Thank you for listening to NewsRadio. Good morning. It is finally Friday. Current time is 6.06 a.m. It is April 18th. We have made it through yet another week. It is a little... I've got to tell you. It's getting lighter a lot faster. I have noticed that definitely in the morning. And a lot later. I mean, just honestly, because I go to bed early. Yeah, I'm going to sleep in the light again now. It has happened. It has happened. It's blackout curtain time again. It is. It is.
Well, it is one of those days that, you know, it's, I will tell you, spring, I could just, I could smell it in the air. That's actually the fields in the valley that you're smelling, but it's almost the spring, yeah. Probably so. Probably so. You know, it's getting there. The temperatures are pretty mild around South Central. My app says Palmer's 38, but my weather station.
says it's 36.2. So it's relatively warm here. Yesterday was a lot warmer, but not bad. What is Anchorage right now? So at the house, it was 38 degrees at the station. It's 38 degrees. Anchorage has actually got a consensus. We can now pass the temperature. It's 38 degrees. All right, 38 degrees. Kenai's checking in at 34. Big Lake, 37. Fairbanks, 36. And as I look around the weather, it looks like...
From Kenai to Big Lake, we're expecting rain today. So, you know, that's good, though. We need it. Because we need to knock down that fire danger. So it's good. Saturate everything. Green up my lawn. All will be fine in the world. And the buds are popping also. I took pictures and sent them to a few people yesterday. Well, actually, it was two days ago.
of the buds popping. I've got actual leaves coming on the trees now. So, yes. Oh, nice. Well, you know, it always amazes me. Like, it's just the same with fall. Like, it just all of a sudden just happens. I'll look around, and I'll see some buds popping, and then all of a sudden, like a couple days later, it says, boom.
It's just very green. See, it's funny. When you went, boom, my sinuses were exactly what my sinuses do. I look around. Everything's like, oh, it's starting to pop. And next thing I know, boom. Oh, yeah. It's three times. You'll notice a difference when I'm in here. No doubt about it. I will say I'm excited for the weekend. I don't have a whole lot planned. I have a celebration of life that I'm going to go to tomorrow for a friend of mine who passed.
Other than that, I don't have anything else going on. Have you heard of anything going on this weekend? Well, yeah, there's a celebration of life going on on Sunday. Oh, well, obviously it's Easter. Yeah, I mean, that's the ultimate celebration of life. That was my first thought when you said you're going to a celebration of life on Saturday. I'm thinking, I'm going to one on Sunday, too. Yes, yes, of course, this is Easter.
Easter weekend. Good Friday today, so it's a good happy day. That's right. That's right. But otherwise, no, got to make a ham, got to make some scallop potatoes because those are both Easter fare. I know I have a niece who is out there right now whipping up deviled eggs because that's her forte. She is really good at them. She did have to take out a couple of mortgages. And then after she took out those mortgages, because that's like a month's planning on them.
Egg prices have dropped. So now she's got all this extra money. I mean, it's literally almost half of what they were. So it's like she's like going, whoo. You notice how when Joe Biden was president, You know, the left really didn't want to talk about egg prices at all until like five minutes after, you know, Trump became president and then they were trying to blame egg prices.
on him, and then we heard about egg prices, egg prices, and then all of a sudden, when the egg prices dropped, have you heard a peep from the left, the left media? Have you heard anything? Almost half. No, and literally, I was looking at some nationwide studies on that. and it's gone down to almost half of it, and there's almost no explanation for it.
The egg jokes are going to be solid today, I'm sure of it. I'm absolutely sure of it. Well, I will tell you, I guess I should do some public announcements. There are not very many at all because it is Friday. As Daryl had mentioned, it is Good Friday, so it seems like everybody has cleared their calendar. So it's very, very light. Now, this one I was going to say. It didn't surprise me it got canceled. The only announcement for the Matsuburo we have.
is for Sunday, the North Lakes Community Council Road Board, or it says North Lakes Community Council Road and Traffic Safety Committee had a meeting scheduled on Sunday at 3. It's been canceled. I think somebody probably gave him the memo that Sunday's Easter. That's just my guess. And they're like, um, dude.
I'm like, why would you schedule that on Easter Sunday? But, you know, they've canceled it, so that is not going to happen. So there's no meetings scheduled today or this weekend in the Mat-Su borough. The same for the city of Wasilla and the city of Palmer. I don't see anything on their calendar at all. It's pretty clear. The only thing I see in the entire state, actually, for their calendars, is the municipality of Anchorage today has a work session on first quarter budget revisions.
That will be at noon today, City Hall, Conference Room 155. Then at 2.10 today, they have a work session on the assembly transition handoff meeting. So old members leaving, new members coming in. So they'll have a work session to discuss the issues and get the new members up to speed.
will be the new one when they certify the election, and then the new members will be seated. So very excited to see Jared take his spot on the Anchorage Assembly representing Chugac Eagle River. So that'll be exciting. But that's really all that's going on today is some Anchorage Assembly work sessions. If you want the agendas for those work sessions, if you want to see more information, just go to muni.org. Click on the Assembly tab and then you will be able to find that straight away.
I don't have any other announcements. Do you, Daryl? Well, let's see. Anchorage School District children and parents, no school today. And Kenai Peninsula, no school for the children down there. Also, Matsu Valley, sorry, you guys get to go to school today.
I didn't realize they had today off. See, look at that. It's a vacation day. So they've got it listed as a V on there. It's a vacation day. So it's like, all right, we'll let people know. That makes the traffic a lot lighter on the roads, especially on a Friday. Yeah, no doubt about it. Well, you know, since we were just talking about, you know, big announcements
I suspect, Daryl has been tracking this all week, and we just haven't gotten to it on the air. Off the air, we've talked about it numerous times. But I don't know if you are, Darrell, but I am signed up for the Anchorage Assembly's newsletter. And I'm on their press release list. So I get all kinds of information. But they sent out something earlier this week that kind of just flew under the radar that not a lot of people saw or talked about, really.
The Anchorage Assembly's newsletter went out, and in there it says an important milestone during a special meeting of the Anchorage Assembly earlier this week. The assembly approved a $1.1 billion with a B. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Listen to this. Listen to this. It was how much? Time not to exceed. One billion, one hundred two million, seven hundred thirty five thousand dollars for the even Chris constantly.
