Title : The Human Cost of Alaska’s Budget Cuts: Stories from the Front Lines
link : The Human Cost of Alaska’s Budget Cuts: Stories from the Front Lines
The Human Cost of Alaska’s Budget Cuts: Stories from the Front Lines
At the suggestion of a reader, I put out a call for anonymous stories about the human impact of Alaska's proposed budget cuts. Here they are, unfiltered and edited only lightly for grammar, spelling, and syntax.COMBAT VET/ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER: Well our working conditions are terrible, but at least we know the body politic places zero value on our profession. I’m sure cutting Medicaid will make it all better.
TEACHER/UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEE: After ten years in rural Alaska teaching public school, last week I just started a new position with the University. This new job is exactly what I want in a career, our new town has great schools for my kids, and my husband is able to continue his own training at night through the UA system. In short, this transition met all of our short term goals and propelled us solidly towards long term success. Now, It seems this job will singlehandedly bankrupt us. We just spent our savings on the move, and budgeted it all exactly so that my first paycheck from UA came at just the right time. We did everything fiscally correct for ourselves. And yet, Dunleavy’s veto means my impending furlough and more than likely ultimate job loss. We invested everything we had into finding just the right spot for us in the state, a place where we will be the most productive and happy. What happens to us now? I am the sole income earner, and it looks like I will soon have no income. My husband is enrolled in the UA system for the fall, using his tuition waiver benefit. My son is enrolled in kindergarten. We can’t afford to move, and we can’t afford to stay. How can one person have such a dramatic and pervasive negative impact on so many hard-working Alaskans?
JOURNALIST: My friend works in public radio for UAF and will lose his job. He is the sole breadwinner for his family of five.
RURAL ALASKA RESIDENT: I don't know how much worse it will be in the bush. We haven't had a VPSO (Village Public Safety Officer) in any village in our area for about five years. Our school year was shortened two years ago to end on May 5. These are a few of the things that happened BEFORE the governor is making the skinny state wallet apparent to urban Alaska. Of course no one in urban Alaska gives a fuck about the bush until they feel the pinch.
SMALL BUSINESS OWNER: I own a residential design company in Anchorage: 50% custom private houses, 50% public housing. If these vetoes hold, the mass exodus will tank the housing market, eliminating most of the former; the latter will be curtailed as projects become increasingly difficult to finance--reduced demand, reduced rents. It's a race to the bottom that will quickly get as ugly as the 1980s.
HOUSING/HOMELESSNESS PREVENTION ADVOCATE: I've been on the phone with multiple communities that will be forced to cease operation of all homeless/housing resources. One example is Nome, which will be forced to shutter its only cold weather emergency shelter--a shelter that was opened in response to two fatalities due to folks having to sleep on the seawall. Since opening in 2009, there have been no winter fatalities on the seawall. The Kenai/Soldotna area will also lose all housing supports. They housed 300 individuals last year: one third of which were children. As a community with no shetler system, those families and children will have zero housing options and likely result in being homeless. These reckless cuts will literally kill people.
JOURNALIST/FISHING INDUSTRY EXPERT: I would like to inform the fishing industry on how these cuts to ADF&G will affect them but there is a gag order on managers and all fishery questions are referred to "the administration." In my 30+ years of covering fisheries, this is the first time state managers have not been able to talk and clarify impacts from budget cuts.
MENTAL HEALTH NON-PROFIT BOARD MEMBER: I’m on the board of a non-profit that provides much needed mental health services to Alaskan youth. We could only pass a “tentative” budget for the start of the fiscal year because we didn’t know what the Governor would do. That budget was based on the 5% decrease to Medicaid passed by the legislature. With no raises for our staff and other crucial cuts, we could only get it to balance if we ignored depreciation of our buildings and deferred maintenance even further. With another 50 million in undesignated cuts to Medicaid we still can’t make a solid budget. Any further cuts might require us to close cottages. There are few other options in Alaska for residential care. Kids will either have to remain in the hospital, or be shipped out of state. Sadly we are better equipped than most other non-profits in the sector. They likely won’t survive.
