Walker makes stop into Petersburg for May 17 festival

PETERSBURG ­– Gov. Bill Walker stopped in Petersburg for a brief visit Friday, making the rounds for meetings and taking some time to participate in its Little Norway festivities.

"It's perfect. I can't complain about a day like today," Walker commented, noting the afternoon's cloudless sunshine. He had attended Petersburg's distinctive festival before, but this year's trip was his first since being elected as governor four years ago. "I came down obviously to meet with various folks, but I was also in the parade. It was a great parade, one of the best in the state."

After the Alaska Legislature reached a compromise on the coming year's budget earlier last week, Walker has 20 days to review it before signing it. He anticipated it will be receiving his signature with no problems, saying, "When it gets to me I will."

On lending his support for additional funding that would make it possible to ship remaining material left from Wrangell's Byford junkyard cleanup, Walker explained his decision had been influenced by the community's concerns.

"There was input from different groups that came to see me in Juneau, some with the tribal organizations, and some from city folks or borough folks," he said. "We threw it out there to see if it would get funding, and by golly it did."

On the previous session, he reflected on legislators' coming together.

"I think it went well. I think a couple things were different this year from prior years. Some said there would be nothing happening this year because it's an election year, so they're not going to do anything. Last year there were 32 bills that were passed and it was about 200-plus days in session," he said. "This year it was 117 days and 113 bills passed. So it was about half the time and almost three or four times the work that we got done."

After several years of budgets with significant deficits that drew from reserve accounts, Walker noted this year was different.

"I think they knew they were getting to the bottom of the last account that they could draw from and they had to make a decision about the earnings, and so they did that," was one. "The second thing is, towards the end of the session, they stopped having press availabilities. They stopped talking about each other and started talking to each other, and I think that helped as well."

A hole of around $700 million remains in this upcoming year's budget, something yet to be addressed. However, Walker felt the state was on its way.

"We have to see where we are on oil prices. That certainly has an impact on what we do and how close that's going to come. But the nice thing is we've fixed 80 percent of the problem, so we have a 20-percent problem now. So rather than, the worst we had was $3.7 billion deficit, now it's $700 million. Still a big number – a huge number – but still I think more manageable than what we had before. So it could be a combination of things. We will continue to look at ways at reducing the cost of government, more efficiencies, et cetera. But then the price of oil will impact it as well, and then we'll see what makes sense as far what other kind of revenue is out there. What will be fair to Alaskans is what we're most concerned about."

With this year's budget, concluding June 30, a gap remains in the state's ability to compensate Medicaid claims. "There's about a $20 million shortfall, which is considerably less than what we had last year, as far as a shortfall," Walker said. He said the state would try to manage compensation to providers, and that some will have to wait for a three-week period before full funding is available again on July 1.

Walker touched on several other issues during his interview.

On transboundary mining issues with Canada and water quality: "Lt. Gov. (Byron) Mallott has been working on that part of it. We do meet regularly with the government of British Columbia and the federal government on transboundary issues, recognizing that what they do in their mines impact our waters, so we're very sensitive to that. It's an ongoing process with them."

On shortfalls in returning king salmon and restrictive measures on fishing: "We watch it closely. We had to make some tough decisions on closures, and certainly involving king salmon. But it really comes down to maintaining the constitutional mandate for managing for sustained yield. When the fish are low-return, we had to make some tough decisions on that."

And on lobbying for changes to federal management of sea otters: "We certainly have talked to folks in the federal government about that, our delegation about that. That's a significant impact on fisheries here, no question about that. We're seeing what we can do to broaden the definition of what can be done with the pelts, some of the options available."

Elected in 2014, Walker faces reelection this year with plans to run.

"It's tough for me because I'm so focused on doing my job I was hired to do," he said. "We're involved in that process, but my goal is to get as many things done in the event I'm not here. I don't want to look back and go, 'Gosh, I wish I'd done this or done that.' So I'm pretty busy trying to do all the things that I think are left to do."

Running previously on a joint ticket with then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mallott, the two will appear again together, but in this year's Democratic Party primary.

"I'm still running as an independent, always will be," Walker stressed. "But this year, as a result of litigation filed by the Democratic Primary, they can allow independents to run on their primary as an independent. It's very unique, I don't know of any other place in the country that has it that way."

Of his lieutenant governor, he said: "It's really been phenomenal. We got to know each other on the campaign trail, and when we discovered we loved Alaska more than we loved partisan politics that allowed that to happen. It's been an amazing relationship with Byron Mallott."

Walker concluded his trip to Petersburg with a barbecue at the mayor's house, before taking off again the next morning.

"It's a good gathering of folks, and fantastic seafood – it doesn't get any better than Petersburg seafood," he said. "And then after that tomorrow I'm going to China for 10 days. It's called 'Opportunity Alaska,' a lot of seafood representation on this trip about Alaskan seafood opportunities in Asia."