JUNEAU -- The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday made public its capital budget proposal for next year and it is barely a shadow of recent years.
The proposed total of $1.46 billion is made up mostly of federal money for things like roads and has trimmed state spending of what is known as "unrestricted general fund" money to $108 million, down from the $150 million proposed by Gov. Bill Walker.
If that proposal stands, it will mean Alaska's unrestricted general fund capital budget will be down by nearly 95 percent from the peak capital spending year of 2012. Unrestricted general fund spending that year ballooned to more than $2 billion, out of a $3.66 billion total capital budget during the heady days of high oil prices and budget surpluses.
Senate budget leader Anna MacKinnon, R-Anchorage, has repeatedly signaled that dramatic cuts would come this year as oil prices fell and revenues plummeted.
"We don't have any money," she said. "We are trying to hold savings in savings," as the state doesn't know how long this period of low oil prices will last.
Among the cuts made to next year's capital budget, released Wednesday by the committee, are the elimination of $8 million for a University of Alaska Fairbanks engineering building, $7.1 million for a road and school in Kivalina, $3 million in the Alaska Housing Finance Corp.'s home energy rebate program and $850,000 for the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault's intervention program.
One new project was added: The trustees for the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trust Fund sought to use $8.2 million from the fund for a Kenai Peninsula Aquatic Restoration program. While legislative approval in the budget is needed, funding comes from the trust fund, rather than the general fund.
"Since it wasn't general fund, we felt it would help communities," MacKinnon said.
The Department of Transportation and Public Facilities got an extra $33 million in federal money to complete the Cape Blossom Road to the port in Kotzebue, which will allow $4 million to be returned to the general fund.
The cutting of the Kivalina projects may be controversial. The state agreed to build the school as part of a 2011 lawsuit settlement after rural schools challenged the fairness of school construction in Alaska.
"I know we want to honor our commitment to Kivalina, and we do not want to reopen that lawsuit," MacKinnon said.
She said that while a school site had been identified, there was no plan for construction of the school and road and she predicted there would be additional discussions among legislators on how to deal with that issue.
That lawsuit, Kasayulie v. State, was settled with an agreement and consent decree in 2011 that called for building five new schools, the last of which is Kivalina's, said state officials.
"The Legislature is willing to step up and do that," MacKinnon said, but doesn't yet know how to do it.
MacKinnon described a request for funding from the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault as one of the most difficult to deny given the need.
"We really felt that if we added one, there was so much need everywhere -- we were having to choose one program over another," she said.
MacKinnon is the former executive director of Anchorage's Standing Together Against Rape.
In addition to the $108 million in unrestricted general funds, the budget also includes $13 million in restricted "designated general funds" and $61 million in other state funds.
The Senate Finance Committee is expected to review the budget as soon as Thursday, and amendments may be made by the full committee, or when it later reaches the Senate floor.