News article: Spending on arts & parks is modest
State capital budget is big on roads & schools
By: Robert Howk
For: Alaska Humanity News—June, 2005
The Alaska Legislature this spring passed one of the largest capital spending budgets in recent history, allocating $650 million in state funds for transportation infrastructure and other construction projects.
While most lawmakers expressed satisfaction with getting their funding requests approved, at least one representative said it is an embarrassment of riches.
“It’s a big fat pig,” said house member Ethan Berkowitz, an Anchorage Democrat. “We would have done well at a state fair.”
“They spent the entire surplus … and then some,” he added.
The proportion of the budget spent on arts, recreation and other cultural amenities is “small,” Berkowitz said, but he hastened to add that a major increase in education funding could be considered as an investment in Alaska’s people.
On the other hand, he said the overall budget lacks discipline. “There is a lot of gratuitous spending in there that shouldn’t have taken place,” he said. “We shouldn’t have spent Permanent Fund money from the Amarada-Hess (oil royalty lawsuit) settlement on the Governor’s ridiculous ‘roads to resources’.”
Mike Chambers, deputy press secretary for Governor Frank Murkowski, said the spending plan is sound. “If you have a robust capital budget that provides jobs for Alaskans, they can enjoy the arts and the life they choose,” Chambers said. “And we are making investments in the humanities, in those areas as well.”
He pointed to $5 million in the budget earmarked for an expansion of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, $550,000 in funding for the Morris Thompson Cultural Center, and $250,000 for improvements to the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage.
“And for the first time in state history, we made it all the way down the list of requests for new school construction and maintenance requests,” Chambers said.
Anchorage’s Director of Parks and Recreation Jeff Dillon was thrilled with the budget provisions. “This is probably the most generous that the legislature has been in a number of years toward recreation, museums and cultural services,” he said.
He cited a laundry list of projects: $465,000 for Chester Creek Sports Complex improvements; $500,000 for developments at Abbot Loop Community Park in south Anchorage; $250,000 for trail and drainage projects in the Baxter Bog area of east Anchorage, with a new route named in honor of long-time community activist Alicia Iden, who recently passed away; $730,000 for summer and winter recreation improvements at Kincaid Park in west Anchorage, in addition to $3.5 million for improved road access into the park and $450,000 to acquire part of the American Legion baseball fields at the city’s sports complex on Klatt Road in south Anchorage.
“Eagle River did pretty well, too,” Dillon said. The community received $1 million for indoor ice rink improvements, $300,000 for a new public access route into Chugach State Park, and $125,000 for the Eagle River Lions Club public park.