural areas may have to close.
North Dakota will be holding its first legislative special season this summer for the same reason. I believe North Dakota's constitution says these special legislative sessions must meet for three days.
Back to Alaska:
The governor slashed tax credits that oil companies can get for exploration, which many Republicans objected to, saying it could hamper incentives to bring in new energy fields.
But he also made some Democrats wince, in cutting education spending and the dividend fund paid to residents, which budget analysts at the University of Alaska said would hit poorer residents hardest because a state check is a bigger part of their income.
Residents will still get a dividend from investment income earned by the state’s $54 billion Permanent Fund, but Mr. Walker ordered it capped at $1,000 per person, down from just over $2,000 last year.
In Alaska — where many things, from food to energy, are expensive — the dividend has become entwined into the economic system. Police departments and social services agencies, for example, routinely garnish the dividend checks of people who owe fines or delinquent child support payments; they have begun calculating the costs of what cannot be collected or distributed.
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