Senate Finance Co-Chair Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, leads a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee on Jan. 18, 2023 at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau.
The House and Senate appear poised to hold the line on agency spending and include $175 million in one-time, outside-the-formula funding for public education to help make up for years without inflation-proofing andDifferences between the House and Senate spending plans — including the size of the Permanent Fund dividend — will be worked out by a small group of lawmakers from both chambers in the final two weeks of the session, which must end by mid-May.
The biggest task for the conference committee will be to find common ground on the size of the dividend. Senate members said Friday that the number would likely be closer to the $1,600 figure they had proposed, because the House plan would have created a nearly $270 million gap in state finances — with few options to cover the deficit.The Constitutional Budget Reserve had around $2.5 billion at the beginning of the current fiscal year, below the minimum $3.
Wilson said the sticking points in the final weeks of the legislative session will likely come not in the operating budget, but from key pieces of legislation where the Republican-controlled House majority and the bipartisan majority in the Senate have not found common ground. The Senate’s dividend amount was calculated by appropriating one-quarter of Permanent Fund earnings toward the dividend — at around $1,350 per eligible Alaskan — leaving three-quarters of the annual draw from the Permanent Fund to pay for state government. The Senate’s dividend was boosted by just over $200 per recipient in energy relief payments, which were calculated using excess oil revenue from the current fiscal year.