Across the street from the Terry Miller Building where the Alaska Legislature held the first day of its fifth special session, about two dozen people gathered at Capital School Park at noon Monday, pressing lawmakers to come up with a plan to raise state revenue.
Rally-goers carried signs that said things like, “Stop the clown car! Do your job!” “Pass a fiscal plan,” and “Don’t drain the Permanent Fund.” Juneau resident Joy Lyon, speaking into a microphone, led the rally and occasional chants, including, “Raise revenues right now,” and “$1,000 is OK. Keep the Permanent Fund here to stay.”
Lyon is the executive director of Association for the Education of Young Children in Southeast Alaska and usually speaks out about early childhood issues, but for the rally, she represented herself.
Instead of more budget cuts, she said the state needs long-term revenue solutions.
“If legislators delay as they have done all year through regular and multiple, multiple special sessions, the problems are only going to be harder to solve next year,” Lyon said to the crowd, which included several onlookers. “We’re going to see worse cuts in the future.”
She said raising revenue is “going to take a little bit from a lot of us.” Options on the table include oil tax credit reform, sales or income tax, or taxing such items as tobacco, fuel or corporate mining.
[Legislature starts fifth special session with no clear path forward]
Juneau middle school teacher Mike Bucy called the tax rate on mining “ridiculously, pitifully small.”
The state doesn’t tax mining if the net income is $40,000 or less. It taxes 3 percent over $40,000; $1,500 plus 5 percent over $50,000; and $4,000 plus 7 percent over $100,000, according to the Department of Revenue’s Tax Division.
“I support mineral extraction. I’m all for it, but we’ve got to be fair. Everybody’s got to do due diligence in this if we’re all going to be in the state,” Bucy said after the rally. “And government is not the problem. Bad government is the problem, and right now we’ve got bad government.”
Jayne Andreen held a sign directed at the Legislature that said, “Stop Playing Around.”
She said she was at the rally because “it’s time for this Legislature to do their job. Get done with business.”
“First and foremost, we need to get back to having an income tax of some sort. We’ve been really fortunate for decades, but now it’s time. We’ve got a real changing picture,” she said.
State income tax went away in 1980 under then-Gov. Jay Hammond.
State House hopeful Justin Parish, who’s running against Juneau Republican Rep. Cathy Muñoz, agreed with Andreen.
“We need an income tax that is going to be sustainable in the long term,” he said during the rally.
[Democrat Justin Parish to challenge Muñoz this fall]
Lyon challenged those at the rally and others, especially lawmakers, to take the “Budget Challenge,” an interactive tool by the Rasmuson Foundation project Plan4Alaska.
“I don’t think we should give campaign support to any legislator unless they’re willing to come out with their plan,” Lyon said to cheers and applause from the small crowd.
She then brought up the Permanent Fund Dividend, which she called the “touchiest subject of all.”
“It’s not a matter of how much our check will be, but how many checks will there be, because if we don’t do something now, we won’t have Permanent Fund Dividend checks,” Lyon said.
After the rally, she said the governor is not to blame in vetoing part of the Permanent Fund appropriation and capping the dividend at $1,000.
“The governor took the first bold move and he’s taking all the fury of people that are angry all on his own shoulders, and I don’t think that’s fair. There are 60 people in the Legislature; a little bit of that burden on all of them is OK,” Lyon said.
[Walker limits PFD checks to $1,000]
She remains positive when it comes to the state’s fiscal future.
“We’re going to get through this,” Lyon said. “It’s not going to be the end of the world if we had an income tax.”
• Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.
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