Yeah, $1.1 billion bond authorization to construct the two terminals of the Don Young Port of Alaska, marking a major milestone for the port modernization program. So, you know, what... We'll actually see this completed probably, it's probably going to take them, I think through 2032 is when they're expecting to be done, is 2032.
They say the cost of all phases of the port modernization program is expected to be $1.9 billion with a B, and the port will continue to seek grants and other creative fund source to minimize the impacts to Alaska's economy. Already the municipality has raised over 500 million dollars in state and federal grants for the project including 200 million.
from the state in 2022 and a 50 million dollar federal grant from mirad announced last year it goes on to say however the port modernization must move forward if grant funding and if grant funding can't make up for all the cost port user fees like surcharges and tariffs will have to be used via the revenue bond to make up the difference
The $1.1 billion bond authorization approved this week secures the municipality's ability to sell bonds backed by port revenues to fund the port modernization program. So there you go. So there's one interesting thing you just said in there also. Notice the city of Anchorage municipality is willing to levy tariffs. on things coming through there. These are tariffs. Remember that word that's the boogeyman word for the left? you know, against Trump, all of a sudden...
Our tariffs are a good thing. It's only the boogeyman for the left when it's Trump's idea. Right, right. When it's paying for their things or giving them money. Oh, no. No, and literally, they're talking some serious tariffs. I mean, remember, they jumped their tariffs like, what was it? Eight or 13 times what it used to be. That's a sizable difference in there. Yeah, no doubt about it. You know, I laugh because with all this discussion about tariffs that happen.
You know, I've seen so many audio clips of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama all talking about the need for tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. And then when Trump starts talking about it, you know, very different reasons why, to be honest with you. But when Trump starts talking about tariffs, then it's bad. This is the thing with the age we live in. You cannot escape recordings. Right, you give a speech on the floor of the Senate.
That is there forever now because it's all recorded, right? And so these throwbacks where you see Nancy Pelosi talking about the need to tariff China. the need to do that. She was even talking about bringing jobs into the U.S. versus Chinese jobs. I mean, she was on the right track. I mean, but not in this day and age. Do you think she'd say that? Not a chance. Oh, no, no, no.
Not a chance. All right, let's go ahead and take our first break in the morning. If you'd like to call in and be part of the show, today is Freeform Friday. We're always happy to take your calls, 522-0650. Welcome back, Current Time 622 on this glorious Friday morning. Yes, it's going to be a little rainy today, but it's better than snowing, and we need it. We've got to green up the grass. My grass is quite brown, so we need to green up the grass. So I'm not complaining at all, Daryl.
Well, you'll see, not only do we got to do that, we also got to knock that dust down that's everywhere. It is, like, bad. I know. It really is. You say dust, and it makes me want to sneeze. I mean, the... Especially where I live because I'm like in that glacial valley, you know. It just, oh, the dust is in the wind. It's a bit much. It's funny you actually said that because last night I was thinking about because right now, you know, we got everybody with the thoughts of Mount Spur going off.
And it's starting to get actually crazy out there. The national and the international and the bots have turned the story of Mount Spur into this catastrophe story. I mean, literally, if you were to watch the national stuff out there, it's... We're going to be Pompeii or something. Armageddon is upon us.
This is going to be a little bit of ash. It's going to be a discomfort and inconvenient. You just need your pantyhose, right, Daryl? You just need your pantyhose. A big chunk of that right there is part of it. Now, if you're doing the facial one, don't go into any businesses. You know, that's one way to filter it out.
But otherwise, it's not going to be that great. And what I was literally trying to figure out of an analogy for people on it, it's going to be like if you were standing on the Matanuska or Knick River bed with the wind blowing and somebody's riding a four-wheeler in the area. That's what it's going to be like. You're going to have all this dust in the air. It's going to be irritating as all get out. But it's really not going to stop anything.
Yeah, I know. I got to tell you, you know, I'm seeing all the clickbait about, you know. Thousands in jeopardy. I'm like, oh, come on. I'm like. I'm just hoping people up here are not believing it. Because, again, this is not. I mean, for something that crazy to happen. almost impossible. I mean, there's that small shred of it, but again, it's just going to be one of these burps. That's the best way I can explain it. It's going to burp.
It's going to be fine. It's going to be totally fine. Exactly. It's still yellow status. We keep checking. But still, all the dust for you? All the dust for you? That's what my thought was when you brought it up. It was literally like, yeah, and that's what you're going to end up with also. And the advantage is, just so everybody knows, there is a good side to this. Well, exactly.
It helps your garden grow. Are you kidding? Oh, that's true. All of our vegetables, all of our trees, all of our grass. They love that ash. I've got to tell you, the last time there was a volcanic eruption in the Anchorage area, I remember people telling me how great their gardens were afterwards. Absolutely. I mean, it is phenomenal for it.
Little bright side in there. Okay, okay, okay. See, I love that. I love the optimism. I was going to say, good on you. All right, let's get into some of the headlines, too. Yesterday, the governor vetoed exactly what he said he was going to veto. Governor Dunleavy vetoed HB 69, which is the massive spending bill that adds $1,000 to the base student allocation. has scheduled a joint session to take up the veto override early next week.
This is the time to contact your legislator and tell them, yeah, you don't have the money. You don't have the money. It's unfunded. You know, I actually spent a couple hours last night. watching the floor session and the discussion about what was going on in the Alaska State House. I watched some of the floor session.
And I tried to decide, do I want to pull an audio clip of somebody who, you know, I agreed with who basically hit the nail on the head? Or do I want to pull an audio clip of somebody who's going to trigger everybody and make them mad? And I thought, well, I could probably do both eventually. But I actually pulled an audio clip. It was interesting. I pulled an audio clip. We'll play it here in just a second of Will Stapp. He's a representative from the Fairbanks area.
And I have to tell you, it sounded a lot like me, what we've been saying here on the show for a long time. I mean, he is on target right on the money. But the governor did veto the BSA increase, and he said, you know, at the end of the day, there's no policies in it. And he said, you know, the revenue forecast has changed significantly since he introduced the budget. So read between the lines. What is he saying? You can't pay for it. You don't have the money for it.
And now here is Will Staff on the floor of the Alaska State Legislature as they're about to take the vote to pass this budget. Here he is. Representative Stepp. Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the member. from Anchorage, the operating budget co-chair. I think he articulated a lot of valuable things in this budget. The deficit is the deficit. Certainly not.
