A marine highway staffer watches as passengers and dogs reboard the ferry Matanuska before departing Wrangell Jan. 16, 2013. (Ed Schoenfeld/CoastAlaska News)
State budget-writers have reversed one of cuts made to the Alaska Marine Highway System.
A conference committee negotiating the operating budget over the weekend restored $1.7 million cut by the Senate. But it let stand an $8 million reduction made by the House. When the governor’s cuts are added in, the total is about $15 million, plus lost revenue from canceled sailings.
Capt. Mike Neussl is the state Department of Transportation’s deputy commissioner overseeing ferries.
“It was reassuring to see that some of those cuts the Senate had made were restored. But until the final bill is done and we do a final analysis of that final funded amount, in terms of the operating schedule and how much service we can provide, we don’t know exactly what the cuts will be,” he says.
Lawmakers may further increase funding during last-minute negotiations.
Neussl says marine highway staff will revise the next fiscal year’s schedule, which begins in July, once the budget becomes final. That will take about a week.
He says earlier projections will be fine-tuned to make sure all port communities continue to receive service.
“We made the cuts with a fairly blunt instrument. We had short notice and large amounts of cuts to make. So we made cuts that were probably less strategically thought out than they would have been if we had more time to make them,” he says.
Once the schedule is done, reservations staff will contact those who booked tickets on canceled sailings. The online reservations system will be shut down to keep it from crashing as travelers try to rebook tickets.