BROADCASTER/EMERGENCY SERVICES/MEDIA: Emergency broadcasting in Alaska is a 3-legged stool. A satellite network to relay signals. The Alaska Public Broadcasting Commission that operates the satellite for the ARCS TV and APRN radio services. And the independent local stations around Alaska that both produce the local news that is shared and mixed in with the statewide networks to provide a communications network as diverse as Alaska. The hub stations in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau rely on the smaller stations for news and financial partnerships, and the smaller stations rely on the larger ones for anchor services. With State funding cut to zero, many smaller stations are in danger of losing Federal matching funds, and in turn are in danger of going off the air. This in turn puts more burden on the larger stations that are already running lean. With APB gone, it's unclear if the ARCS TV service, which is the only television available in much of Alaska (and the backbone of Alaska's emergency broadcast system, even for the big cities) will remain on the air, or how the APRN radio service will operate. That satellite uplink is currently at UAF operated KUAC in Fairbanks. UAF is currently also losing 40% of state funding. It's very possible that there may soon be a satellite broadcasting an empty signal to far fewer communities, kicking 2 of the 3 legs out from under Alaska's emergency broadcasting stool. It's likely that the decision makers didn't even know what they were doing, but I fear their justifiable ignorance of a complex topic, acted on in haste, may have led to a grave error that will cost Alaskan lives. Ask anyone in public broadcasting in Alaska how this works and they can ask give you the same stories of interdependence in the system for the communities we serve. It's ironic that the announcement of these cuts was broadcast to the state live on public media. Cellphone alerts are one option for emergency messages, but they barely work in Alaska, and are limited to short pre-scripted templates, and almost always end with "Check local media". Maybe the VPSO's can help get the warning out?
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTHCARE RECIPIENT: I had a Medicaid abortion in Alaska before I was ready to raise children. I had no money and trouble finding work at the time (2010). Dunleavy trying to make a point against state funded abortions by punishing the Alaska Supreme Court system with budget cuts he says are commensurate with the cost of such abortions scares me. It is a personal attack on my voice to exercise my constitutional right to make choices about my own body. I also had my first child at Bartlett in Juneau. During the birth, many mistakes were made by an admittedly overworked staff. They later told me budget cuts meant they were understaffed. The doctor performed a cesarean and sewed me up. As I lay in recovery, I started to feel faint and my stomach kept getting bigger and bigger. It took the staff six hours to realize I was internally bleeding. By the time I went in for a second emergency surgery, I had lost 3 LITERS of blood into my abdominal cavity. I nearly died due to the poor quality of care at one of Alaska’s major hospitals. Alaska’s quality of care issues are directly tied to our Medicaid funds being used as a political football. Dunleavy has just made this dangerous healthcare situation much, much worse. More women will have difficult births due to low quality of care, and it clearly puts the lives of mothers and babies at risk. How dare Dunleavy and team seek to restrict abortion while they simultaneously worsen the quality of care women receive when they bring a pregnancy to term. His budget is a bold attack on women and children.
STATE EMPLOYEE/UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR/FOSTER PARENT: I’m sick to my stomach about the budget. My husband will almost certainly lose his job. Our foster kid will lose all kinds of benefits. We may well have to leave the state, where we’ve raised our family and been active community members. The cuts will shut the transitional housing where my foster daughter lived so her family could get out of the homeless shelter/hotel room they were living in. And the mental health cuts are going to make the crime in Anchorage so much worse than it already is. As someone who works in public benefits programs, I can’t imagine the devastation this will cause to the poorest and most vulnerable. And as a family with significant university involvement, we’re heartsick. There is literally no way to keep UAA meaningfully functional with a cut that deep. Alaskan kids will suffer so much for this.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: I was a professor at a UA school. There were many reasons I decided to leave at the end of the last school year, but an uncertain job future and increasing duties to cover for those leaving (at no extra pay) were the death knell. In light of the current situation, I made the right choice. I could not handle watching students in my classes every day suffering- paying high costs of tuition, needing to work FT while going to school, worrying about food insecurity. I am packing to leave the state, and took a short break to write this. Alaskans need to know that UA is being gutted, they’re losing a lot of good people, and the terrific people left behind will be buried beneath more work than they can reasonably handle. If you use this, please keep it anonymous. I don’t want to hurt my co-workers, and I am still adjunct teaching next year to help them fill-in gaps.