Only $60 million is much greater than that. I won't get into that detail, though, Mr. Speaker. I will just say an unfunded budget is an unfunded budget is an unfunded budget. It's a fiscal mirage. Mr. Speaker, several weeks ago, I stood on this floor. And I told the members of this body that they were going to write a check for over a quarter billion dollars that they could not cash. And it was going to bounce on the other end. Mr. Speaker, I stand before you right now.
And turns out I was wrong. The check's not going to bounce on the other end, Mr. Speaker. It's going to bounce right now when this budget goes over because it's not funded. All these good things in this budget that were added, guess what? They're not funded. CACs, not funded. $1,000 BSA increase, not funded. You can go down the line, dementia. Mr. Speaker, most of the new additions to this budget
Not only are they not funded, they're in the base budget itself. Okay, what does that mean? That means that we decided that even though in the face of a fiscal deficit, we were still going to add to our base budget. When we know that the fiscal picture is dismal, Mr. Speaker, we are at a critical junction in this session. It's going to get worse. Maybe we'll get out of FY26 without a massive CBR draw. I don't think we're going to get a CBR draw, but we can talk about that later.
But FY27 is going to be worse. And Mr. Speaker, at a press conference, you implored the House minority to work with the majority to balance the budget. And you said that we... as the body would be stuck in a morass that would carry us into a special session. Mr. Speaker, I don't want to go to special session. I don't think many people in this room want to go to special session. But I will say... that we, throughout this process,
offered hundreds of millions of dollars in targeted cut reductions, generic cut reductions, sequestration, percentage reductions. We offered individual amendments that would cut. A million dollars, a hundred thousand dollars. Almost all of them failed, if not all of them failed, Mr. Speaker. Because at the end of the day, an unfunded budget is an unfunded budget.
That makes a lot of promises to people. A lot of promises. And unfortunately, it's a bunch of promises that don't come with the one thing that guarantees them. Money. He's not wrong. He's not wrong. Man, that was exactly right. Well, that's why I said, you know, when I heard him talking, I thought, you know, there were so many good comments that I heard multiple legislators make on the floor regarding the budget and their perspective.
But we've been seeing this all along. I mean, at the end of the day, this is a show pony. This is a virtue signal. that we're behind you NEA. It has nothing to do really with educating children or improving educational outcomes. This is virtue signaling to the unions that we're going to take Alaskan's money out of their pocket and put it in your pocket. and we'll stop hit the nail on the head. It's an unfunded budget. So after they vote on the budget, they pass it.
Of course, it's 21 to 19, right? 21 Democrats. You know, add in their stutes and cap. to the 19 Republicans in the House. So it passes 2119. But in order to spend money out of the Constitutional Budget Reserve, the CBR, what he refers to, they needed 30 votes. Failed. 2119. We always knew it was going to fail because they didn't work at all with the Republicans to actually pass this budget, to work on this budget. In fact, they shot down almost every single Republican amendment to this budget.
They didn't have any conversation. I mean, and then they did the whole sneaky thing, you know, where they don't want to leave that out where, where they cut your PFD from like 3,800 down to 1,400. And then listening to Andy Josephson talk, you know, this is what almost triggered me.
I'm listening to him talk about, when he starts to talk about the PFD, and he's like, well, you know, there's an escalator in there. Basically, like, if oil, you know, per barrel gets... to 70-some-odd dollars per barrel, then, I'm paraphrasing, of course, then, you know, there's going to be an energy rebate, but that's likely not going to happen. And, you know, because of the formula. Well, there is no formula. Like, he said it, like, really fast. Wow. And I'm like.
See, this is what the, and he's like, but there's a $1,000 backstop in there. Okay. Oh, like, what is he even talking about? And so I'm sitting here, and I'm just like, squirrely, squirrely, squirrely. And then I hear Will stop, you know. jump up after Andy Josephson. And he hit the nail on the head. Look, the reality is this is all virtue signaling. They're going to say, look,
We supported kids in education, but the governor vetoed it, and those mean Republicans, look, they voted to uphold his veto. What they're not telling you is they passed an unfunded budget. They passed a budget that was in the deficit. Andy Josephson made the comment that, well, the other body, you know, they already have some ideas and some measures to make up the gap for that.
so what is he talking about he's not talking about cuts he's talking about taxes I mean, so what we have is the Democrats in the House coordinating with the Democrats in the Senate. to pass this massive union spending on an education bill, which isn't going to help educational outcomes because there's no policy changes in there. I don't know that the money will actually make it to the classroom.
that, and then on top of it, they pass an unfunded budget, and they say, well, you know, the Senate's working on something, you know, to close that gap. Well, it's not going to be cuts. It's going to be taxes. So, again, here we have, this is why I've got to tell you, I question the ability of people to do basic math. When it comes to the illogical, clearly there's people down there that do basic math.
But Andy Josephson apparently is not one of them. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Current time is 639. We are expecting a call from Senator Kaufman at 7.05 this morning. So we had some... Phone technical difficulty issues yesterday. So it didn't quite work out. So he is going to try to call back again today. So we will get an update from him on what. is going on in the legislature. We know that the Senate has passed the capital budget.
And the House has now passed the operating budget. The House passed an unfunded operating budget. which is a problem. It's a problem. It's not going to make it to the governor's desk that way. My guess is they passed it knowing, well, at least we got it out of here. They'll get it to the Senate. And then it will come back to the House for concurrence with any changes maybe the Senate has made.
And if they don't agree, then it'll end up going to a conference committee. So that conference committee is effectively three members of the finance committee from the Senate, three members of the finance committee from the House. And then they, you know, hammer out their differences between the two bodies. And then they send it back to both bodies for concurrence. So we'll see what happens. But it's going to be entertaining for sure.
You know, Daryl, we were talking about it yesterday, but did you see? That Senator Van Hollen, he did meet with Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadorian MS-13 gang member in El Salvador. Well, yeah, but not before letting everybody know that he was blocked and banned from going there by El Salvadorian.
soldiers on the road. That was the main headlines. Very small headlines. Picture of him with the guy sitting there like they're lounging around in a resort or something. Yeah, exactly. Well, in the pictures that I saw, They looked like they were at a very nice resort, had a very nice table, and he was dressed. He was not dressed in prison garb. Bingo. No, he was very nicely dressed. He looked well-fed. Let's put it that way.
