With classes starting next month, Alaska is burning up both figuratively and literally. It remains to be seen how things will go down, but here's the short (super short) story. The governor is hell bent on cutting everything in the state as revenue from oil has continued to decline the last years in order to balance the budget rather than look for sources of revenue other than oil. He's also hell bent on giving Alaskan's a large PFD (our individual checks of oil money royalty) as our last gov. made them smaller as part of a solution to shore up budget problems. That has become a state constitutional crisis (over the "robbing" of our PFD) and now the legislature is divided about whether to pay a $3000 PFD or fund the state and university.
The legislature can override the vetoes to these cuts if they can get 45/60 votes, but right now 60% of them are in the capitol trying to do that and 40% are in the town the Governor declared the location of the special session, so neither body has enough legislators to get much of anything done. They have till Friday to do it, but neither group looks ready to buy a plane ticket to the other location. The university reagents will meet on Monday to figure out what's next. If the cuts go through the University will probably declare bankruptcy and lay off thousands of tenured faculty, as well as potentially close a large campus. Forget about athletics if the cuts go through...
Ryan McCarthy did write a nice opinion piece for the ADN which I'll attach. I saw the UAF volleyball coach at a rally the other night, but have not seen Sparling anywhere advocating for his team, school or players, or even his job. I hear he spends summers in Ellensburg...
https://www.adn.com/opinions/2019/07...get-otherwise/
The legislature can override the vetoes to these cuts if they can get 45/60 votes, but right now 60% of them are in the capitol trying to do that and 40% are in the town the Governor declared the location of the special session, so neither body has enough legislators to get much of anything done. They have till Friday to do it, but neither group looks ready to buy a plane ticket to the other location. The university reagents will meet on Monday to figure out what's next. If the cuts go through the University will probably declare bankruptcy and lay off thousands of tenured faculty, as well as potentially close a large campus. Forget about athletics if the cuts go through...
Ryan McCarthy did write a nice opinion piece for the ADN which I'll attach. I saw the UAF volleyball coach at a rally the other night, but have not seen Sparling anywhere advocating for his team, school or players, or even his job. I hear he spends summers in Ellensburg...
https://www.adn.com/opinions/2019/07...get-otherwise/
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