PARENT/MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEE: The wonderful woman who was going to be my daughter's third grade teacher is leaving the public schools and will be teaching in a private school instead. She told me, I am heartbroken. I love this school and these kids. But I can't afford to get layoff notices every summer and not know if I'm going to have a job in the fall.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: I was a professor at a UA school. There were many reasons I decided to leave at the end of the last school year, but an uncertain job future and increasing duties to cover for those leaving (at no extra pay) were the death knell. In light of the current situation, I made the right choice. I could not handle watching students in my classes every day suffering- paying high costs of tuition, needing to work FT while going to school, worrying about food insecurity. I am packing to leave the state, and took a short break to write this. Alaskans need to know that UA is being gutted, they’re losing a lot of good people, and the terrific people left behind will be buried beneath more work than they can reasonably handle. If you use this, please keep it anonymous. I don’t want to hurt my co-workers, and I am still adjunct teaching next year to help them fill-in gaps.
PARENT/MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEE: The wonderful woman who was going to be my daughter's third grade teacher is leaving the public schools and will be teaching in a private school instead. She told me, I am heartbroken. I love this school and these kids. But I can't afford to get layoff notices every summer and not know if I'm going to have a job in the fall.
DISABLED MEDICAID RECIPIENT: I am an Alaskan who qualified for the Medicaid Expansion 3.5 years ago. Since then I have qualified for SSI due to disability. I currently am in a 70-day wait to see my primary care provider because of how busy she/the clinic is. The Medicaid cut looms large in my brain and I wonder if I'll be able to find care for myself. Making this statement makes me feel like I am ungrateful because I am lucky I received these services (not so lucky my legs and brain don't do what they are asked) and I know there are a lot of Alaskans who would view me (and people like me) as mooches. But many also do not realize that they too could end up needing Medicaid and you will do what you need to do to survive.
STATE EMPLOYEE/MS PATIENT: I have MS and my husband is a chef with no insurance. I have a staff made up of two high school interns, three college interns, four non-permanent positions, and one short-term position (all 100% federally funded). I have three other positions (including mine) that are partially federally funded and enough funds to cover them all without general funds. We are all being let go. I run millions of dollars in grants, most of which are awarded out. I finally got retailers to pay us for marketing supplies and enough customer/industry support to generate a sustainable revenue for our section, but not enough receipt authority. My staff and I have been covering all our programs full steam as instructed, not allowed to fill vacancies for help, and found out on TV instead of hearing from my Department ahead of time.
PRE-MED STUDENT: I was a UA student before I decided to take a few years off to travel abroad and work. I wanted to take the time to find what I actually wanted to do, instead of earn a degree for a field I wasn't passionate about. Well now I've discovered my passion. I'm about two years away from returning to school (gotta save so I don't drown in debt) and now that looks like a pipe dream. I wanted to obtain my bachelors and then go to medical school. That would require me to leave Alaska after my bachelors, but I had always planned to return and serve those who need it here. Now I'm fearful. I don't have enough money to start over in another state, but if the UA system closes, what choice will I have? Will there be a market for me to come home to once I'm done? I'm worried my goal of becoming a doctor will force me to abandon the only place I've really felt at home. And that in turn worries me more, because who else will leave because they can't grow here? These cuts will stunt the growth of this state.
UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEE/MOTHER: I work for UAA. I have one daughter who is in an undergraduate program and one who is about to start a doctoral program. If my job is cut, none of us will have a reason to stay in Alaska. I have three graduate degrees and my daughters are on their way to being well-educated, contributing members of society and we do not see a future here. One of my daughters (20 years old) is considering a tubal ligation because of threats to birth control and abortion. The decisions being made do not reflect our values or the society we want to live in.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: I am a recently tenured liberal arts faculty member at UAF. There are one to two tenure track faculty positions in my specialization in the anglophone world annually. Tenured faculty, unless they are superstars, are generally not able to move after tenure: we are too expensive and less likely to eat shit than a recently minted PhD, so those job openings are for junior faculty. In short, when I lose my job at UAF, I am done being a professor, which is the only job I've had aside from food service in college. I am 47 and have a chronic illness; it's the loss of health insurance I fear most. My meds--without which I will become disabled--cost $1,500 a month. I just received tenure, which in a state not run by clowns is supposed to provide job security until retirement. And I'm not dead wood, as soon as classes got out I started writing the book I was awarded a sabbatical to complete. The sabbatical is sure to be revoked. I recently separated from my husband, who is also faculty, and going from having a joint to single income in the last year has been expensive, so I do not have much savings. No one in the university system thought he would stick to his draconian 41% budget cut. My program, UA wide, is one of the starts of liberal arts because we bring in grants and are prominent in our field. The assumption had been that even in a 20% cut scenario we'd be preserved in some way, even if the liberal arts (the public's and the university's lowest priority) get gutted. It would require shutting UAF down entirely to meet these budget cuts. I am not an optimist, but I don't think I'm paranoid. I just told my landlady that I am not renewing my lease and am going to move into a one room month-to-month dry cabin so I can be flexible and save money. (If I'm ever paid again--we are "off contract" and unpaid during the summers). I think there's a chance they will keep us one semester if there's no override so students can still take the classes they registered for? But if there is no override, one semester more of pay is like the ultra best scenario for me. I'm looking into moving into my dad's basement in Michigan and hoping there is some office job there with health insurance that I can take on until I save enough money to relocate to a Latin American country to retire and die. I don't think my scenario is even much better if there is an override--something dramatic would have to change for this to not be an annual battle and I don't trust the legislators to stand up to the governor every year (or at all actually). An override will just kick the can down the road for one year, so I'm packing my bags for that dry cabin (started this morning) regardless.
