All three of Juneau’s delegates to the Alaska Legislature voted in favor of the deal to avert the statewide shutdown. Here’s what they had to say:
Rep. Justin Parish
“I’m glad that we’ve reached a deal that we can come together on. We still have to deal with the overall fiscal crisis, otherwise we’ll just be back here next year, and that is unacceptable.”
Rep. Sam Kito III
“From my perspective, we protected public education, we protected the Marine Highway System with no impacts from last year to this year. We limited cuts to the university. That’s going to be a challenge, but we’re still working on that. We still have to come up with a fiscal plan solution. We’re going to have to do that with less money in our savings accounts, and that’s going to be a challenge.”
Sen. Dennis Egan
“I’m really torn. I hate what we did. I think we could’ve solved the problem not only last year but this year. Now we’re kicking it again and we’re going to be in real trouble in 2018, and it just gets worse. … However, what choice do I have? I want to keep 29.5 percent of my population from losing their jobs.”
