Politics

Alaska Senate again targets public broadcasting for budget cuts

JUNEAU — An Alaska Senate budget committee Tuesday proposed deleting all state spending on public radio and television, an effort that was debated last year.

Wasilla Republican Sen. Mike Dunleavy, who chairs the Senate subcommittee that controls spending on public broadcasting, is proposing to cut $2 million for radio and $630,000 for TV included in Gov. Bill Walker's original budget proposal as well as the state House's.

If the different Senate and House budgets pass intact — one with the cuts, the other without — the Senate's proposed reductions will likely become part of end-of-session negotiations between the two chambers.

The House and Senate already approved sharp cuts in the state grants to public broadcasting over the past two years, with cash for public radio falling from $3.3 million in 2015 to $2 million in the current year's budget.

The reductions have hit rural stations especially hard, said Bill Legere, general manager of Juneau-based KTOO. Further cuts could imperil federal money that comes only if stations raise a certain level of nonfederal support, he added.

KTOO receives about $230,000 for its $3.2 million budget from the state, though Legere said the proportion is lower than that of many other stations.

The station produces "Gavel to Gavel," the televised broadcasts of the Legislature's hearings and floor sessions.

"A cut like this would just put the stations right at the edge, if not over the edge," Legere said. "It's a real threat to the continuation of stations and to the service that the surviving stations would be able to provide."

Nathaniel Herz

Anchorage-based independent journalist Nathaniel Herz has been a reporter in Alaska for nearly a decade, with stints at the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media. Read his newsletter, Northern Journal, at natherz.substack.com

ADVERTISEMENT