PARENT/MULTI-GENERATION ALASKAN: These budget cuts are going to shut down my kids' school in Anchor Point--Chapman K-8, a school I went to and my dad went to. This isn't wrong because of our nostalgia, but now my daughter in kindergarten will have to spend an extra two hours on a bus to go to school in Homer (where class sizes will blow up, mind you). We've already lost so many good teachers because of the threat of these cuts. All of this has got me thinking hard about moving my family out of state to a place where education is a priority. We will essentially be "Dunleavy Refugees."
GRADUATE STUDENT: I am a graduate student at UAF. Before this disastrous budget proposal, I was offered the possibility of teaching as an adjunct after graduation. I am passionate about education and this job would be a dream come true. My husband and I decided to build our future here in Fairbanks and are in the process of building a home. Now it looks as though my career will be traded away for an annual payout. Our future here is uncertain. All I want to do is work. If there is anything I would like Alaskans to understand, it's the impact this budget will have on their neighbors' lives.
JUNEAUITE: Without Medicare we lose our hospital. Without our hospital, we lose our coast guard families. Without our coast guard families, we lose school funding. No more ferries, we can’t afford sports and other school travel. Without sports programs, families will leave. The dominoes will fall in quick succession.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: I'm an assistant professor at UAA, I just finished my third year, and I'm really worried. President Johnsen has basically said they have no idea how UAA, UAF, and statewide are going to absorb these cuts (UAS and community campuses are apparently exempt), since they are astronomical. If there is no override and the university declares exigency on July 15, this means that the university does not need to honor the terms of our contracts (for example, my tenure track contract would ordinarily require I have 12 months of notice before I am let go, since the academic hiring market process lasts the whole academic year). So I could very well be let go. No one knows what is going to happen, though I've heard the 1,300 layoffs number being kicked around. I moved my entire family here to take this job, which I love, and I worry for my students, who will face tuition hikes, drastically reduced course offerings, and significant challenges that might make it difficult to impossible to finish their degrees. They may have to transfer out of state, and this makes them statistically less likely to return to the state and reinvest in it after they receive their degrees. My husband is a public school teacher, so if I lose my job, we will survive (I will try to cobble together side jobs and online work as I can), but given that the governor has said that K-12 will be a target in next year's budget, it's really hard to see a future here. If the university declares exigency and fires tenured or tenure track professors, it will have catastrophic impacts on future hiring and retention of faculty. People will leave (even if I keep my job, I will go on the market this year, because I cannot take three more years of this insanity and uncertainty), and the university will not be able to attract new faculty because it will be seen as unreliable and not worth moving up here for a job that could be taken away immediately.
UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEE/MOTHER: I work for UAA. I have one daughter who is in an undergraduate program and one who is about to start a doctoral program. If my job is cut, none of us will have a reason to stay in Alaska. I have three graduate degrees and my daughters are on their way to being well-educated, contributing members of society and we do not see a future here. One of my daughters (20 years old) is considering a tubal ligation because of threats to birth control and abortion. The decisions being made do not reflect our values or the society we want to live in.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: I am a recently tenured liberal arts faculty member at UAF. There are one to two tenure track faculty positions in my specialization in the anglophone world annually. Tenured faculty, unless they are superstars, are generally not able to move after tenure: we are too expensive and less likely to eat shit than a recently minted PhD, so those job openings are for junior faculty. In short, when I lose my job at UAF, I am done being a professor, which is the only job I've had aside from food service in college. I am 47 and have a chronic illness; it's the loss of health insurance I fear most. My meds--without which I will become disabled--cost $1,500 a month. I just received tenure, which in a state not run by clowns is supposed to provide job security until retirement. And I'm not dead wood, as soon as classes got out I started writing the book I was awarded a sabbatical to complete. The sabbatical is sure to be revoked. I recently separated from my husband, who is also faculty, and going from having a joint to single income in the last year has been expensive, so I do not have much savings. No one in the university system thought he would stick to his draconian 41% budget cut. My program, UA wide, is one of the starts of liberal arts because we bring in grants and are prominent in our field. The assumption had been that even in a 20% cut scenario we'd be preserved in some way, even if the liberal arts (the public's and the university's lowest priority) get gutted. It would require shutting UAF down entirely to meet these budget cuts. I am not an optimist, but I don't think I'm paranoid. I just told my landlady that I am not renewing my lease and am going to move into a one room month-to-month dry cabin so I can be flexible and save money. (If I'm ever paid again--we are "off contract" and unpaid during the summers). I think there's a chance they will keep us one semester if there's no override so students can still take the classes they registered for? But if there is no override, one semester more of pay is like the ultra best scenario for me. I'm looking into moving into my dad's basement in Michigan and hoping there is some office job there with health insurance that I can take on until I save enough money to relocate to a Latin American country to retire and die. I don't think my scenario is even much better if there is an override--something dramatic would have to change for this to not be an annual battle and I don't trust the legislators to stand up to the governor every year (or at all actually). An override will just kick the can down the road for one year, so I'm packing my bags for that dry cabin (started this morning) regardless.
PARENT/MULTI-GENERATION ALASKAN: These budget cuts are going to shut down my kids' school in Anchor Point--Chapman K-8, a school I went to and my dad went to. This isn't wrong because of our nostalgia, but now my daughter in kindergarten will have to spend an extra two hours on a bus to go to school in Homer (where class sizes will blow up, mind you). We've already lost so many good teachers because of the threat of these cuts. All of this has got me thinking hard about moving my family out of state to a place where education is a priority. We will essentially be "Dunleavy Refugees."
GRADUATE STUDENT: I am a graduate student at UAF. Before this disastrous budget proposal, I was offered the possibility of teaching as an adjunct after graduation. I am passionate about education and this job would be a dream come true. My husband and I decided to build our future here in Fairbanks and are in the process of building a home. Now it looks as though my career will be traded away for an annual payout. Our future here is uncertain. All I want to do is work. If there is anything I would like Alaskans to understand, it's the impact this budget will have on their neighbors' lives.
JUNEAUITE: Without Medicare we lose our hospital. Without our hospital, we lose our coast guard families. Without our coast guard families, we lose school funding. No more ferries, we can’t afford sports and other school travel. Without sports programs, families will leave. The dominoes will fall in quick succession.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: I'm an assistant professor at UAA, I just finished my third year, and I'm really worried. President Johnsen has basically said they have no idea how UAA, UAF, and statewide are going to absorb these cuts (UAS and community campuses are apparently exempt), since they are astronomical. If there is no override and the university declares exigency on July 15, this means that the university does not need to honor the terms of our contracts (for example, my tenure track contract would ordinarily require I have 12 months of notice before I am let go, since the academic hiring market process lasts the whole academic year). So I could very well be let go. No one knows what is going to happen, though I've heard the 1,300 layoffs number being kicked around. I moved my entire family here to take this job, which I love, and I worry for my students, who will face tuition hikes, drastically reduced course offerings, and significant challenges that might make it difficult to impossible to finish their degrees. They may have to transfer out of state, and this makes them statistically less likely to return to the state and reinvest in it after they receive their degrees. My husband is a public school teacher, so if I lose my job, we will survive (I will try to cobble together side jobs and online work as I can), but given that the governor has said that K-12 will be a target in next year's budget, it's really hard to see a future here. If the university declares exigency and fires tenured or tenure track professors, it will have catastrophic impacts on future hiring and retention of faculty. People will leave (even if I keep my job, I will go on the market this year, because I cannot take three more years of this insanity and uncertainty), and the university will not be able to attract new faculty because it will be seen as unreliable and not worth moving up here for a job that could be taken away immediately.
Thus Article The Human Cost of Alaska’s Budget Cuts: Stories from the Front Lines
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