You know, you see it. Again, this is all just a photo op. You know, I've got to be honest with you. When I saw this senator, this is the hill he's going to die on. He is. literally advocating for a foreign gang member, part of a designated terrorist group, who was in the country illegally. This is who he's going to put all his political chips in for. I got to think. I got to think. I mean, he's just kind of a scumbag, to be honest with you.
And what really makes it worse, at least to me, is because I was thinking about the same thing with it. He's going to put all his capital. We're going to go. I'm going to fly down there. That's it. Where was the same person for, let's say, the people held in Russia, you know, the political prisoners? What? What about the Palestinians? What about the Americans that were held by the Palestinians?
that would be a thing to go get support for not this it's heartbreaking because you know the maryland mom of five that was murdered by an illegal alien You know, I watched her mom, Rachel Morin's mom, you know, she went to the White House earlier this week. She gave a press conference and she was talking at the press conference. And, you know, again, this is a Maryland resident. An actual Maryland resident, mom of five, who was murdered by an illegal alien.
And, you know, where was the attention from this Maryland senator on that issue? Instead, this is why I say I think he's a scum. Instead, what he's doing is he's throwing all his chips in for an illegal who wasn't even supposed to be here. He's a member of a foreign terrorist organization. I mean... Come on. Come on. It's just their five minutes of fame. I think the American people see through it, and I think most people think it's just disgusting.
And I'm hoping they do, but I honestly don't think they do, Amy, because, like, I mean, they had a protest down in Juneau just the other day where everybody was protesting about due process matters, and you've got to release this Maryland man who was mistakenly deported. He's not a Maryland man. He is not a Maryland man. He is not. Nope. He is absolutely not. He was not mistakenly deported. He went through two...
Later. Bye, Felicia. Well, they keep saying they do process. This gentleman went through two processes. Both of them found him illegal to be here. And one of them, which I find really interesting because it kind of goes up against everything they're saying is, is.
They say he can't be deported back to, this is why it was wrong to deport him, the mistake to deport him to El Salvador. You can't deport him back there because, well, there's a danger from the other gangs. The rival gangs will kill him. If the rival gangs are going to kill him if he shows up there,
That means he's in a gang because you can't have a rival gang unless you're in a gang. Well, of course. He's not a gangbanger. They're saying he's not a gangbanger. Well, this is why I say the delusion of the left, you can't change it. And I still say. This is easily an 80-20 issue. Look, you're always going to have your nut jobs. You're always going to have your delusional ones that just absolutely will not believe reality.
The fact of the matter is I don't care how many, you know, blue-haired left-leaning loonies are out there holding a sign saying, you know, bring Garcia back. The same ones are protesting, kicking somebody who is a Hamas supporter out of the country, right?
You're always going to have the fringe. I mean, they're always going to be there. But that is not the majority of the country. True. And I agree it's not the majority, but there's that big chunk that's very vocal. And those are also the same people that believe killing a health care CEO. is acceptable. In fact, you know what? We're going to make that man a celebrity who did it. In fact, wow, all these women...
They want him, because that's just the coolest thing. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's what I said. I mean, no matter what issue we pick up, Look, there are lemmings among us. I mean, and you see it all the time. You know, it's so funny when I start thinking about like the whole Tesla movement and the whole electric vehicle movement. for the last many years. I mean, remember the legislation coming out of California
That is, we're going to ban all gas vehicles, all gas-powered anything, combustion engines. You can't have a gas lawnmower. You can't have a gas car. All this crap that they were going for. Electric, electric, electric, electric. And then the moment Elon Musk joins Doge
Then they're firebombing Tesla dealerships. They're shooting up Tesla dealerships. They're keying Tesla cars. And so it tells you this is not a closely held... belief that they truly believe in it's a fad it shifts with the political winds whatever is politically necessary expedient for them that's where they shift And so now to see the left turn on electric vehicles is, I mean, it's a little comical, to be honest with you.
Because it tells you where their core base really is. Are they really core believers in some of this stuff? Or is it just their lemmings following? following the propaganda machine. I would argue it's the latter. All right, let's go ahead and take a quick commercial. When we come back, we will take your calls. 522-0650. Looking at the Alaska total traffic cameras on this Friday morning. Currently light traffic coming inbound on the Glenn High. Now.
Welcome back. Current time is 6.51 on this glorious Friday. We're going to go straight to the phones. And Larry is with us. Good morning, sir. Senator Dembofsky. Striking fear into the hearts of liberals everywhere. You know, you're like the female Trump of Alaska. Both parties are insecure. I think that's a little bit true. I've got a little bit of an echo on my end. I hope you can hear. Yeah, I can hear you just fine. We're good. I just wanted to comment about lemmings.
You know, it's so true. They seem like things. There's a couple things going on here. that just emotionally react to the superficial elements of a subject, whether it be Ukraine or COVID or whatever. And I was listening to, I'm still listening to the Tucker Carlson. interview with what's his name from Redacted News. And they're talking about Portugal, and he's talking about how the average person only has... so much time to absorb some sort of news.
They get home from work, they're taking care of the kids, they're running errands, doing laundry, etc. And if they get 30 minutes of MSNBC or some other retarded news, that's all. And they can't really be blamed for it. So you've got the young people that are just kind of still not looking for the second and third and fourth layer of the issue. They're just emotionally reacting. Oh, little poor little Ukraine, you know.
And so we think of these people as being lemmings, but we're just fortunate enough to... have the time or it's in your case, your job to look into the news. Yeah, I think what you're saying is absolutely true. And I wouldn't say it's even isolated to just young people. I think there's people out there that are busy, you know, and they're...
You know, they're working their job. They're dropping kids off at daycare. They're picking them up after school, bringing them to soccer practice, coming home, getting dinner on the table. And, you know, you have, you know, 35 minutes to an hour that maybe you can turn the TV off. on at the night at the nighttime and if you turn on CNN and that's all you see you don't know the other side of it so I would say it's probably not just young people I would say it's just you know but
Again, when you start, and you see this with man on the street sometimes, where somebody will say, you know, do you support, I watched this one last night. That's why it's fresh on my mind. Fresh example. There's this guy out there, and he's clearly gay. He states he's gay. And he goes up to this woman at this Pride event. And he says, do you support Palestine or Israel? And she says, Palestine. And he says to her, do you know being gay in Palestine is illegal? The penalty is death.
