Nick Begich Criticized The Anchorage Municipal Government For Taking Out Bonds To Pay For School Infrastructure, Claiming He Wanted To Implement Zero-Based Budgeting

Begich Criticized The Anchorage Local Government For Taking Out Bonds To Pay For School Busses Because It Raised Property Taxes. “In Anchorage, you know, one of the things that concerns me and concerns a lot of the people that I speak with is the manner in which we bond things. Bonds are a major driver of our property taxes in this town. When I see things like IP cameras, when I see things like school buses, these are things that on the grand scale are relatively moderate to minor expenditures. Do we really need to bond these? Aren’t these foreseeable -shouldn’t they be fit within the scope of the existing budget? So once you start fitting those maintenance things that we should be putting in the budget- according to several people- something else has got to go.” [KTVA Newa, 3/25/16]

Begich Claimed Schools Should “Tighten Their Belts” On Infrastructure Expenditures Because Teachers “Drive Learning Outcomes.” “My bias is for teachers, not for infrastructure. We have teachers in this town that drive learning outcomes for our students. I think we’ve got some fantastic facilities but when faced with the budget challenges that we all know exists you know we’re going to have to we’re going to have to tighten the belt a little bit on some of those types of investments and in order to retain the the high-quality teachers.” [KTVA Newa, 3/25/16]

Begich Believed In Zero-Based Budgeting, Which Would Require An Annual Review For Every Budgetary Item. “I believe in a process called ‘zero-based budgeting.’ Rather than simply using the previous year’s expenditures as the starting point of next year’s budget as is proposed in Proposition 8, I believe that every budgetary line item should be reviewed for need on a regular basis.” [NBC KTUU, 3/23/16]

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