Juneau -- Good morning. This is Speaker of the House Brian Porter.

This week, the house is considering the state operating budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1st. This measure passed out of the House Finance Committee late Friday night. I would like to publicly thank Representatives Eldon Mulder and Gene Therriault, the Finance Committee Co-Chairs, the Finance Committee Members and Subcommittee Members, and their Staffs for the thousands of hours of hard work they put it to produce this comprehensive budget blueprint. Thanks also to the hundreds of Alaskans who took the time to come out and testify. The end result of all this effort is a budget plan which, it must be admitted, doesn't meet everyone's wishes. It is, however, a plan which I believe the overwhelming majority of Alaskans who take the time to study and understand it will find they can live with. This plan does a good job of allocating our limited resources to get, as the phrase goes: "the biggest bang for every buck."

However, this budget does not, either literally or figuratively, reduce the state to a bread-and-water existence. In fact, while at this point it reduces spending approximately $36 million from the current year's budget, it still appropriates just over $2.1 billion for state operations. While it does make serious reductions, it actually increases funding in several areas:

• It allocates an additional $1 million to fully fund 240 state troopers;
• It increases the general fund allocation for the University of Alaska by $5.6 million;
• It increases funding for child care benefits, foster care, subsidized adoptions, and residential care programs;
• There is increased funding for youth corrections and for grants to communities for developmental disabilities programs;
• It increases funding to start 21 additional projects for safe water in rural communities.

In addition there is money for public broadcasting and for normal spring opening of the Taylor and other highways. The court system will be fully funded at its FY99 level, as will the Offices of Public Advocacy and the Public Defender. Before the budget process is over, we will likely be able to achieve even further savings through possible consolidations of departments and through the redirection and refocusing of agencies' efforts.

So, where do we stand now? To review the process: we debated this budget on the floor of the house for hours. We will be doing the same today and, in all likelihood, tomorrow. We will make changes where necessary, pass the budget in its final house form, and send it on to the senate which is undergoing a virtually identical process. Once both bodies have passed their operating budgets, Senate President Pearce and I will each appoint members to a conference committee, which will reconcile the differences between the two versions. The final product must then be approved by both houses.

As it would appear, this is an ongoing process. At this point, no one knows what the budget will finally look like. Only one thing is certain. In the words of the most-quoted major like baseball player: "it ain't over 'til it's over."

This is House Speaker Brian Porter. Thanks for listening.