And she looks at him like, what are you saying? No, that's Israel. He says, no, Israel is actually a free country where it's not illegal to be gay, but it's illegal to be gay in Palestine and I would be killed. And you can see the shock on her face because she's shocked. It's like she's never heard this before. And that's why he said, you know, an organization like Gays for Palestine would actually be illegal in Palestine.
Yeah, it's the difficulty. We all settle into our paradigm, our belief systems, and some of us are willing to do them, and many of us. Most of us are just stuck in our ways, and we refuse. We just don't want to lose. are entrenched in a belief. Yeah, no, I think, Larry, I think you've hit the nail on the head. I mean, absolutely. Great commentary this morning. Thank you. Yeah, great talking to you, sir.
You know, look, Larry's right, and this is why honestly many times when somebody calls in and they disagree with me, I'll actually give them more time. You know, it is difficult because oftentimes, you know, we all are set in our ways. Look, I'm no different than anybody else. I can be very stubborn at times. No, that isn't so, Amy. Yeah, I'm just telling you, it can happen. It can happen. But as we have these conversations,
You know, one thing I've always thought I was pretty good at is willing to sit back and listen and say, hey, is there information that I'm missing? Am I wrong? Are they bringing new information to light that maybe I didn't think about, maybe I didn't consider? If I'm trying to fix something.
maybe they have a better way of doing it or maybe they have a more efficient way of doing it. So I try to do that. That is something that I've actually pried myself on over the years is being willing to listen to see if there's new facts. that we're missing. But there's a lot of people out there. It's either my way or no way. And unfortunately, the country right now is very divided. But I think we are starting to see a change. I do think we're starting to see a change.
That's the case. All right. We're going to go ahead and take a quick break. When we come back, we're expecting a call from Senator James Kaufman. Stay with us. KENI. The Opinion. At current time, it's 7.07. This is Hour 2 of the Amy Dobosky Show, broadcasting live and local every weekday morning from 6 to 8 a.m. Joining the show now is none other than Senator James Kaufman. He represents the Abbott Loop Huffman. I'm in O'Malley and Lower Hillside area. Good morning, sir.
Good morning. I hope I'm coming in clearer than I did yesterday. You have that booming voice. It sounds wonderful. Thank you for your patience with us yesterday. Sorry about the connectivity issues, but I'm glad we got you today.
No, it was worth it. Well, we got to add a layer of excitement to it, so that was going to be pre-veto, and now we're talking post-veto. Yeah, exactly. Well, I started to cover it today, so for those that are just joining us, The governor has vetoed the education spending bill, also known as HB 69.
and it seems there's commentary coming out of both sides, it seems, and the legislature will take this veto override up next week. What are your thoughts on it, and what are your kind of expectations, Senator? I'd like to do kind of what I do sometimes, explain my perspective of, you know, I'm in the middle of it all. sometimes see things differently.
This big tug of war on whether or not to add funding and how much or what policy to add has been the dynamic on education. You've got the people that... want nothing more than additional money for education. And then you have the people that want the policy, we'll call it the assurances, that that money is going to be used to deliver education and not somehow get chewed up in the system.
And so I'll tip my hat to everyone, say, you know, good on you. Let's let the debate begin and let's reach a rational compromise because that's what it's going to take. The governor has incredible veto powers. He can veto the bill, and then we have a two-thirds majority that's needed. And then if... gets past them in that veto, there's always the line item in the budget, the actual funding mechanism in the budget, and that can be vetoed. So that's a three-quarter vote, so that's really tough.
If people in the legislature want to get something through that's going to be durable for the next few years at least, they have to work it with the governor, and that's just the reality. Then we go to the next piece of the puzzle of why this bill is getting vetoed, and the answer is it was designed to be. So the leadership that stripped the bill out, stripped all of the policy out of the bill, had come out of Senate finance or Senate education with policy.
And that policy was a carryover from what got hammered into it in the House and then what got worked in Senate education. And then it goes to the finance table where I sit. And I was informed that we were going to pretty much do a procedural thing, strip all the policy out, put it to the floor, and get it to a vote. And I was like, well.
the uh senate majority leadership uh well it's just going to get vetoed like yep that's what's going to happen so okay so it was born to Well, not born to run, but it was built to be vetoed. And it served its purpose. So they passed it and denied any amendments to try and make it something that the governor would accept. I know because I'm the one that put forth the floor amendment.
to try and amend policy back into it that was framed around the governor's ass. And that got voted down, and then it got voted out of the Senate. The chamber went over to the House for concurrence and to the governor, and he vetoed it. So there's some interesting things to look at. If you look at the floor vote for it, you'll see that the finance chairs, the majority finance chairs voted no against it. and also stood up and spoke against it, which is kind of unusual for...
to happen in a bill that the majority is passing. And their concern is simply financial. The $1,000 BSA with the other constraints on the budget, it's just not there. I think they wanted to just throw down a marker on the financial aspects of it and then... You know, send it to the governor and have it get vetoed.
And what I was told is that they have other policy that they plan on putting forth immediately behind it. So this veto will not get overridden. There's not support. I mean, you even have members of the Senate majority. particularly the finance chairs, that since they voted no on passing the bill, they're likely to vote no with respect to overturning the veto. So it's a lot of kabuki theater.
If you'll visualize a game of tug-of-war between the funding advocates and the policy advocates, Then you have to start adding a third rope that's just been attached to the middle of the tug-of-war game, and that's getting into the... gubernatorial races that are coming up. So I think there's starting to be some unfortunate angling in that realm, too. I've been hoping that wouldn't happen and we could stay focused on policy and funding with respect to education.
I think we're a little premature for it to get unreasonably political. to create something that just holds a problem over into the next legislature. And I hope that's not the case. But if you see where a deal can't be made, I'll have a hard time imagining that it's anything but. You know, Senator Kaufman, you're bringing up things that, you know, you're just verifying for me kind of what my gut instinct was. And, you know, when I see this, like, I don't know.
And it's probably happened. I don't recall it happening. But when you pass a budget, you know, I didn't get a chance to watch the Senate debate on this. But I'm going to, now you've piqued my curiosity. So now I'm going to go back and I'm going to watch the Senate's debate.
