Slashed funding. The mean, hypocritical Republican slashed funding…except…
…that if you actually bother to examine the information that Alaska's Covenant House makes available about its operations, it's obviously not true. Start with the financials. In 2007, Covenant House reported $1.3 million dollars in "grant income". In 2006, the figure was $1.2 million. So why, all of the sudden, did Covenant House seem to need 4 times that amount, $5 million or so in state money?
The answer is that Covenant House is expanding. The plans are described in the 2009 Alaska capital budget proposal…
State funding will assist Covenant House to relocate, and construct a new Crisis Center for Covenant House in downtown Anchorage.
$22 million is needed to complete the expansion. Covenant House asked the Alaska legislature to provide $10 million, the legislature answered with $5 million in the 2009 budget. Governor Palin cut the figure back to $3.9 million -- for this year. This likely doesn't stop the expansion; Covenant House will either have to get more from the state in a future year and/or increase the amount from private donations to make it happen. But no existing program that helps teenage mothers or the children of teenage mothers has been affected by this budget decision, and calling a one-time infusion of $3.9 million added by the state on top of normal operating expenses a "cut" only makes sense if you can't do math, if you don't understand the difference between a capital outlay and an operating outlay, or if you hate Republicans.