Wrangell is fortunate its two state legislators know that a good education pays years more dividends for Alaskans than the short-term gain a larger PFD provides.
They are on the long-term, good-thinking side of what is shaping up as a monumental debate this year embroiling lawmakers and the governor: The more the state spends on the Permanent Fund dividend, the less money is left in the treasury to help schools.
Rep. Dan Ortiz and Sen. Bert Stedman between them have more than 25 years of legislative service. They have heard all the arguments over the “people’s dividend” while watching school districts statewide — including Wrangell — struggle to balance their budgets as state funding has not really budged in almost seven years.
The Legislature has failed for too long to support public education, and the Sitka senator and Ketchikan representative, both in districts that also include Wrangell, say it’s time to move school funding to the head of the class.
Ortiz, in a letter to the editor in the Sentinel this week, explained to his constituents: “We can’t have it all. We can’t have a supersized dividend and simultaneously support our students and the facilities in which they attend school in the manner that is needed. This message is challenging to hear, but it’s the hard truth.”
Stedman, in public statements, put it this way: “We’ve got to make a choice. Do we want to teach our kids to cash checks, or do we want to teach them to read and write?”
The senator provided a math lesson for Alaskans. At a $1,300 dividend this fall — around the average of the past decade, before last year’s election-size payout — the state general fund could afford more money for school districts, enough money to cover the state budget deficit caused by lower-than-projected oil prices, and still have enough cash to fully pay the state’s share of municipal debt for school repairs and construction.
To get it moving, Ortiz has introduced legislation that would boost the state’s per-student contribution to local school district operating budgets by 20%. A Senate bill would raise the amount by about 17%. Either one would increase overall state spending by just about 3% — a small slice to cut out of the budget pie for students.
Both Stedman and Ortiz support the dividend, no question of that. But not so much that schools pay the price.
“Let me be clear,” Ortiz wrote in his letter. “I am absolutely for protecting the PFD, especially for future generations of Alaskans, but I am not for sacrificing our youth’s educational opportunities, the need for other essential state services, the need to make investments in deferred maintenance of public facilities, and other capital budget investments in statewide infrastructure … to pay for it.”
The two legislators are right. Let’s hope their colleagues sit through the class and pass the test, too.
— Wrangell Sentinel
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