Alaska Senate Majority discusses budget process at press availability

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) – Nearly three months into the current legislative session, the Alaska Senate Majority held a press conference giving updates on the budget process and other items of interest to the public.

The House is currently working to create a draft of their budget, which will be submitted to the Senate. The Senate Finance Committee then makes their own changes and sends it to the full Senate for a vote. Once the Senate has its own approved version of the budget, they send it back to the House for concurrence.

If the House does not concur with this version, the two bodies appoint a Conference Committee to meet, negotiate and develop a combined budget that meets with each group’s approval.

According to Republican Senator Bert Stedman, “We need to look at our overall spending plan with the operating budget and the capital budget combined. We have no intention of running a deficit, and what I mean by that is we want to have our budget bookmarked, or bookended within the revenue expectations of the spring revenue forecast for ‘24 and ‘25.”

The state’s budget contains both a capital and operating budget as well as other supplements and appropriations.

The capital budget includes deferred maintenance, infrastructure, construction projects and other funding for plans beyond the next year.

According to Republican Bert Stedman, the current capital budget the Senate and House are working on is around $550 million.

The operating budget, meanwhile, has to do with the yearly allocation of state funds to complete state business.

Stedman sees a deficit in the House’s current version of the budget. “They’re underwater somewhere around $276 million, so that’s a lot of gaposis to deal with in the Conference Committee, and we have to get the ends to meet. How they plan on doing that in their spending plan, in how they want to structure the budgets to negotiate with the Senate I don’t know. I guess I’m going to find out when we fire up the Conference Committee, but that’s a big spread.”

As the Senate held the press conference on April 10, the House was working on various budget items in a floor session.

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