Anchorage Daily News

JUNEAU -- State lawmakers with billions of oil dollars to spend are considering a list packed with road projects, hospital improvements, sewer upgrades, artificial turf for football fields and even a little Dolly Parton.

These and many hundreds more items are included in a 208-page bill lawmakers unveiled Wednesday. The bottom line including all state and federal funding sources is close to $2.5 billion -- not a record but certainly a big sum, said Anchorage Republican Rep. Kevin Meyer, who manages the capital budget as co-chairman of the powerful House Finance Committee.

The capital budget, Senate Bill 221, is maybe the sexiest of the dozens of bills lawmakers will consider in the 90-day session ending Sunday. It's the place where lawmakers pay for projects that please the voters back home.

High oil prices and last year's tax increase are sending billions of extra dollars into the state treasury.

Lawmakers brag that they're on track to save $4 billion in a state rainy day account this year, and that they're holding the spending to a reasonable level.

But everybody's got a worthy project and saying no is hard, Meyer said.

"I've done this for four years," he said. "This is probably the hardest year. In the past I could say with a straight face we didn't have the money. I can't say that this year."

The capital budget has been growing for days and is likely to swell even larger through the weekend. Wednesday evening, the House Finance Committee took public testimony and people called in from all over the state with last-minute pleas to fund projects such as wood chipping in Tok, putting kids to work in health care jobs, converting an Eagle River shopping mall into a new "town center."

Some think the budget already is overstuffed.

"It's a pie filled with pork," said Gregg Erickson, a Juneau economist and longtime state budget watcher.

ANWR AND WIND

Other callers included Mike Navarre of Arctic Power, a controversial organization that lobbies Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

The capital budget has $120,000 for Arctic Power, but Navarre asked the committee to increase it to $250,000 so the organization could add a second staff person in Washington, D.C., to canvas new Congress members after the election "to determine the threat of ANWR being put into a wilderness bill."

Many of the items in the capital budget are mundane -- new computers for schools, road improvements, garbage trucks. Several million dollars are included to help villages such as Kivalina deal with erosion caused by climate change.

Items get a bit more exotic after that. A wind power project on Anchorage's Fire Island is slated for $25 million.

Another $4.8 million is earmarked for wind projects in four villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

Bethel Democratic Rep. Mary Nelson, who sits on the Finance Committee, said the wind, health, water and other budget items for her district -- grand total $135 million -- are worthwhile and needed. In one case, she said, a village jail that burned is being replaced so the village public safety officer doesn't have to keep prisoners at his home.

"We've made a big commitment to saving," she said. "But I think it would be disappointing if we just saved."

BOOKS AND A HOTEL

The budget contains several oddities, such as $90,000 for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. No, it's not for a hillbilly shrine to the country music singer. It's for an Anchorage children's reading program supported by Parton's foundation, Meyer said.

The budget also contains $1 million to buy the Ramada hotel in Muldoon. The money would go to a nonprofit called Safe Harbor, which wants to use the motel for homeless people making the transition to permanent housing.

Among big-ticket items in the capital budget are $99 million for a new sportfish hatchery in Anchorage, $15 million for the Anchorage port expansion, and $15 million to plan for a new sports arena at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Find Wesley Loy online at adn.com/contact/wloy or call him in Juneau at 1-907-586-1531.

Spending snapshot

A sampler of items in a 208-page, $2.5 billion capital budget state lawmakers are considering in the closing days of the legislative session:

• $1 MILLION: Muldoon Ramada hotel purchase

• $29.8 MILLION: Fire Island, village wind power projects

• $90,000: Dolly Parton Imagination Library

• $15 MILLION: Anchorage port expansion

• $15 MILLION: UAA sports arena

• $120,000: Arctic Power lobbying for ANWR

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