When it comes to, you know, whether we're talking in the finance committee or whether we're talking about, I'm just going to track it a lot closer because I think it will be interesting. You can say a lot of things about some of the, you know, like Stedman. or maybe Lyman Hoffman or whomever. But one thing I have watched with Stedman is he seems to be very in tuned with the actual funding sources. And I appreciate the fact that
People are actually recognizing you can't pass an unfunded budget. You have to make sure there's a funding source for the budget you pass, and I appreciate that. I think when we have those conversations, I played earlier a floor clip from one of the House members from Fairbanks who was talking about the House passing an unfunded budget. And the reality is, is this is the game that is played. And that's why I was concerned. What I'm watching is.
is political theater for the 2026 governor's election. That's what I was expecting that I'm going to see. Because what it's going to do is it's going to set Republicans up and say, look, You guys didn't override the governor's veto of this education bill. It's all your fault. You don't love kids. I mean, that's kind of the narrative I see going to develop from a political aspect.
Yeah, it's here already. The ASD, the Anchorage School District, has did their budget in a way that assumed no additional money coming in, even though every year we put additional money in the budget. It's one-year uplift to the BSA now. There's problems with that. It makes it difficult for people to plan and to budget if you don't know what the base number is. So it's good to have a base number that...
you can count on and you're not worried about the legislative process and what the additional number will be for budgeting. I get it. I think we should fix that. But they've done a good job of putting out a budget that assumed that we wouldn't give the additional money and referring back to the current base without any uplift and using it to market.
the notion that the legislature is cutting education if we don't pass this. And really, the entire debate is around how much more money and how to deliver that money, what assurances that... So that's the policy that gives people the assurance that education will be delivered and bureaucracy just won't chew it up. I would say ASD and their support network, they are on high pitch, my email.
It's flavored with the quit cutting education. Well, we haven't cut anything. Well, this is the political spin that just mystifies most of us that watch. The reality is... When somebody is coming to you screaming that it's your fault they can't live within their budget because you won't give them a $1,000 BSA increase because you're not going to give them $1,000 per child raise in their base student allocation. It's your fault that they can't live within their budget. Look.
Whenever somebody gets a raise, You didn't live on that raise before. You got the raise, you should probably live within your budget. You know, we had Senator Hughes on the show a couple weeks ago, and she was talking about, you know, this funding source that ASD has that has about $87 million in it. And when you talk about the positions that they potentially could cut, I would say ASD probably has the money to cover their budget.
if they chose to use this other funding source. So, again, I don't think it's the legislature's fault, is my point. I think ASD has choices to make here. Well, what I will say, there has been tremendous inflation. You know, it's not as if... We had an efficient school system before. I do believe that we need funding. So I'm a centrist on this. Let's make a deal. Let's get some good policy, and let's get some funding in there.
but let's not make perfect be the enemy of the good. Let's find kind of a middle ground that we can afford. So it's got a pencil into the budget. We have to be able to cover it with present revenue. because there's no appetite to fund this upcoming operating and capital budget with drawing down from the CBR. And I credit the finance chairs. So those guys take a lot of heat from the right. If you're in there with them, you see that they really do care about balancing a budget, controlling costs.
The next piece, there's a couple of them that would be willing to add additional taxes, and there's other people on the finance table that aren't really up for taxes. So you've got some division there. But dealing with a balanced budget that's balanced against present revenues is... That is a point of concern for the finance table, and I'd say that even the Senate majority leadership
Most of them know that that's what we have to do because they don't want to be held captive by a CBR vote to fund the budget. That gives a lot of leverage to people. Sure. No, that makes sense. You know, and that's why I appreciate your perspective because I found you to be a very pragmatic.
non-emotional person discussing these type of issues. And I know I get a little carried away sometimes, but I do appreciate the pragmatic style and the approach that you take. And I think people like me say, look, When we see the educational outcomes of our children and we are ranking in the lowest level in the country, we're like 49th, right, when we start to take metrics on.
you know, whether it's fourth grade reading or math scores or whatever, the reality is Alaska spends some of the highest dollars per capita per student. on our educational spending, but we get some of the poorest results. And I think most Alaskan parents want their kids to have a great education, but we don't want to throw good money after bad results. We actually want to see
The results, if we're going to invest, what is that return on investment going to look like? And so I appreciate the fact that you're also talking about, you know, how do we actually improve outcomes? Because that's the whole point of putting all this money behind each other. you know, these expenditures. Senator Kaufman, do you have one more segment you can stay with us or do you got to jet?
Oh, absolutely. Now that we've got a good phone connection, you can't get me out of here. I love it. All right, we're speaking with Senator James Kaufman. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Morning Drive Radio with Amy Dembos. Welcome back. We're talking with Senator James Kaufman. This is the time in the legislative session where it starts to get interesting. As you start to see the big appropriation bills moving, different types of legislation moving.
This is when the gamesmanship begins. So Senator Kaufman, as... As you're in the thick of it, down in the Alaska State Senate, what is it we should expect? What are we going to see? Or what are the things that you're tracking that are piquing your interest? But I guess on the operating budget, the House is narrowly divided. So you have an almost equal split between the majority-minority caucus.
And the difficulties with the budget that you saw were for two reasons. One, you have that very equal division or near equal. That creates a lot of political tension. But then you also have people that were in very difficult positions. You have people who promised large BSA-based student allocation increases. And in some cases, and they're also promoting a traditional dividend payment. So they're...
The promises that they've made or the positions they've taken have overloaded what's possible with present revenue and creating that impossible hurdle of a CBR vote. A lot of the difficulty that you saw with that and then the results, which is a budget that's unfunded, the CBR vote failed, the effective date failed.
coming out of the House. So that's a bloated budget that is coming to the Senate, and it can't be sustained. So you can almost think of it that the House process was like the feedlot. And then it's coming over to the Senate, which is going to be the butcher. Because what they built just can't be sustained, couldn't be passed, and we couldn't afford it if it did. And that's just the brutal truth. And the reason why it's there is that...
The coalition was held together by duct tape and bailing wire over the policy divisions and the spending proposals that were just overheating the financial load on the state. That's just, it's almost... technicality that a budget passed out of the House because it didn't really pass. It's not fully funded, you know, and it failed the higher threshold votes that are required to get it out of the House.
