The Honorable Tony Knowles
Governor of Alaska
State Capitol Building
Juneau, Alaska

Dear Governor Knowles:

We were surprised to receive your May 1, 2000 letter regarding funding for schools, harbors and the university. We are dismayed at your response to the hard work that has gone into crafting a successful funding package that will address many of the needs of many Alaskan children.

The strident nature of your response leaves the impression that you are demanding your approach or nothing. We would caution you that the insistence of what you consider "the perfect", at the expense of doing "the good", is not a wise strategy for a person actually interested in funding school construction.

As you, we do not see everything we, personally, would like to see in this package. However, the power of appropriation is clearly the responsibility of the legislative branch, not a few individuals nor the governor. We rather expected you would appreciate, as we do, that this package needs the consensus of legislators representing all Alaskans, not just your approval.

Unfortunately, we are hearing rumors that the demand of finding more funding for the school package is a ruse and a precursor to a special session. The true purpose of such a special session is actually a desire to make another run at the labor contracts under the guise of increased funding for children. While we sincerely hope this is an unfounded rumor, we can assure you that anything even remotely near such a thing would be poorly received.

Sincerely,

(Signed)
Representative Brian Porter
Speaker of the House

cc: Members of the Legislature

Attachments:

• Governor's letter (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)