But it'll come to the Senate, it'll get traded with the capital budget, so it's kind of the process where the handoff, unless we get into a year where, as before, it was... The budge has got turducken, which is a nickname for when everything just gets blended together and passed from one body to the next. So barring a turducken, and I don't see that happening. I don't see it right now, but the capital budget that we passed, this is remarkable.
was unanimous out of the Senate. So if you picture everybody pushing the green button for a capital budget, and the reason why... is because Bert Stedman, the capital chair on Senate Finance, did a great job of trying to pull money that had been sitting in other appropriations that... that weren't useful and pulled them into the useful part of the capital budget.
You know, it's money that was maybe sitting there for a stalled project, and there's not as much as people think. People think that there's a lot of money that's available, but some of it's encumbered in these different buckets that it's been put in. And it's not always easy to get that money out. But they did what they could to do. pull money from other buckets, get it into the part of the capital budget that's the most efficient.
which is where we have federal matching for projects. So that's our most leveraging capital money that we can spend and got that put into a... pretty darn fair capital budget to the point where everybody voted for it. And so that's the difference. You have a lean, responsible capital budget. It's not great in terms of our backlog of... deferred maintenance and capital projects that would be helpful. It's not great from that perspective, but it had the respect.
of the people on the floor who pushed the green button because... They respected that it was a very workmanlike effort to get a good, clean capital budget out under the current restraints. Well, I will say I can't remember a time when a budget was passed unanimously. And I know with the capital budget,
Like you said, it's much smaller than it has been in past years. But the fact that the Senate was able to come together as one body and unanimously agree, that's, I mean, that's pretty, it's pretty impressive. I don't remember seeing that in any recent history anyway. Yeah, it was pretty remarkable, but it was merited because you go through the thing and you think, well, some money came from here and it went there, and that was a small project. You know, the Port of Nome, they actually...
pulled some money out of the port of Nome because that project has stalled. The Corps of Engineers has backed off. of it uh at present so um they they were able to get a little bit of money there and and so money moved around but it it again it was just a professional It was lean, but it was done fairly. And so it earned respect. And the results are clear in that vote. So that's the difference between...
What was done in finance in the Senate with the capital budget and then versus the House operating budget, which is a product of the terrible political tensions. in that body and a product of the over-promising on spending that some people did that wasn't really tuned in. to the funding constraints that we have this year. Well, and I think you would agree. I mean, when you pass a budget, it has to be based in reality. I mean, if you're going to pass a budget, it has to be funded.
It does, and I get... calls and emails from people. Again, ASD has done a good job of pumping up the level of attention to people in the district and around town. calls, you know, hey, if we need to fund education, tax me. And what they don't understand is we couldn't tax anyone quick enough to get out of the funding dilemma that we're in this year. You can't stand up a new tax structure.
you know, populate it with the people that collect the tax and do all the things you have to do, you can't hardly do that within the time frame of funding the budget that we're currently working on. The taxes, if they're in the future, they won't be useful for filling the revenue shortfall that we're seeing this year because... of a number of issues. So the price of oil is trending down. Good for America. Can be rough on us. And the other constraint is that because of the capital investment,
write-offs that all the work on the slope is getting, it trims back our near-term revenue. So the future is much brighter, the present is tight, and there may be new taxes because those are simple majority votes. But I don't vote on yes on any tax if we don't have a valid spending cap in place. And everyone knows that I'm the...
the spending cap guy. I continue to put forth that legislation. And actually, I'm told that Senator Clayman is going to hear the spending cap when we get back to the Capitol after Easter. That's optimistic. You know, you've been on this fiscal responsibility and a holistic picture of how to get there for a number of years now. And the fact that that bill is going to be heard, I think, is a positive step.
Senator Kaufman, unfortunately, our time always goes way too fast, but we always appreciate you calling in because it's like the voice of reason that we hear coming out of Juneau, and we really appreciate your... your very clear perspective to navigate us through these waters.
Well, thank you, Amy. Always enjoy being on and look forward to the next time. All right. Thank you so much. If you want to get in touch with Senator Kaufman, one of the easiest ways to do it is just go to his webpage, SenatorKaufman.com. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Wait, mornings on NewsRadio 650.
Well, this is one of those days you wish you had a three hour show. Very few of those days exist for me. But this is one of those days. Lots of information. I just posted it on Facebook. But the White House has put out lab leak, the true origins of COVID. And in there, they have it broken down. They have it absolutely broken down. And they talk about the NIH failures, gain-of-function research that was funded, you know, effectively that funded this stuff.
But then they start getting into the obstruction of the House Select Committee's research into COVID-19. And they call out people by name that obstructed. the select subcommittees investigation. It is a very interesting read. So if you want more information, you can find it at whitehouse.gov. Or if you follow me on Facebook, you can go to Facebook. And I've shared the link to.
the White House's page where you can see them just dropping now again the true origins of COVID-19 and I think the more interesting part for us because we all know it's from China. We all know that. But I think the more interesting thing is the obstruction that is demonstrated.
by the White House in this report, I think it's going to lead to a lot more headlines. Let's just put it that way. All right, let's go to the phones. And Senator Shelley Hughes is joining us now. Good morning, Senator Hughes. Yeah, good morning, Amy. I didn't know if you'd want to take another legislator after Senator Kaufman did such an awesome job. Well, it's hard to follow him. Yeah, it's hard to follow him. He's always so, like...
pragmatic and so calm. You know, I love that about him. I'm always happy to take your call. Yeah, and that nice bass voice in the morning is just kind of soothing. Since we're talking about education and taxes, the people that want taxes, I have a riddle for you. What's the best? way to teach a child about taxes. Oh, I don't know what is it? Eat 34% of their ice cream.
Bingo. So I just want to call in because I did mention that $87 million that the Anchorage School District is not showing that they're using in this year's budget. And I went over the numbers with D to make sure I wasn't incorrect. The Anchorage School District has not been able to refute it. So I know because when Senator Kronk in Senate Finance
made a question about their fund balance. Maybe they were holding too much there. He wasn't sure. They quickly, within an hour or so, had emails tuning around the building. Oh, no, no, no. We are following the law with our fund balance. We're going to have it at only 10%. That's required by statutes. That 8% is being applied. So they cleared that up. They have not been able to clear up the $87 million. They can't do it.
because you can look at their budget. They submitted to DEED, and there's $41 million they overestimated for human resources. and the 46 million that the legislature appropriated to them last summer outside the... the formula, $680 per student, they did not apply. So they have $87 million, and I will just point out they can set aside $27 of that. to keep their bond rating, you know, a good bond rating. So that still leaves 60 available.
And the average cost for an employee is, I'm hearing, with all the benefits and retirement, is about $126,000 per employee. So that $60 million is more than enough. to cover the 360 employees that they are claiming. And I tell you, when you cry wolf like that and you're not being honest,
It's very difficult to have a frank discussion about the needs of the school, and I think Anchorage School is actually damaging the discussion for the rest of the districts. The rest of the districts use... the 408 I'm sorry the $680 per student they received last summer. They included in their budgets because they needed it. Anchorage didn't include it. If they needed it, they would have included it. They didn't. Oh, so sneaky. So sneaky. And this is the Washington Monument argument.
This is what I get frustrated about. Like, it's not complicated. Live within your budget. Base yourself on your budget what you got last year. year you could probably guess you're you're gonna be okay yes inflation happens yes our bargaining agreements happening costs go up but instead what they're doing is they're betting on a thousand dollar BSA and they're saying
we're going to have to cut all these things if you don't give us a massive raise. And when you say that and you have $87 million in your slush fund, I will just say it doesn't pass the red face test for most voters. Because what it does is you're not being really honest about your books.
And I think that's, you know, again, and then when they're out there hyping up their people and the parents telling the parents it's all the legislature's fault because they can't budget, you know, it gives me heartburn. I'll be honest with you, it gives me a little heartburn. And just to make it clear, that $87 million also does not include, they've got another 10%.
that they by law can set aside for emergencies so that 87 million does not include it. And we should probably back out the 27 for their bond rating, but they have 60 million available. So they aren't, you know, it was very strange. Their budget, they had even other superintendents, Amy, around the state were wondering what was going on because they were such an outlier. Their job seemed so huge. So they actually brought them on.
brought this upon themselves. They haven't been able to refute it. They'll try to weave numbers and confuse you, but they cannot actually refute the 41 and the 46. So I just thought I'd tell you. And the other thing I wanted to bring up really quick, because I know you probably have other callers we are we are on we're up against a break really quick Yes, the governor has provided a copy of his education proposal.
and it will get read across next week. But it is already a compromise. It actually doesn't have everything that I had hoped it would have in it. If anybody says, oh, we've got to will it down and compromise what he's got, he has compromised a bunch in this bill. It does not have the charter authorizer. an extra one. It doesn't have the teacher retention bonus
It doesn't have the, it doesn't ban cell phones. It leaves it up to districts, which to me would be a game changer for middle and high school students. Absolutely. Well, we will watch for it. Maybe we can have you on next week and we can talk about it a little bit more if you're game. Would love it. Would love it. All right. Thank you so much.
Have a blessed Easter weekend. You too, Senator Hughes. Thank you so much for calling in. I appreciate it. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Looking at your Alaska total traffic cameras on this Friday morning. Currently, light traffic is still inbound on the Glen Highway. Not seeing any stoppages or slowdowns out there. Welcome back to live, local, and insightful Morning Drive Radio on NewsRadio 650K.
Welcome back, current time, 7.52. All right, we're going to go to the phones, and Randy is with us. Good morning, sir. Good morning, Ms. Sunshine and Daryl. Happy Friday. Yeah, happy Good Friday, sir. Well, I'm glad to hear your voice. I know you've not been feeling well, but you sound great. Oh, that's good. I was wondering if you could hear me. Two things I'd like to express. One thing, I enjoy your podcast, and I play them to...
Help educate those uneducated people, especially if you do the podcast in a few minutes. The senator's talking. Just a few minutes, they can walk into your hospital room, you punch that on there, and they get edgy good. Yep. I will tell you, we do our best. We try our best. Well, are you all ready for Easter this weekend? Most definitely, and especially dying eggs tonight.
Anyway, a quick joke for the end of the week, please, if you're ready for one. I'm ready. Why did the skeleton cross the road? Why did the skeleton cross the road? I don't know why. He had a bone to pick with a chicken. I love it. Well, I don't know that there's a better way to end the week. Father Randy, I'm so glad you called in this morning. I hope you and your beautiful wife, Susan, have a wonderful Easter weekend. You're on the mend soon and you're feeling better.
Most definitely. Thank you. All right. You too, sir. Thank you so much for the call. Randy, he is such a gem. Well, I will tell you. I'm going to switch gears for just a second because I have about a minute and a half left. But the story is popping now. We mentioned it. I just briefly mentioned it. The White House has released on whitehouse.com.
They have released Lab Leak, The True Origins of COVID-19. And through this, I mean, they just go down in section by section, proximal origin publication, gain-of-function research. EcoHealth Alliance Incorporated, known as EcoHealth, under the leadership of Peter Dzak, used U.S. taxpayer dollars to facilitate dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. I mean, this is an awesome website. NIH failures. It talks about the failures of NIH. HHS obstruction.
The Biden administration's HHS engaged in multi-year campaign of delayed confusion and non-responsiveness in an attempt to obstruct the select subcommittee's investigation and hide evidence. could incriminate or embarrass senior public health officials, it appears that HHS even intentionally under-resourced its component that responds to legislative oversight requests. So basically, we're not going to staff the department that's answering legislators' questions.
EcoHealth obstruction. Dr. David Marenz. Dr. Fauci's senior advisor, Dr. David Moretz, deliberately obstructed the subcommittee's investigation, likely lied to Congress on multiple occasions, unlawfully deleted federal COVID-19 records, and shared non-public information about NIH.
grant processes with EcoHealth President Dr. Peter Dzak oh this is good I gotta tell you it just goes on and on and on the information they have a full report up if you want it you can download it just go to whitehouse go Whitehouse.gov is the website. And if you follow me on Facebook, I've shared it on Facebook. So it is there as well. Well, that does it for Daryl and I for today. This is Easter weekend. Easter is meant to be a time of... renewal in life I hope everybody has a
Daryl, we will be back on Monday. Yes, we will. And not only that, but remember, he is risen on Sunday. Amen to that, brother. All right, that does it for Daryl and I today. We will see you Monday morning at 6 a.m. Until then, stay tuned. May God bless each and every one of you.